Greffe, Titouan; Margni, Manuele et Bulle, Cécile
(2022).
« An instrumental value‑based framework for assessing the damages
of abiotic resources use in life cycle assessment ».
The International Journal of Life Cycle Assessment.
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Résumé
Introduction & literature review. Abiotic resources are extensively used in industrialised societies to deliver multiple services that contribute to human wellbeing. Their increased extraction and use can potentially reduce their accessibility, increase competition among users and ultimately lead to a deficit of those services. Life cycle assessment is a relevant tool to assess the potential damages of dissipating natural resources. Building on the general consensus recommending evaluating the damages on the instrumental value of resources to humans in order to assess the consequences of ressources dissipation, this research work proposes a novel conceptual framework to assess the potential loss of services provided by abiotic resources, which when facing unmet demand, can lead to a deficit to human users and have consequences on human wellbeing.
Results. A framework is proposed to describe the mechanisms that link human intervention on the resources in the accessible stock to competition among users. Users facing the deficit of resource services are assumed to have to pay to recover the services, using backup technologies. The mechanisms that are proposed to be characterized are dissipation and degradation. Data needed to later operationalize the framework for abiotic resources are identified. It also proposes a framework at the life cycle inventory level to harmonize life cycle inventories with the current impact assessment framework to fully characterize impacts on resource services. It regards ensuring mass balances of elements between inputs and outputs of life cycle inventory datasets as well as including the functionality of resource flows.
Discussion and Conclusions. The framework provides recommendations for the development of operational life cycle impact assessment (LCIA) methods for resource services deficit assessment. It establishes the impact pathway to damage on the area of protection “Resource Services”, data needed to feed the model and recommendations to improve the current state of life cycle inventories to be harmonized with the LCIA framework.
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