Combining territory-oriented LCA and GIS to provide an environmental baseline of a French Mediterranean land case study | Diagnostic environnemental d'un territoire français méditerranéen réalisé en combinant une démarche d'ACV orientée "territoire" et des outils SIG

[Departement_IRSTEA]Ecotechnologies [TR1_IRSTEA]INSPIRE

International audience

English. Although LCA is product-oriented, recent proposals have been made to broaden its object of analysis by studying meso-level systems. This is even more interesting since LCA has been considered as a promising tool for the environmental assessment of territories (cities, districts, etc) compared to other methods. In order to remove the bottlenecks that arise when assessing territorial systems (i.e. functional unit definition, boundary selection, data collection and provision of indicators for local decision-making), we have adapted the LCA framework and created a new approach, called “territorial LCA”. This is a comprehensive method which provides two kinds of indicators, i.e. indicators of services provided by the territory (land use functions) and indicators of environmental impacts generated by the territory (unlike conventional LCA, for which provided services are used to define functional unit and the associated reference flow). “Territorial LCA” has been designed to meet the requirements of the European Directive (2001/42/EC) on Strategic Environmental Assessment of land planning policies. In this directive, two stages call for an environmental assessment, i.e. (i) provision of an environmental baseline of territories and (ii) comparison of land planning scenarios. This paper aims to validate the usefulness of territorial LCA for the first purpose (i.e. providing an environmental baseline of territories) as well as to emphasize the essential contributions brought by GIS (Geographic Information System) tools for this kind of assessment. The method relies on the implementation of territorial LCA on a French Mediterranean case study, i.e. a coastal area with municipalities and a harbour, as well as agricultural and industrial activities. The results highlight the strenghts of territorial LCA for assessing cumulative impacts, identifying transboundary impacts, prioritizing environmental issues, determining hotspot activities and assessing eco-efficiency. Furthermore, GIS tools have been mobilised to reinforce the overall approach. The combination of GIS and territorial LCA contributes to provide a comprehensive and understandable baseline. This approach proposes an original way to present results. It allows identifying main contributors to environmental impacts at a glance and makes easier the appropriation of results by stakeholders. Moreover, regional / local in-site impacts (i.e. impacts due to environmental flows occuring on the territory) can be mapped. Information on the location of in-site emissions of polluting substances can be cross-checked with data on sensitivity and vulnerabilty of the surrounding environment (e.g. proximity of water bodies or protected areas, population density, and so on). Environmental hotspots (sensitive areas located near in-site emissions) are thus identified and this paves the way for a deeper analysis of in-site impacts by taking into account spatial information. As a conclusion, combining territorial LCA and GIS contributes to enhance the communication of results and provides useful information that should be taken into account in the elaboration of land planning scenarios.