A combination of Planetary Boundaries-LCA and the Doughnut to assess social impacts of systems

Abstract

Life Cycle Assessment is the most widely used method for assessing ecological impacts. This method only considers the ecological part of the sustainability, although social issues are becoming increasingly important. “Social life cycle assessment” (S-LCA) has been developed to fill this gap, but it is rarely used in practice. In fact, it is complex and there is a lack of clear guidelines to implement S-LCA, especially for localising (adapting to a context), the indicators, which often imply the involvement of various stakeholders.

Our hypothesis is that social indicators can be linked to ecological indicators through a mathematical correlation. Thus it allows the assessment of social impacts using these correlations. This article provide a method to do so, taking as input a Planetary-Boundaries LCA (PB-LCA) and achieving localisation by a downscaling of this PB-LCA. Our proposal is illustrated by a case study. The illustration highlights how to link and interpret the social and ecological dimensions, but also some weaknesses, such as the fact that it depends on PB-LCA, a method not yet widely spread, thus causing limitations of use by practitioners under real conditions. To remedy this, we make preliminary recommendations for practitioners wishing to use this method. Furthermore, the results must be interpreted with caution by practitioners: they are only a statistical representation. Practitioners should validate this mathematical approach with a field approach (interviews, etc.).