PW06 Life-Cycle Assessment
Exhibit Hall
8:00 AM - Wednesday
(PW086) LCA - exergy based environmental evaluation of Clean Development Mechanism Afforestation Reforestation projects: from planning to monitoring phases.
Garcia-Quijano, Juan1, Muys, Bart1, 1 K.U. Leuven, Leuven, Belgium
ABSTRACT- The Kyoto Protocol of The United Nations Framework Convention on Climate Change (UNFCCC) sets the Clean Development Mechanism (CDM) encouraging afforestation and reforestation (AR) projects in developing countries to reduce greenhouse gases in the atmosphere and to support sustainable development. Sustainability of CDM-AR projects depends on 4 aspects: society, economy, institutions and environment. All these aspects must be taken into account from the setting of targets and objectives throughout the design, implementation and monitoring phases of CDM-AR projects. Annex B of the Modalities and Procedures for CDM-AR projects approved at the Conference of Parties of the UNFCCC (CoP9 in Milan, Italy 2003), states that Project Design Documents (PDD) of CDM-AR projects should describe the project activity and the present environmental conditions (i.e. climate, hydrology, soils, ecosystems and endangered species and their habitats, analysis of the environmental impact including biodiversity, natural ecosystems, and off site impacts). In order to accomplish this, planning and design phases count with instruments [e.g. Environmental Impact Assessment (EIA) and Risk Analysis] which are aimed at identifying possible negative impacts and at elaborating alternative course of actions or control measures. For the implementation and monitoring phases, tools [e.g. Principle, Criteria & Indicators (PC&I), Sustainable Forest Management (SFM), or Life Cycle Assessment (LCA)] aim at surveying the state of ecosystems or site conditions so the appropriate decision and actions can be taken. We propose the use of Environmental Impact Assessment (EIS) and Risk Analysis methods for the planning and design phases and a new Land-Use Environmental Impact Assessment method based on LCA and exergy concepts for the implementation and monitoring phases. EIA leads to an Environmental Impact Statement (EIS), a document meeting government requirements and added as part of the PDD of UNFCCC. The proposed Land-Use Impact Assessment Method compares the quality of the actual land use with the quality of the Potential Natural Vegetation of the site under the actual conditions. Assessment is carried out by mean of 17 indicators under 4 components: soil, water, vegetation and biodiversity. The method is scale independent and applies to all land uses in the world.
Key words: lca, cdm-ar, exergy, land use impact