Toward better biodiversity impact assessment of agricultural land management through life cycle assessment: a systematic review

Summary

Agricultural intensification has driven global biodiversity loss through land management change. However, there is no consensus on assessing the biodiversity impacts of changes in land management practices and intensity levels using life cycle assessment (LCA). This study reviews 7 expert scoring-based (ESB) and 19 biodiversity indicator-based (BIB) LCA methods used to assess biodiversity impacts, aiming to evaluate their quality and identify research needs for incorporating land management change in LCA. Overall, BIB methods outperformed ESB methods across general criteria, especially in robustness (95% higher). BIB methods assess biodiversity impacts based on land management intensity levels, whereas ESB methods emphasize specific land management practices. Neither approach fully captures biodiversity impacts across supply chains. For future studies, it is advisable to (1) model the direct (on-farm) impacts of land management change at the midpoint level; (2) establish cause-effect relationships between key land management practices and biodiversity indicators, while distinguishing between direct (on-site) and indirect (off-site) biodiversity impacts resulting from land management change; (3) characterize land-use intensity levels with specific land management practices and include the positive impacts from agroecological practices. This Review examines LCA methods for biodiversity concerning land management practices and discusses improvements to better account for the biodiversity impacts of agricultural land management.