The International Association for Impact Assessment (IAIA) will hold its next annual conference in Montréal, Canada from 4-7 April 2017. We warmly invite you to submit an abstract for the session entitled “Potential role of life cycle assessment in EIA, SEA and environmental management” before October 31st, 2016. Abstracts must be submitted online at http://conferences.iaia.org/2017/index.php
In this session, we will explore how life cycle assessment (LCA) could play a role in environmental impact assessment (EIA), strategic environmental assessment (SEA) and environmental management. As LCA is performed for a specific functional unit, it allows comparison of the environmental performance of products and services on a functional equal footing. Additionally, as the assessment is performed for several environmental impact categories and along the different life cycle steps, LCA allows the identification and quantification of potential impact displacements from one life cycle stage to another, or from one impact category to another. Based on these assets, LCA has developed as a strong decision support tool, and is currently expanding its scope to project based LCAs, organizational LCA, territorial LCA, national LCA, etc.
Papers that explore potential interactions between LCA and these tools (EIA, SEA and environmental management), including conceptual, methodological or applied research, are welcome. Given the theme of the conference which is “Impact assessment’s contribution to the global efforts in addressing climate change”, we are especially interested in papers that would look at how these tools can be combined to support decision making regarding the identification of the best climate change mitigation strategies while avoiding impact shifting toward other environmental issues or life cycle stages.
Session chairs:
Annie Levasseur, CIRAIG, Polytechnique Montréal, Canada
Wouter Achten, Université Libre de Belgique, Belgium
