Methodologies for social life cycle assessment
Methodologies for social life cycle assessment
复制标题
DOI：
10.1065/lca2007.11.367
复制
发表时间：
2008-03-01
影响因子：
4.8
通讯作者：
Hauschild, Michael
中科院分区：
文献类型：
--
作者：
Jorgensen, Andreas;Le Bocq, Agathe;Hauschild, Michael
目标、范围和背景。近年来，对社会生命周期评估(SLCA)提出了几种不同的方法。本审查的目的是比较这些方法，以突出方法上的差异和普遍存在的缺点。SLCA与其他社会评估工具有几个相似之处，尽管为了限制审查的范围，只考虑了从类似LCA的框架中解决社会影响的主张。审查在很大程度上是以会议记录和报告为基础的，这些会议记录和报告并不都很容易获得，因为公开文献中关于可持续土地利用的公开文献很少。本综述遵循国际标准化组织14044标准中环境生命周期评价的方法学步骤。审查显示，这些方法如何处理ELCA方法的步骤，特别是在选择和制定指标方面，具有广泛的多样性。这些指标涉及各种各样的问题；一些方法侧重于在产品系统中包括的过程非常接近时产生的影响，而另一些方法侧重于更遥远的社会后果。对产品生命周期中的使用阶段只给予了很少的关注。提案之间的另一个非常重要的区别是它们对通用数据的使用的立场。一些提案认为，社会影响与公司的行为有关，从而得出结论，产品链中的每一家公司都必须进行评估，而另一些提案则声称，通用数据可以足够准确地描述相关的社会影响。SLCA方法表明，对社会影响的看法是非常不同的。侧重于在产品系统中所包括的工序附近产生的社会影响的评估，不一定与侧重于更多的社会后果的评估指向相同的方向。这表明有必要就SLCA中包括的最相关的影响达成一致，以便包括大部分情况。关于使用通用数据作为评估的基础，这显然比使用站点特定数据在实用性方面具有优势，尽管SLCA方法背后的许多作者声称，只有使用站点特定数据才能获得合理的准确性。然而，在这种情况下，重要的是要记住，现场特定数据的质量非常依赖于审计方法，因此不一定具有很高的准确性，通用数据的设计可能会考虑到公司的位置、部门、规模和可能的所有权，从而在某些情况下给人一个合理的印象，说明执行评估过程的公司可能会产生的社会影响。结论。这篇综述通过介绍现有的SLCA方法并讨论它们如何解决ISO标准化ELCA框架中的方法学问题，概述了SLCA的当前发展。在SLCA方法的几乎所有步骤上，作者发现了许多不同的方法，因此反映出这是一个非常新的和不成熟的LCA领域。SLCA正处于发展的早期阶段，建立共识还有很长的路要走。然而，如果SLCA要作为一种决策支持工具增加任何分量，就哪些影响最相关地纳入SLCA以充分涵盖该领域似乎是至关重要的。此外，对特定地点数据和通用数据之间的差异进行一些评估，可为以下问题提供宝贵的视角：是否可以通过使用通用数据获得合理的准确性，或者使用特定地点数据是否是强制性的，如果是，在哪些方面最重要。
Goal, Scope and Background. In recent years several different approaches towards Social Life Cycle Assessment (SLCA) have been developed. The purpose of this review is to compare these approaches in order to highlight methodological differences and general shortcomings. SLCA has several similarities with other social assessment tools, although, in order to limit the expanse of the review, only claims to address social impacts from an LCA-like framework are considered.Main Features. The review is to a large extent based on conference proceedings and reports, which are not all easily accessible, since very little has been published on SLCA in the open literature. The review follows the methodological steps of the environmental LCA (ELCA) known from the ISO 14044 standard.Results. The review reveals a broad variety in how the approaches address the steps of the ELCA methodology, particularly in the choice and formulation of indicators. The indicators address a wide variety of issues; some approaches focus on impacts created in the very close proximity of the processes included in the product system, whereas others focus on the more remote societal consequences. Only very little focus has been given to the use stage in the product life cycle.Another very important difference among the proposals is their position towards the use of generic data. Several of the proposals argue that social impacts are connected to the conduct of the company leading to the conclusion that each individual company in the product chain has to be assessed, whereas others claim that generic data can give a sufficiently accurate picture of the associated social impacts.Discussion. The SLCA approaches show that the perception of social impacts is very variable. An assessment focusing on social impacts created in the close proximity of the processes included in the product system will not necessarily point in the same direction as an assessment that focuses on the more societal consequences. This points toward the need to agree on the most relevant impacts to include in the SLCA in order to include the bulk of the situation.Regarding the use of generic data as a basis for the assessment, this obviously has an advantage over using site specific data in relation to practicality, although many authors behind the SLCA approaches claim that reasonable accuracy can only be gained through the use of site specific data. However, in this context, it is important to remember that the quality of site specific data is very dependent on the auditing approach and, therefore, not necessarily of high accuracy, and that generic data might be designed to take into account the location, sector, size and maybe ownership of a company and thereby in some cases give a reasonable impression of the social impacts that can be expected from the company performing the assessed process. Conclusions. This review gives an overview of the present development of SLCA by presenting the existing approaches to SLCA and discussing how they address the methodological aspects in the ISO standardised ELCA framework. The authors found a multitude of different approaches with regard to nearly all steps in the SLCA methodology, thus reflecting that this is a very new and immature field of LCA.Recommendations and Perspectives. SLCA is in an early stage of development where consensus building still has a long way. Nevertheless, some agreement regarding which impacts are most relevant to include in the SLCA in order to cover the field sufficiently seems paramount if the SLCA is to gain any weight as a decision support tool. Furthermore, some assessment of the difference between site specific and generic data could give valuable perspectives on whether a reasonable accuracy can be gained from using generic data or whether the use of site specific data is mandatory and, if so, where it is most important.