Status Quo der Biodiversitätsbewertung in Ökobilanzen

Summary

During the last years the demand and use of Life Cycle Assessment (LCA) for calculating and comparing the ecological impacts of agricultural products has increased. However, within LCA important environmental impacts of agriculture, for instance biodiversity, soil quality or animal welfare are considered inadequately or stay unaccounted. In the case of biodiversity agriculture is considered as the main driver for the worldwide biodiversity loss. Thus, biodiversity cannot be neglected in future agricultural LCAs. Even though there is no widely accepted approach yet, a lot of research has been undertaken to solve the question how biodiversity can be assessed in the LCA framework. Within a literature review eleven studies with biodiversity assessment approaches for Life Cycle Impact Assessment (LCIA) were analysed and compared. The results of this review will be the basis for the development of a new LCIA method for biodiversity