corsus published White Paper on ‘Most appropriate impact assessment methods for communicating environmental impacts of food’

In December 2024, corsus published a White Paper within the project ‘CLIF – Climate Impacts of Food’.  The aim of the White Paper is to identify the most appropriate impact assessment methods for selected environmental impact categories to be used for communicating environmental impacts of food.

To figure this out a Delphi study has been conducted. The Delphi method is a method of choice to find consensus among different stakeholders and experts. The study was conducted with international food LCA experts and consisted of three steps. It started with an online survey, followed by three group discussions, and a second online survey. Impact assessment methods were researched in advance for selected impact categories, which then formed the basis for the first survey.

The results clearly show that the two LCIA methods GWP 100 (climate change) and AWARE (water use) receive a high level of approval from the impact assessment methods surveyed. Results also clearly show that some LCIA methods are more generally accepted than others, like GWP100 and AWARE. However, even with these LCIA methods, there are experts who disagree with these methods.

However, it must be noted that the results are only based on a small number of experts and are therefore limited. Furthermore, the workshops have shown that even LCA experts cannot be experts in every LCIA method. In addition, the LCIA methods differ in their level of awareness among experts, e.g. due to the fact that they are quite ‘young’ methods that are not yet known worldwide or that it is difficult to introduce other methods when there are already well established LCIA methods.

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