Titled “Addressing Sustainable Development Goals in Life Cycle Sustainable Assessment: Synergies, challenges, and Needs,” this paper uses text-mining analysis to discover correlations between Life Cycle Sustainable Assessment (LCSA) and Sustainable Development Goals (SDGs).
The work aimed to further clarify the relationship between LCSA and SDGs by analyzing works that explicitly addressed the links between LCSA and SDGs, investigating the associations between product LCSA and SDGs, and discussing key challenges and needs relating to the connection of LCSA with SDG.
One of the paper’s conclusions was that ‘integrating and making sense of information referring to different sustainability aspects is a critical challenge’ and affirmed that the ORIENTING project is testing methods to integrate LCSA results.
Another significant finding is the identification of a lack of consensus and a harmonized approach for setting up and analyzing the connections between SDGs and LCSA. The interchangeability of impact categories (e.g., climate change) and indicators (e.g., global warming potential) is an example of an area where a more harmonious nomenclature could be implemented.
Congratulations to the ORIENTING project members, including ecoinvent Project Manager Thomas Sonderegger, who co-authored this paper.
You can read the paper below and discover the latest news about our involvement with the ORIENTING project on our projects page.