Integrating Ecosystem Services and Life Cycle Impacts to Assess Sustainability: A Framework Accounting for Local and Global (Socio-)Environmental Impacts

The role of nature's contributions to people in sustaining international trade of agricultural products

“…For example, it is not enough to quantify erosion control in a certain area; it is essential to quantify how much of that erosion control actually supports the production of an agricultural product that is traded. Life cycle assessment is a tool that is used to calculate the environmental impacts of a product taking into account all stages of its life, from raw material extraction, processing, manufacture, distribution, usage, recycling and waste treatment (Taelman et al., 2023). To do so, it requires that information on all processes and inputs to a product's production is collected in what is called the inventory stage.…”

“…grass, freshwater) embedded in trade but cannot account for the contribution of regulating and non‐material NCP to production processes and trade. The work on this front is still in its nascent stage (Alvarenga et al., 2020; De Luca Peña et al., 2022; Taelman et al., 2023). Ecosystem services accounting is another useful approach that can quantify the contributions of nature to the economy, following the structures and practices used in traditional economic accounting (United Nations, 2021).…”