Biodiversity impact assessment (BIA+) - methodological framework for screening biodiversity

Area of Science:

• Environmental Science
• Ecology
• Life Cycle Assessment

Background:

• Current life cycle assessment (LCA) methods inadequately address biodiversity impacts, focusing only on limited species and regions.
• A comprehensive approach is needed to integrate global biodiversity impacts into LCA.

Purpose of the Study:

• To propose a novel methodological framework for assessing global biodiversity impacts within LCA.
• To enable LCA practitioners to quantify currently unaddressed biodiversity impacts on a worldwide scale.

Main Methods:

• The framework comprises two components: a habitat factor for 14 major habitat types and assessment of biodiversity status within these habitats.
• Habitat factors are derived from habitat-specific indicators, while biodiversity status depends on impact category parameters and expert-judged impact functions.
• The framework is regionalized to a country scale for practical LCA data integration.

Main Results:

• Weighting factors for the 14 major habitat types range from 0.63 to 1.82, with country-specific factors calculated via area weighting.
• Impact functions were demonstrated for freshwater eutrophication and ecotoxicity categories.
• The framework's suitability was confirmed through application examples.

Conclusions:

• The proposed framework offers user-friendliness by utilizing existing LCA database information.
• It comprehensively includes all biodiversity levels (genetic, species, ecosystem) and is globally applicable across various impact categories.