Incorporating Ecosystem Services in LCIA – Recommendations from GLAM3

Current Life Cycle Assessment (LCA) practice has struggled to include Ecosystem Services (ES) in its life cycle inventory or into impact assessment. 

As part of the third Global Life Cycle Impact Assessment Methods (GLAM) project, a task force was established to propose impact methods and endpoints for potential impacts ecosystem services. Over the 3 years, the project has developed recommendations which built on existing methods to propose a common endpoint and recommended characterisation factors. 

After an extensive review, six midpoint categories and four endpoint categories have been recommended. The midpoint categories included are Soil Organic Carbon (SOC) deficit, erosion resistance, groundwater regeneration, mechanical filtration, physiochemical filtration and soil salinisation. 

Endpoints were calculated for 4 of these pathways SOC deficit, erosion resistance, groundwater regeneration, mechanical filtration using economic valuation of ecosystem service loss compared to potential natural vegetation.

The method was normalised against annual global land occupation and transformation and established a total value of ecosystem service damage of $1.7 trillion international dollars which compares to the total value of agriculture in the world of approximately 4.4 trillion US dollars. Land occupation accounts for most of this impact with SOC deficit (0.97 Trillion) and groundwater regeneration (0.58 Trillion) being the main contributing ecosystem services. 

The paper has demonstrated a pathway for including an important group of ecosystem service impacts associated with land occupation and transformation. By finding a common endpoint for 4 of the indicators a practical summary indicator for including in ES impacts in the LCIA framework which is suitable for LCA based on existing data.

The beta version of GLAM is undergoing testing and stakeholder consultation for refining and improving the guidance, ahead of a final launch at the SETAC LCA Case Study Symposium in Gothenburg in October 2024.