The Area of Protection Resources in LC (S) A

Dear Colleagues,

Life cycle assessment (LCA) often attributes potential environmental impacts (midpoint or endpoint) to three so-called areas of protection (AoP), i.e., natural environment, human health and resources (ISO, 2006 [1]). While the first two are well established, the role of the last AoP in LCA is still debated, and there is no consensus on how this AoP should be tackled methodologically (Sonderegger et al., 2017 [2]). Furthermore, it is often defined by different terminologies (e.g., natural resources), or it even incorporates aspects of ecosystem services (UNEP, 2016 [3]; Bulle et al., 2019 [4]), which can raise debates of what should be included, e.g., limiting the resources to be analyzed or even going beyond what is typically analyzed in LCA. For those issues, this AoP has been highly under debate in the LCA community, as different aspects can fit into it, depending on the perspective considered (Dewulf et al., 2015 [5]), or it can even remain controversial and sometimes be questioned whether an impact assessment of resource use fits within the scope of environmental LCA when it also comprises economic aspects (Drielsma et al., 2016 [6]; UNEP, 2019 [7]). In the end, previous concepts of AoPs, such as the “Man-made Environment” (Finnveden et al. 2009 [8]), may become relevant (again), especially when considering the growth in the use and operationalization of life cycle sustainability assessment (LCSA) (orienting.eu), which incorporates social and economic aspects into the traditional environmental LCA.

In that sense, we would like to present the Special Issue “The Area of Protection Resources in LC (S) A”, in which we kindly invite experts in the field to submit scientific articles discussing this topic. Relevant questions to be discussed in this Special Issue include (but are not limited to) the following:

• What should the AoP resources consider? What are the “resources” society wants to protect (land, biomass, water, metals, minerals, fossil fuels, etc.)?
• Should it include only “natural” resources or also human assets, which include secondary resources (materails obtained from recycling) up to cultural heritage?
• What is its connection with ecosystem services? Should only provisioning services belong to the AoP resources? What about the other ecosystem services (e.g., regulation)—where do they belong?
• How can we differentiate natural resources from human-made resources?
• Should the way forward be “rebranding” this AoP into another (more complete) terminology, e.g., “natural, manufactured, human and social assets”?
• How should this AoP fit into the emerging concept of circular economy? That is, resources are no longer (sought to be) simply extracted, processed and disposed (as in a linear economy), and thus society is no longer trying to protect aspects related to the extraction of these resources but actually exploring how they can be kept accessible to society, either in the natural environment or in the human/technosphere environment.
• Does “criticality” fit in this AoP for LCA, or in another AoP for LCSA?
• What are the potential overlaps with other AoPs (e.g., ecosystem service; human-made environment), and how can they be solved?

[1] ISO. ISO 14040:2006. Environmental management – Life cycle assessment – principles and framework. 20p. 2006

[2] Sonderegger, T., et al. Towards harmonizing natural resources as an area of protection in life cycle impact assessment. Int J Life Cycle Assess 22, 1912–1927 (2017)

[3] UNEP. Global Guidance for Life Cycle Impact Assessment Indicators: Volume 1. 2016.

[4] Bulle, C., et al. IMPACT World+: a globally regionalized life cycle impact assessment method. Int J Life Cycle Assess 24, 1653–1674 (2019)

[5] Dewulf, J., et al. Rethinking the Area of Protection “Natural Resources” in Life Cycle Assessment. Environ. Sci. Technol. 49, 5310-5317 (2015).

[6] Drielsma, J.A., et al. Mineral resources in life cycle impact assessment—defining the path forward. Int J Life Cycle Assess 21, 85–105 (2016)

[7] UNEP. Global Guidance for Lify Cycle Impact Assessment Indicators: Volume 2. 2019.

[8] Finnveden, G.; Hauschild, M. Z.; Ekvall, T.; Guinée, J.; Heijungs, R.; Hellweg, S.; Koehler, A.; Pennington, D.; Suh, S. Recent developments in Life Cycle Assessment J. Environ. Manag. 2009, 91, 1– 21

Dr. Rodrigo Alvarenga
Prof. Dr. Jo Dewulf
Dr. Masaharu Motoshita
Guest Editors

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• area of protection
• LCA
• LCSA
• resource
• ecosystem service
• circular economy
• criticality
• natural resources