BiLCA – Biodiversity assessment in lifecycle assessment (LCA)

Large Swedish biodiversity datasets available from environmental monitoring systems, peer-reviewed studies and yet unpublished data will be consolidated and used. The project thus aims at making biodiversity data useful in current decision making at policy, business and consumer level. 

Calculating and utilizing environmental footprints for food has become increasingly common. Such environmental footprints are used in various decision-making situations such as consumer information, meal planning, and policy development. Often, these footprints are limited to climate impact. However, food production affects the environment in many different ways, and there is a risk of misdirection if more aspects are not included in decisions regarding how we should eat and produce food more sustainably. An important aspect is the impact on biodiversity.

In Sweden, there is a lot of data on how different species are affected by various farming practices, but these are not compiled and processed in a way that allows them to be used to calculate the impact of food production on biodiversity per product. Just as we can currently calculate the carbon footprint, for example, of 1 kg of Swedish milk, the project aims to develop factors to calculate the footprint on biodiversity from the production of 1 kg of Swedish milk. 

The project is a collaboration between a number of leading ecologists specializing in different organism groups and researchers who are specialists in life cycle analysis. The project includes three different case studies where organically grown crops and beef will be compared with equivalent conventional products in terms of biodiversity and climate impact. Goal conflicts between climate and biodiversity will be discussed, as well as the method's usability in different decision-making situations. The latter will be done in collaboration with key stakeholders in the food chain.