Why Include Impacts on Biodiversity from Land Use in LCIA and How to Select Useful Indicators?

Sustainability

Ottar Michelsen²  Jan Paul Lindner¹ 

[1] Department Life Cycle Engineering, Fraunhofer Institute for Building Physics, 70563 Stuttgart, Germany; E-Mail:;NTNU Sustainability, Norwegian University of Science and Technology, 7491 Trondheim, Norway

关键词: LCIA;    biodiversity;    land use;    land use changes;    species diversity;    structural indicators;   

DOI  :  10.3390/su7056278

来源: mdpi

【 摘 要 】

Loss of biodiversity is one of the most severe threats to sustainability, and land use and land use changes are still the single most important factor. Still, there is no sign of any consensus on how to include impacts on biodiversity from land use and land use changes in LCIA. In this paper, different characteristics of biodiversity are discussed and related to proposals on how to include land use and land use changes in LCIA. We identify the question of why we should care about biodiversity as a key question, since different motivations will result in different choices for the indicators, and we call for more openness in the motivation for indicator selection. We find a promising trend in combining pressure indicators with geographic weighting and regard this as a promising way ahead. More knowledge on the consequences of different choices, such as the selection of a reference state, is still needed.

【 授权许可】

CC BY   
© 2015 by the authors; licensee MDPI, Basel, Switzerland.