How Well Does LCA Model Land Use Impacts on Biodiversity?A Comparison with Approaches from Ecology and Conservation

The modeling of land use impacts on biodiversity is considered
a priority in life cycle assessment (LCA). Many diverging approaches
have been proposed in an expanding literature on the topic. The UNEP/SETAC
Life Cycle Initiative is engaged in building consensus on a shared
modeling framework to highlight best-practice and guide model application
by practitioners. In this paper, we evaluated the performance of 31
models from both the LCA and the ecology/conservation literature (20
from LCA, 11 from non-LCA fields) according to a set of criteria reflecting
(i) model completeness, (ii) biodiversity representation, (iii) impact
pathway coverage, (iv) scientific quality, and (v) stakeholder acceptance.
We show that LCA models tend to perform worse than those from ecology
and conservation (although not significantly), implying room for improvement.
We identify seven best-practice recommendations that can be implemented
immediately to improve LCA models based on existing approaches in
the literature. We further propose building a “consensus model”
through weighted averaging of existing information, to complement
future development. While our research focuses on conceptual model
design, further quantitative comparison of promising
models in shared case studies is an essential prerequisite for future
informed model choice.