Global Guidance for Life Cycle Impact Assessment Indicators

The UNEP/SETAC Life Cycle Initiative provides global guidance on harmonizing LCIA indicators to improve the comparability and accuracy of environmental assessments. The document recommends specific metrics for climate change (GWP100 and GTP100), human health impacts from PM2.5, water scarcity (AWARE approach), and biodiversity loss from land use, while proposing an updated LCIA framework that distinguishes between intrinsic, instrumental, and cultural values.

• The document proposes an updated LCIA framework that categorizes damage into three value types: intrinsic (human health and ecosystem quality), instrumental (socio-economic assets, natural resources, and ecosystem services), and cultural (cultural and natural heritage).
• For climate change, the guidance recommends using two complementary metrics from the 5th IPCC assessment report: Global Warming Potential 100 year (GWP 100) for decadal-scale impacts and Global Temperature change Potential 100 years (GTP 100) for century-scale impacts.
• To address health impacts of fine particulate matter (PM2.5), the guide recommends using intake fractions to model source-receptor relationships for both primary and secondary PM2.5 across different archetypes, including urban versus rural and indoor versus outdoor settings.
• For water scarcity, the 'AWARE' approach is recommended, which quantifies the relative Available WAter REmaining per area. The method is calculated at the watershed and monthly levels, though aggregated factors are provided for country and global levels for practicality.
• The guidance provides an interim recommendation for land use impacts on biodiversity using characterization factors (CFs) that quantify potential species loss (PSL) across five taxa: vascular plants, mammals, birds, amphibians, and reptiles.
• The potential species loss indicators for land use are explicitly restricted to hotspot analyses in LCA and should not be used for comparative assertions or eco-labeling.
• Regarding water use and human health, the guide recommends characterization factors for DALYs lost due to malnutrition caused by a lack of water for irrigated food production, though these are recommended for marginal applications only.
• The document emphasizes the need for transparent reporting in LCIA, specifically regarding impact pathways, units, reference states, uncertainties, spatial scale, and the rationale for modeling and data choices.

APA

WWF International (2016). Global Guidance for Life Cycle Impact Assessment Indicators. https://www.worldwildlife.org/documents/686/3xts1fmiz4_LCIA_publication_preview.pdf

Chicago

WWF International. Global Guidance for Life Cycle Impact Assessment Indicators. 2016. https://www.worldwildlife.org/documents/686/3xts1fmiz4_LCIA_publication_preview.pdf.

Wikipedia

{{cite report |author=WWF International |title=Global Guidance for Life Cycle Impact Assessment Indicators |date=2016 |url=https://www.worldwildlife.org/documents/686/3xts1fmiz4_LCIA_publication_preview.pdf |access-date=23 October 2026 |via=Climate Insights Directory}}

BibTeX

@techreport{wwfinternational2016global, author = {{WWF International}}, title = {{Global Guidance for Life Cycle Impact Assessment Indicators}}, institution = {WWF International}, year = {2016}, url = {https://www.worldwildlife.org/documents/686/3xts1fmiz4_LCIA_publication_preview.pdf}, urldate = {2026-10-23}, note = {Indexed by Climate Insights Directory} }