TY - JOUR
T1 - Characterization Factors to Assess Land Use Impacts on Pollinator Abundance in Life Cycle Assessment
AU - Alejandre, Elizabeth M.
AU - Scherer, Laura
AU - Guinée, Jeroen B.
AU - Aizen, Marcelo A.
AU - Albrecht, Matthias
AU - Balzan, Mario V.
AU - Bartomeus, Ignasi
AU - Bevk, Danilo
AU - Burkle, Laura A.
AU - Clough, Yann
AU - Cole, Lorna J.
AU - Delphia, Casey M.
AU - Dicks, Lynn V.
AU - Garratt, Michael P.D.
AU - Kleijn, David
AU - Kovács-Hostyánszki, Anikó
AU - Mandelik, Yael
AU - Paxton, Robert J.
AU - Petanidou, Theodora
AU - Potts, Simon
AU - Sárospataki, Miklós
AU - Schulp, Catharina J.E.
AU - Stavrinides, Menelaos
AU - Stein, Katharina
AU - Stout, Jane C.
AU - Szentgyörgyi, Hajnalka
AU - Varnava, Androulla I.
AU - Woodcock, Ben A.
AU - van Bodegom, Peter M.
PY - 2023/2/13
Y1 - 2023/2/13
N2 - 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.
AB - 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.
KW - agriculture
KW - Delphi expert elicitation
KW - ecosystem service
KW - impact assessment
KW - pollinator abundance
U2 - 10.1021/acs.est.2c05311
DO - 10.1021/acs.est.2c05311
M3 - Article
C2 - 36780611
AN - SCOPUS:85148349731
SN - 0013-936X
VL - 57
SP - 3445
EP - 3454
JO - Environmental Science and Technology
JF - Environmental Science and Technology
IS - 8
ER -