Expanding the assessment of resources in LCA Presentation for - - PowerPoint PPT Presentation

Expanding the assessment of resources in LCA

Presentation for LCM2007 - the 3rd International Conference on Life Cycle Management, Zürich, 2007.08-27-29

Bo Weidema 2.-0 LCA consultants

Expanding the assessment of resources in LCA

• Traditionally in LCA: Resources = Natural resources
• thus ignoring human, social and manufactured resources
• Hypothesis: The procedure currently used for impacts on

natural resources in LCA (Müller-Wenk 1999, Stewart & Weidema 2005) can also be used for assessment of impacts

• n human, social and manufactured resources
• Thereby, the impacts on human productivity (Weidema

LCM2005: The integration of economic and social aspects in LCIA) can be integrated seamlessly in the LCIA of resources

Resources defined

• Resource: an available means of production

( = Production factor)

• human resources: the available labour force with its

different productive abilities

• biotic resources: the natural or manipulated biota with its

inherent or artificially enhanced abilities to grow and propagate

• abiotic resources: the natural or manufactured raw

materials or catalysts for human or biotic production.

• social resources: the social conditions, such as institutions,

rule of law, trust, and human networks (prerequisites or catalysts for production, although not entering directly into production)

The value of resources

• The value of a resource is defined in terms of the future

production or consumption that it can sustain, i.e. its productivity

• Damage to resources may thus be measured as the loss of

potential output, typically measured in monetary value

Resources = Capital

• Human capital
• Social capital
• Natural capital
• Manufactured capital
• and when monetised: Financial capital
• The aggregate of all capital is also known as wealth

World Bank (2002): 78% of all capital

• biotic 3%, abiotic 1%
• 18%

Summarising:

• A resource is an available means of production

( = Production factor = Capital), the value of which is its potential contribution to future output

Resource type Private costs (for manufacture and maintenance) External damage1 Human resources Costs of education and health care Health impacts, Missing education Social resources Costs of governance Corruption, […], Rent seeking Biotic resources

• manufactured

Costs of fertilisation, soil management, rangeland management Pollution etc.

• natural

None (free good)2 Pollution etc. Abiotic resources

• manufactured

Manufacture and maintenance costs to compensate depreciation Pollution

• natural

None (free good)2 Disintegration, dissipation

Damage to resources

1) External damage may become a private damage (cost) if the damage is compensated by the responsible economic agent. 2) As a natural endowment, there are no manufacture costs of natural resources (but of course there are costs for their extraction). If there is private ownership of the resource, there will be a transfer of resource rents from the user to the owner, but this is not a net cost from a societal perspective.

LCIA LCC

LCC and LCIA

People Planet Profit Private costs LCC E.g. health and safety expenditures, product liability expenses E.g. costs of pollution prevention Costs of raw materials, wages, taxes, interest

• n capital

Externalities LCIA E.g. reduction in human well-being due to pollution E.g. biodiversity impacts from pollution E.g. reduction in productivity due to human health impacts, missing education due to child labour, or reduction in crop yields due to pollution

Rough assessment of the ”ressource productivity gap”

• The accumulated loss of potential output resulting from

current human activities:

– Impacts on human ressources (health impacts, lost education, unemployment): 33000 USD/capita/year (Weidema LCM2005) – Impacts on social resources (market imperfections, corruption, rent seeking, lack of governance and social infrastructure): 33000 USD/capita/year (Weidema LCM2005) – Impacts on biotic resources (invasive species, ecotoxicity): 130 USD/capita/year – Impacts on manufactured abiotic resources: ~10 USD/capita/year (extrapolated from Rabl 1999) – Impacts on natural abiotic resources: ~1 USD/capita/year (based

• n data from Müller-Wenk 1999)

Conclusion

• The procedure currently used for impacts on natural

resources in LCA (future loss of output) can also be used for assessment of impacts on human, social and manufactured resources

• Expressing all resource damage in the same (monetary)

unit allows comparison of resource impacts, and reveals that damage to human and social resources is much more important than impacts from use of mineral resources

Thanks for your attention Questions?