The international conference avniR 2017 on “Life cycle management; the solution to an eco-transition” held in Lille, France, on November 8-9 invited the FSLCI to organise a session on life cycle approaches for sustainable regional development.
Guido Sonnemann and Fritz Balkau prepared the session that combined three international speakers with an audience dialogue. Philip Strothmann presented an overview of the life cycle methodologies that could help regions accelerate their progress towards the 17 sustainable development goals outlined by the United Nations in 2015.
This was followed by an example of the application of various LCA techniques to a development sector (renewable energy) presented by Giulia Ferrini from UN Environment, and subsequently by an example of a regional initiative in Baden-Wurtemburg to train SMEs in materials flow cost accounting to improve their cost-efficiency and reduce waste, presented by Andreas Genest of ifu, Hamburg.
The session confirmed the relevance of life cycle management approaches for regional authorities despite their rather low level of consciousness in the potential applications. Clearly a great deal more outreach and training is needed before life cycle techniques become common in the public sector.
The conference session was in line with the FSLCI’s objective to work more on this subject and followed this year’s Summer School that was organized on the same topic.
In addition to the session we were also present with our booth and participated in the panel discussion on Circular Economy. All in all we would like to thank avniR for providing us with these opportunities to present the FSLCI.
Tags: avnir life cycle regional sustainable development session
