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Regionalization of agri-food life cycle assessment: a review of studies in Portugal and recommendations for the future

  • REGIONAL TOPICS FROM EUROPE
  • Published:
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Abstract

Purpose

One of the main trends in life cycle assessment (LCA) today is towards increased regionalization in inventories and impact assessment methods. LCA studies require the collection of activity data but also of increasingly region-specific background data to accurately depict supply chain processes and enable the application of an increasing number of geographically explicit impact assessment models. This is particularly important for agri-food products. In this review, we assess progress in Portugal towards this goal and provide recommendations for future developments.

Methods

We perform a comprehensive review of available LCA studies conducted for Portuguese agri-food products, in order to evaluate the current state of Portuguese agri-food LCA. Among other issues, we assess availability of data, methods used, level of regionalization, impact assessment model relevance and coherence for inter-product comparability. We also provide conclusions and recommendations based on recent developments in the field.

Results and discussion

We found 22 LCA studies, covering 22 different products. The analysis of these studies reveals limitations in inter-study comparability. The main challenges have to do with a lack of country-specific foreground data sources applied consistently in the studies found, with discrepancies in impact assessment categories, and with the use of simple functional units that may misrepresent the product analyzed.

Conclusions

We conclude that Portuguese agri-food LCA studies do not have a systematic and country-scale approach in order to guarantee regional accuracy and comparability. We propose a research strategy to engage the Portuguese agri-food LCA community in devising a consistent framework before practical application studies are conducted.

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Acknowledgments

T. Morais was supported by a research grant of the MARETEC Research Centre/Laboratory of Robotics and Systems in Engineering and Science/Instituto Superior Técnico/University of Lisbon. R. Teixeira was supported by the grant SFRH/BPD/111730/2015 from the Fundação para a Ciência e Tecnologia. We gratefully acknowledge the comments of two anonymous reviewers that helped improve the manuscript.

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Authors and Affiliations

  1. MARETEC – Marine, Environment and Technology Centre, Instituto Superior Técnico, Universidade de Lisboa, Av. Rovisco Pais, 1, 1049-001, Lisboa, Portugal

    Tiago G. Morais, Ricardo F. M. Teixeira & Tiago Domingos

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  1. Tiago G. Morais
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  2. Ricardo F. M. Teixeira
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  3. Tiago Domingos
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Correspondence to Tiago G. Morais.

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Morais, T.G., Teixeira, R.F.M. & Domingos, T. Regionalization of agri-food life cycle assessment: a review of studies in Portugal and recommendations for the future. Int J Life Cycle Assess 21, 875–884 (2016). https://doi.org/10.1007/s11367-016-1055-3

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