William G. Lowrie Department of Chemical & Biomolecular Engineering, The Ohio State University, Columbus, Ohio 43210, USA.
Environ Sci Technol. 2010 Apr 1;44(7):2232-42. doi: 10.1021/es9021156.
If life cycle oriented methods are to encourage sustainable development, they must account for the role of ecosystem goods and services, since these form the basis of planetary activities and human well-being. This article reviews methods that are relevant to accounting for the role of nature and that could be integrated into life cycle oriented approaches. These include methods developed by ecologists for quantifying ecosystem services, by ecological economists for monetary valuation, and life cycle methods such as conventional life cycle assessment, thermodynamic methods for resource accounting such as exergy and emergy analysis, variations of the ecological footprint approach, and human appropriation of net primary productivity. Each approach has its strengths: economic methods are able to quantify the value of cultural services; LCA considers emissions and assesses their impact; emergy accounts for supporting services in terms of cumulative exergy; and ecological footprint is intuitively appealing and considers biocapacity. However, no method is able to consider all the ecosystem services, often due to the desire to aggregate all resources in terms of a single unit. This review shows that comprehensive accounting for ecosystem services in LCA requires greater integration among existing methods, hierarchical schemes for interpreting results via multiple levels of aggregation, and greater understanding of the role of ecosystems in supporting human activities. These present many research opportunities that must be addressed to meet the challenges of sustainability.
如果生命周期导向方法旨在鼓励可持续发展，那么它们必须考虑到生态系统商品和服务的作用，因为这些商品和服务构成了地球活动和人类福祉的基础。本文回顾了与核算自然作用相关的方法，这些方法可以被整合到生命周期导向的方法中。这些方法包括生态学家用于量化生态系统服务的方法、生态经济学家用于货币估值的方法，以及生命周期方法，如传统的生命周期评估、资源核算的热力学方法，如能值和潜能分析、生态足迹方法的变化，以及净初级生产力的人类占用。每种方法都有其优势：经济方法能够量化文化服务的价值；生命周期评估考虑排放并评估其影响；能值核算以累积能值的形式核算支持服务；生态足迹直观且考虑生物容量。然而，没有一种方法能够考虑到所有的生态系统服务，这通常是由于人们希望将所有资源都汇总到一个单一的单位中。本综述表明，在生命周期评估中全面核算生态系统服务需要在现有方法之间进行更大程度的整合，通过多层次的聚合来解释结果的分层方案，以及更深入地了解生态系统在支持人类活动方面的作用。这些都提出了许多研究机会，必须加以解决，以应对可持续性的挑战。
