WHAT IS FOUND IN THE LITERATURE ON THE CATEGORY OF TERRESTRIAL AND AQUATIC EUTROPHICATION IMPACT IN LATIN AMERICA?

CONCI, E.; BECKER, A.; ARENA, A. P.; CIVIT, B.M.

Buenos Aires

Conferencia; 9th Int. Conference on Life Cycle Assessment in Latin America - CILCA 2021; 2021

Red Argentina de Ciclo de Vida/Red Iberoamericana de Ciclo de Vida

The traditional production model, the driving force of the world economy, is in the process of transformation towards production systems that are less dependent on the unsustainable consumption of natural and human resources. Since the guidelines established in the Sustainable Development Goals, specifically in Sustainable Development Goal No. 12, the willingness of the productive sectors and society to produce and consume responsibly has increased considerably. There is also a response from decision-makers who promote policies aimed at favoring and promoting such changes. To achieve these goals, it is necessary to have tools to assess the environmental impact of products and activities to assist decision making at all levels. Life Cycle Assessment (LCA) is one of them and allows to know the environmental profile of products, processes and activities by applying characterization factors (CFs) to the input flows of materials and resources identified at each stage of the life cycle of the product under analysis. Among the impact categories assessed in all Life Cycle Impact Assessment (LCIA) models and methods is eutrophication, allowing quantification of the potential impact of increased nutrients in aquatic (freshwater and marine) and terrestrial ecosystems. Regional CFs are not developed for all parts of the world (usually only for Europe and North America), which is a problem in a globalized world where the processes that make up a system can take place anywhere on the planet. Eutrophication is a regional impact category, whose methodological approach was recently reviewed, updated and agreed upon at the Pellston Workshop organized by the Life Cycle Initiative in 2018. However, little development of this impact category has been found in Latin America in general, and in Argentina in particular, a conclusion derived from a thorough review of the existing literature on the subject, which was carried out through search engines such as Google Scholar, Science Direct, Springer Link, Scielo, REDIB, OAJI, DOAJ, JSTOR, Latindex, Publindex, Dialnet and Redalyc. Proceedings of scientific events were also reviewed under the umbrella of life cycle thinking, all using keywords as a search strategy. A series of questions were posed on what to look for in the articles and presentations identified and, from the 4556 studies initially found, 95 were selected that responded to the interests sought. Among them, few articles were found that analyze aquatic and terrestrial ecosystems in an integrated manner. This highlights the need for studies on this category of impact in Argentina in regions of environmental significance, considering the characteristics of the receiving ecosystems and the inclusion of the analysis of the mechanisms of impact on aquatic ecosystems, which is justified by the fact that several authors have studied aquatic eutrophication in the region, but outside the context of the LCA. Human contributions to the increased cycling of nitrogen and phosphorus through the biosphere threaten the health of freshwater and marine ecosystems and the economic and life-supporting functions they perform. When comparing freshwater bodies or terrestrial areas, there may be differences due to variation in climate, species composition, underlying geology, or previous environmental stresses, among others. The choice of developing regional indicators within the LCIA stage is visibly justified to carry out research where aquatic and terrestrial eutrophication is not yet explored in LCA at the regional level. Based on these and other findings, it is planned to continue with a systematic analysis of the studies resulting from the literature review to identify research needs for the region on eutrophication in Latin American sub-regions, given the bioclimatic variability and the wide differences between production systems, even within the countries that make up the region. It is also proposed to develop a set of eutrophication indicators with a regional aggregation level, or even by sub-regions or countries, which would contribute to the environmental sustainability of Latin America, so that the presence of regional values avoids the use of CFs developed for other sites, generating non-representative results for site-dependent impact categories such as eutrophication. With this research, we intend to provide tools to minimize the impacts derived from the production and consumption of products and services, giving rise to the development of a doctoral thesis initiated in 2020, in Mendoza, Argentina.