Characterization Factors to Assess Land Use Impacts on Pollinator Abundance in Life Cycle Assessment

Area of Science:

• Environmental Science
• Ecology
• Agricultural Science

Background:

• Wild pollinators are crucial for global food security, yet their impact is largely unassessed in Life Cycle Assessment (LCA).
• Existing LCA methods lack compatible data for incorporating pollinator abundance and land use impacts.
• This gap hinders comprehensive environmental impact assessments of agricultural and land management practices.

Purpose of the Study:

• To develop globally applicable characterization factors (CFs) for assessing the impact of land use on wild pollinator abundance within LCA.
• To address the data scarcity and compatibility issues hindering pollinator impact assessment in LCA.
• To demonstrate the utility of expert elicitation for generating essential data for environmental impact assessment.

Main Methods:

• A Delphi assessment involving 25 international experts was conducted to estimate relative pollinator abundance across 24 land use categories.
• Data on low, typical, and high expected pollinator abundance were collected and analyzed.
• Globally generic characterization factors (CFs) were derived from expert consensus estimates.

Main Results:

• A set of globally generic characterization factors (CFs) was developed to link land use types to relative impacts on wild pollinator abundance.
• The study presents the uncertainty associated with these CFs.
• An illustrative case study demonstrates the practical application of these CFs in LCA.

Conclusions:

• The developed CFs offer a first step towards integrating wild pollinator impacts into LCA, enhancing environmental assessment.
• Expert elicitation is a viable method for overcoming data limitations in environmental impact characterization.
• The recommended CFs, based on expert consensus, are readily applicable and highlight significant differences among land use types.