Research Needs and Challenges from Science to Decision Support. Lesson Learnt from the Development of the International Reference Life Cycle Data System (ILCD) Recommendations for Life Cycle Impact Assessment

Serenella Sala, Rana Pant, Michael Hauschild and David Pennington
Additional contact information
Serenella Sala: European Commission, Joint Research Center, Institute of Environment and Sustainability. Via E. Fermi, 2749 I-21027 Ispra (VA), Italy
Rana Pant: European Commission, Joint Research Center, Institute of Environment and Sustainability. Via E. Fermi, 2749 I-21027 Ispra (VA), Italy
Michael Hauschild: Department of Management Engineering, Technical University of Denmark (DTU), Produktionstorvet, Building 426, 2800 Lyngby, Denmark
David Pennington: European Commission, Joint Research Center, Institute of Environment and Sustainability. Via E. Fermi, 2749 I-21027 Ispra (VA), Italy

Sustainability, 2012, vol. 4, issue 7, 1-14

Abstract: Environmental implications of the whole supply-chain of products, both goods and services, their use, and waste management, i.e. , their entire life cycle from “cradle to grave” have to be considered to achieve more sustainable production and consumption patterns. Progress toward environmental sustainability requires enhancing the methodologies for quantitative, integrated environmental assessment and promoting the use of these methodologies in different domains. In the context of Life Cycle Assessment (LCA) of products, in recent years, several methodologies have been developed for Life Cycle Impact Assessment (LCIA). The Joint Research Center of the European Commission (EC-JRC) led a “science to decision support” process which resulted in the International Reference Life Cycle Data System (ILCD) Handbook, providing guidelines to the decision and application of methods for LCIA. The Handbook is the result of a comprehensive process of evaluation and selection of existing methods based on a set of scientific and stakeholder acceptance criteria and involving review and consultation by experts, advisory groups and the public. In this study, we report the main features of the ILCD LCIA recommendation development highlighting relevant issues emerged from this “from science to decision support” process in terms of research needs and challenges for LCIA. Comprehensiveness of the assessment, as well as acceptability and applicability of the scientific developments by the stakeholders, are key elements for the design of new methods and to guarantee the mainstreaming of the sustainability concept.

Keywords: life cycle impact assessment; science for policy support; integrated environmental assessment; environmental sustainability (search for similar items in EconPapers)
JEL-codes: O13 Q Q0 Q2 Q3 Q5 Q56 (search for similar items in EconPapers)
Date: 2012
References: View references in EconPapers View complete reference list from CitEc
Citations: View citations in EconPapers (4)

Downloads: (external link)
https://www.mdpi.com/2071-1050/4/7/1412/pdf (application/pdf)
https://www.mdpi.com/2071-1050/4/7/1412/ (text/html)

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:gam:jsusta:v:4:y:2012:i:7:p:1412-1425:d:18577

Access Statistics for this article

Sustainability is currently edited by Ms. Alexandra Wu

More articles in Sustainability from MDPI
Bibliographic data for series maintained by MDPI Indexing Manager ().