Towards more meaningful biodiversity inclusion in life cycle assessment

Sustainable, climate-resilient agriculture urgently depends on ecosystem services that rely on healthy ecosystems and rich biodiversity. While Life Cycle Assessment (LCA) has become a key tool for quantifying environmental impacts across production systems, including agriculture, its integration of biodiversity remains limited and often focuses primarily on negative impacts i.e. ecological footprints. In this study, we aim to advance incorporating biodiversity into agricultural LCA, introducing the complementary concept of the handprint - a measure of positive actions and outcomes that enhance or restore biodiversity along the agricultural value chain.

Integrating biodiversity into LCA typically relies on land-use or land-use-change indicators and species richness models. However, these methods often overlook spatial heterogeneity, temporal dynamics, and management practices that influence biodiversity outcomes. To address these gaps, we propose a biodiversity-inclusive LCA framework that captures both detrimental and beneficial interactions between agricultural systems and ecosystems. Resulting in better rewarding of good practices. 

It comprises four key steps: defining system boundaries and functional units that explicitly consider biodiversity-relevant outcomes; compiling life-cycle inventories that include land occupation, habitat quality, and management intensity; quantifying biodiversity impacts (footprints) and improvements (handprints) through appropriate characterization factors and interpreting results to support biodiversity-sensitive decision-making. The handprint approach captures actions such as introduction and restoration of landscape elements, agroecological diversification, reduced chemical inputs and creation of ecological corridors. This allows the assessment to highlight net-positive contributions to ecosystem resilience and biodiversity. Selected agricultural systems represent different management intensities and landscape contexts. The study will compare conventional and biodiversity-enhancing practices by embedding both footprint and handprint perspectives. Agricultural LCA can evolve from a damage-minimization tool to a framework for positive biodiversity contributors. This shift supports global biodiversity targets and offers practical pathways for farmers but also next stakeholders along the value chain, impact evaluators and policymakers in accordance with planetary boundaries, rather than depleting natural capital. Additionally, contributes to reaching the ambitions aims of the UN Convention on Biological Diversity and its protocols.