Biodiversity loss

Tobias Hatzfeld and Christoph Scope

Chapter 5 in Elgar Encyclopedia of Life Cycle Sustainability Assessment, 2026, pp 14-16 from Edward Elgar Publishing

Abstract: Biological diversity, or short, biodiversity, is hereby defined as the variety of living organisms, classified as the genetic, species, and ecosystem diversity in terrestrial and aquatic ecosystems. Biodiversity loss is a significant global risk and highlights the importance of understanding its impacts and developing strategies for its preservation by all relevant decision-makers. It introduces the five drivers of biodiversity loss identified by the SCBD and shows that LCA already assesses bits and pieces to consider biodiversity impacts. The need for spatial modelling in LCA is discussed to account for global impacts related to biodiversity. The text suggests potential research areas for LCA, such as sound pressure, odour, and loss of genetic and ecosystem diversity. It mentions the GLAM project, which is working on recommendations for new impact assessment models, and introduces the concept of global extinction probability (GEP) and product biodiversity footprint (PBF) as examples to assess potential biodiversity loss.

Keywords: Biodiversity; Loss of biodiversity; Genetic diversity; Species diversity; Ecosystem diversity (search for similar items in EconPapers)
Date: 2026
ISBN: 9781035309887
References: Add references at CitEc
Citations:

Downloads: (external link)
https://www.elgaronline.com/doi/10.4337/9781035309894.00010 (application/pdf)

Related works:
This item may be available elsewhere in EconPapers: Search for items with the same title.

Export reference: BibTeX RIS (EndNote, ProCite, RefMan) HTML/Text

Persistent link: https://EconPapers.repec.org/RePEc:elg:eechap:22215_5

Ordering information: This item can be ordered from
http://www.e-elgar.com

Access Statistics for this chapter

More chapters in Chapters from Edward Elgar Publishing
Bibliographic data for series maintained by Jack Sweeney ().