A review of environmental impact assessment frameworks for livestock production systems

The report assesses 50 environmental impact assessment frameworks, finding that few focus exclusively on livestock. It identifies nine key impact dimensions—including GHG emissions, water use, and biodiversity—and notes a significant lack of ex-ante analysis and explicit rationale for indicator selection. The review highlights that while many frameworks target policymakers, they often rely on short-term data and lack clear methodologies for up-scaling results across different spatial and temporal scales.

• Of the 50 frameworks reviewed, only three explicitly state a primary focus on livestock production systems, though 16 have known applications to them.
• The review identifies nine key environmental impact dimensions: greenhouse gas emissions, energy use, water usage and pollution, biodiversity loss, nutrient cycling, land use, land cover change, waste products and emissions, and eco-toxicity.
• Water use is the most frequently analyzed impact dimension, appearing in 66% of the frameworks, followed by soil health (60%) and GHG emissions (58%).
• There is a notable deficiency in ex-ante assessments, with only 11 of the reviewed frameworks designed to measure systems before implementation, which limits the ability of policymakers to take preventive action.
• Most frameworks focus on short-term temporal scales (less than one year), and many lack clear descriptions of how they handle the up-scaling or down-scaling of data across different spatial levels.
• A significant gap exists in the transparency of framework development, as most tools provide little to no explicit rationale for why specific indicators or environmental impact categories were selected.
• Policymakers and decision makers are the primary target audience for approximately 60% of the frameworks, while farmers are targeted by nearly 30%.
• Biodiversity is the most challenging dimension to measure, characterized by the greatest variety of indicators and a lack of consensus on how to attribute biodiversity loss to specific agricultural practices.

APA

Ran, Y., Lannerstad, M., Barron, J., Fraval, S., Paul, B., Notenbaert, A., Mugatha, S., & Herrero, M. (2015). A review of environmental impact assessment frameworks for livestock production systems. Stockholm Environment Institute. https://www.sei.org/mediamanager/documents/Publications/Air-land-water-resources/CLEANED/sei-pr-2015-03-ran-cleaned-1411l.pdf

Chicago

Ran, Ylva, Mats Lannerstad, Jennie Barron, Simon Fraval, Birthe Paul, An Notenbaert, Simon Mugatha, and Mario Herrero. A review of environmental impact assessment frameworks for livestock production systems. Stockholm Environment Institute, 2015. https://www.sei.org/mediamanager/documents/Publications/Air-land-water-resources/CLEANED/sei-pr-2015-03-ran-cleaned-1411l.pdf.

Wikipedia

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BibTeX

@techreport{ran2015review, author = {Ran, Ylva and Lannerstad, Mats and Barron, Jennie and Fraval, Simon and Paul, Birthe and Notenbaert, An and Mugatha, Simon and Herrero, Mario}, title = {{A review of environmental impact assessment frameworks for livestock production systems}}, institution = {Stockholm Environment Institute}, year = {2015}, url = {https://www.sei.org/mediamanager/documents/Publications/Air-land-water-resources/CLEANED/sei-pr-2015-03-ran-cleaned-1411l.pdf}, urldate = {2026-10-23}, note = {Indexed by Climate Insights Directory} }