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Publicatie

A sense of planetary urgency: an environmental index for an informed food choice

Boekbijdrage - Boekhoofdstuk Conferentiebijdrage

Sustainability can only be achieved if we live within the ecological carrying capacity of our planet. At this very moment, our consumption patterns are exhausting the environment by depleting more resources and by creating more waste than our planet can sustain. In 2009, a group of renowned scientists presented a planetary boundaries framework to define a safe operating space for humanity with respect to the earth system. The framework was subsequently updated in 2015 and is based on nine key earth system processes with boundary levels for each process (the biophysical limits) which should not be transgressed in order to maintain a low risk of destabilising the earth system. In parallel to these academic analyses, recent years have shown increased consumer concerns on the sustainability of their food. To increase consumer autonomy and enable them to make an informed food choice, consumers should be informed on how to better respect the biophysical limits of our planet through their consumption patterns. This paper therefore proposes communicating life cycle assessment (LCA) results for food products in an understandable way to the general public, by translating them via the use of the planetary boundaries framework. The resulting environmental index enables comparison of alike products, and can be applied to a wide range of food products, based on the ‘planetary urgency’ of the environmental impacts associated with those products or processes.
Boek: Food futures: ethics, science and culture
Pagina's: 127 - 132
ISBN:978-90-8686-288-7
Jaar van publicatie:2016
Toegankelijkheid:Closed