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Social impact assessment in LCA using the Preston pathway

The case of banana industry in Cameroon

  • SOCIETAL LIFE CYCLE ASSESSMENT
  • Published:
The International Journal of Life Cycle Assessment Aims and scope Submit manuscript

Abstract

Purpose

The purpose of the social Life Cycle Assessment (LCA) method is to predict the social impacts on people caused by the changes in the functioning of one product chain throughout its life cycle. Changes in health status are very important experiences for people. The aim of this paper is to build a pathway between changes in economic activity generated by the functioning of a product chain and the changes in health status of the population in the country where the economic activity takes place.

Methods

Empirical and historical factors suggest that increased economic activity through growth in income leads to improvements in the health of a country’s population. This empirical relationship is well known in economics as the Preston curve. Using this relationship, we design a pathway for social LCA impact assessment. This pathway may be used to explain or predict the potential impact caused by the modification of one product sector upon the health of a population. The Preston relationship usually is calculated for a cross section of countries. We assess whether the Preston relationship is valid when a single country is considered alone. Drawing from scientific literature regarding development, we define the context where the use of the Preston relationship is justified. We describe the general design of the Preston pathway, using a recalculated (panel based) relationship, and specify the conditions for its use. We apply it to the case of company B, a banana industry in Cameroon, for the period between 2010 and 2030.

Results

We highlight that the panel calculation of the Preston relationship remains significant when a country is considered alone. We suggest that the following conditions are required for the pathway to be used: (1) the activity is set within countries where the GDP per capita in purchasing power parity is less than $10,000 at the start of the period, (2) the assessed activity accounts for a significant part of the annual GDP and/or demonstrates obvious signs that it represents a huge stake in the country’s economy, (3) the duration of the assessed activity is regular and long enough, and (4) the added value created by the activity is shared within the country. We found that the future activity of company B would improve the potential LEX of the entire population of Cameroon by 5 days over 20 years, based on 200,000 t of bananas exported annually (in comparison with no activity).

Conclusions

When the four conditions for use are met, and provided results are interpreted by comparing them with other situations or countries, the recalculated panel-based relationship may be used to explain or predict a change in potential life expectancy generated by a change in economic activity. The Preston pathway may be useful for impact assessment in social LCA. The assessment is valid only when used for a comparative analysis and must be done within a multi-criteria framework. Complementary pathways therefore need to be designed. We suggest that the conditions for use and other research issues be discussed and fine-tuned further. Moreover, we welcome comments and criticisms.

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Notes

  1. Later in the paper this abbreviation will be used to refer to GDP per capita. We never use the global GDP.

  2. Longevity, non-fatal impacts on human health, autonomy, safety security and tranquillity, equal opportunity, participation and influence.

  3. Entity B may be one company, or several small craft workshops, or farms, etc.

  4. Local value added includes the direct (of the company) and indirect (generated by the inputs and suppliers) primary value added and the secondary value added (related to the allocation of income). This value added is different than accounting value added because it includes only cash flows that remain in the country and not those that are exported (unless they generate effects at local level).

  5. There are 44 branches in the input–output matrix provided by the National Institute of Statistics of Cameroon. Each of these branches comprises hundreds or thousands of companies.

  6. See http://faostat.fao.org

  7. It was shown that in the most affected countries, HIV was responsible for a decline in LEX of 10 years (UNPD 2003).

  8. We choose the period 1995–2009 because it is only since this period that the country has experienced economic development without the occurrence of major disruptive events that could bias the analysis.

  9. Given the demographic transition, the population growth rate is positive but diminishes gradually (Pinson 2009). Thus, we calculated a decrease in the population growth rate of 0.04 % per year over the period 1989–2009. We apply it to future population growth.

  10. We compared these results with the future gross domestic product per capita calculated from the Gapminder data, estimated for each year using the average annual growth rate over the period 1995–2009 (1.48 %). Both provide comparable results, but we preferred using data resulting from the two calculations steps (1 and 2), due to the lack of transparency of the calculations made by Gapminder.

  11. Impact transfer is the phenomenon such as when comparing two variant scenarios, the impact X is improved, but to the detriment of the impact Y.

  12. Triangulation is a scientific method, well known in social sciences, to get insight about the same issue from different sources and by different ways.

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Acknowledgments

This work was performed as part of the Industrial Ph.D. “Development of a social LCA of pathway methodology. The case of banana supply chains” carried out at Compagnie Fruitière and at CIRAD-Department of PERSYT, in Banana, plantain and pineapple cropping systems Research Unit (Market News Service). Financial support for the study from Compagnie Fruitière and the French Ministry of Higher Education and Research is gratefully acknowledged. The authors thank the case study company for its participation. The authors are members of the ELSA group (Environmental Life Cycle and Sustainability Assessment) (www.elsa-lca.org); they thank all the other members of ELSA for their advice.

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Authors and Affiliations

  1. UPR Systèmes de productions bananes, plantains et ananas, CIRAD, Persyst, Bd de la Lironde, 34398, Montpellier Cedex 5, France

    Pauline Feschet & Denis Loeillet

  2. UMR ITAP-ELSA, Cemagref-Irstea, 361 rue Jean-François Breton, 34196, Montpellier Cedex 5, France

    Catherine Macombe

  3. Université Montpellier 1, UMR Art-Dev, Rue Raymond Dugrand, 34960, Montpellier Cedex 2, France

    Michel Garrabé & François Benhmad

  4. UMR SELMET, CIRAD, Persyst, Station de Ligne-Paradis, 7 chemin de l’IRAT, 97410, Saint-Pierre, France

    Adolfo Rolo Saez

Authors
  1. Pauline Feschet
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  2. Catherine Macombe
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  3. Michel Garrabé
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  4. Denis Loeillet
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  5. Adolfo Rolo Saez
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  6. François Benhmad
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Corresponding author

Correspondence to Pauline Feschet.

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Responsible Editor: Andreas Jørgensen

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Feschet, P., Macombe, C., Garrabé, M. et al. Social impact assessment in LCA using the Preston pathway. Int J Life Cycle Assess 18, 490–503 (2013). https://doi.org/10.1007/s11367-012-0490-z

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