LCA Options for Sustainable Governance Assessed

Abstract

This paper describes and analyses challenges for the further development of Life-Cycle Analysis (LCA) and other LCA-related tools from a governance perspective, considering their application context in policy and business and the linkages between policy and science. It will be investigated how LCA can be further developed to make it more relevant for supporting both public and private applications in a “new governance” framework. The paper furthermore attempts to elaborate what environmental information is required in sustainability-oriented decision-making, and how the relevant information for sustainability decision-making can be supplied. This applies to different levels of policies, ranging from specific environmental to broader sustainability policies as well as product policy, technology policy and innovation policy. The paper has been developed as part of the international research project “CALCAS co-ordination action for innovation in life-cycle analysis for sustainability”.

Keywords: Life-Cycle Analysis, New Governance