Incorporating biodiversity in assessing the sustainability of livestock systems using comprehensive life cycle assessment: A Mini Review

Md Elias Uddin^1*Sooriya P.M. Sandeepa²

• ¹Department of Animal Science, College of Agriculture, Health and Natural Resources, University of Connecticut, Storrs, Connecticut, United States
• ²Department of Zoology and Environmental Management, Faculty of Science, University of Kelaniya, Kelaniya, Sri Lanka

Livestock are a major contributor to biodiversity loss primarily through land use change, over-exploitation of natural resources, pollution, and climate change. Intensive farming systems which depend on large inputs of resources accelerate the decline of species and exert immense pressure on biodiversity making the industry unsustainable. Hotspot identification and quantification of impacts along the value chain of animal products helps producers and policymakers to make informed decisions and provides insight for consumers to lean towards environmentally conscious purchasing. Life cycle assessment (LCA) provides a holistic approach to assessing the environmental footprint throughout the life cycle of the product or service. However, ecosystem services such as biodiversity are not often integrated with LCA, particularly in the context of livestock systems and the existing studies and methodologies fail to illustrate the impacts of biodiversity under various management practices. Also, most of these studies rely on a single midpoint impact category of land use change which works on the concept of species area relationship and metrics at species level. However, due to the dynamic and complex nature of biodiversity, a single mid-point impact or metric alone is unable to capture the full spectrum and does not provide a comprehensive understanding of the impacts. Additionally, lack of consensus on characterization factors, limitations in data availability (i.e., conservation status of taxa at local and regional level) and challenges in assigning weights for taxa and ecological functions based on their significance are some limitations to be addressed in future LCA studies.