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Yann Clough. Photo.

Yann Clough

Professor

Yann Clough. Photo.

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

Author

  • Elizabeth M. Alejandre
  • Laura Scherer
  • Jeroen B. Guinée
  • Marcelo A. Aizen
  • Matthias Albrecht
  • Mario V. Balzan
  • Ignasi Bartomeus
  • Danilo Bevk
  • Laura A. Burkle
  • Yann Clough
  • Lorna J. Cole
  • Casey M. Delphia
  • Lynn V. Dicks
  • Michael P.D. Garratt
  • David Kleijn
  • Anikó Kovács-Hostyánszki
  • Yael Mandelik
  • Robert J. Paxton
  • Theodora Petanidou
  • Simon Potts
  • Miklós Sárospataki
  • Catharina J.E. Schulp
  • Menelaos Stavrinides
  • Katharina Stein
  • Jane C. Stout
  • Hajnalka Szentgyörgyi
  • Androulla I. Varnava
  • Ben A. Woodcock
  • Peter M. van Bodegom
Show all

Summary, in English

While wild pollinators play a key role in global food production, their assessment is currently missing from the most commonly used environmental impact assessment method, Life Cycle Assessment (LCA). This is mainly due to constraints in data availability and compatibility with LCA inventories. To target this gap, relative pollinator abundance estimates were obtained with the use of a Delphi assessment, during which 25 experts, covering 16 nationalities and 45 countries of expertise, provided scores for low, typical, and high expected abundance associated with 24 land use categories. Based on these estimates, this study presents a set of globally generic characterization factors (CFs) that allows translating land use into relative impacts to wild pollinator abundance. The associated uncertainty of the CFs is presented along with an illustrative case to demonstrate the applicability in LCA studies. The CFs based on estimates that reached consensus during the Delphi assessment are recommended as readily applicable and allow key differences among land use types to be distinguished. The resulting CFs are proposed as the first step for incorporating pollinator impacts in LCA studies, exemplifying the use of expert elicitation methods as a useful tool to fill data gaps that constrain the characterization of key environmental impacts.

Department/s

  • LU Profile Area: Nature-based future solutions
  • Biodiversity and Conservation Science
  • Centre for Environmental and Climate Science (CEC)
  • BECC: Biodiversity and Ecosystem services in a Changing Climate

Publishing year

2023-02

Language

English

Pages

3445-3454

Publication/Series

Environmental Science and Technology

Volume

57

Issue

8

Document type

Journal article

Publisher

The American Chemical Society (ACS)

Topic

  • Environmental Sciences related to Agriculture and Land-use
  • Ecology

Keywords

  • agriculture
  • Delphi expert elicitation
  • ecosystem service
  • impact assessment
  • pollinator abundance

Status

Published

Research group

  • Biodiversity and Conservation Science

ISBN/ISSN/Other

  • ISSN: 0013-936X