Categories for LCA seafood production: Review and Prospectus

This is a methodological paper, 'Impact categories for Life Cycle Assessment research of seafood production: Review and Prospectus', looking at the technicalities of LCA in wild caught fisheries and aquaculture.

It finds that the LCA analyses of fisheries and aquaculture call attention to an important range of environmental interactions that are usually not considered in discussions of sustainability in the seafood sector. These include energy use, biotic resource use, and the toxicity of anti-fouling paints.

However, certain important impacts are also currently overlooked in such research. While prospects clearly exist for improving and expanding on recent additions to environmental impact categories, the nature of the LCA framework may preclude treatment of some of these impacts.

Socio-economic impact categories have only been described in a qualitative manner. Despite a number of challenges, significant opportunities exist to quantify several important socio-economic impacts.

Pelletier, N., N. Ayer, S. Kruse, A. Flysjo, G. Robillard, F. Ziegler, P.H. Tyedmers, A. Scholz, U. Sonesson (2007) Impact categories for Life Cycle Assessment research of seafood production: Review and Prospectus. International Journal of Life Cycle Assessment. Vol. 12(6): 414-421. This paper available here,
(This is a pay service.)

Many other potential papers to include in the above section. I’ve attached pdf’s of a

1. Swedish LCA of fisheries for Norway lobster,

2. a Spanish LCA of fisheries for horse mackerel,

3. an Icelandic LCA study (only available as a report) of cod fishing and processing.
4. In addition I’ve also attached a pdf of another methodological paper from our global salmon LCA project (Kruse et al) that describes how socio-economic aspects might be included in LCA of aquaculture