Life Cycle Assessment (LCA) is increasingly used in policy, industry, and research to inform decisions and to support the achievement of internationally agreed goals, guide action on impact hotspots, identify trade-offs, and ensure consistency and coherence across policies and sectors. However, as its use expands, structural limitations in the current LCA ecosystem have become more visible and impede a faster scale-up of LCA use.

Today, life-cycle data and methods are highly fragmented. Databases operate with different formats, nomenclature, system boundaries, and quality criteria. Concepts are interpreted and operationalized differently across systems, making data exchange and comparison resource intensive. Manual mapping between databases is often required, reducing efficiency and increasing the risk of inconsistencies. At the same time, access to high-quality datasets remains uneven across regions, limiting meaningful participation in global sustainability processes. Growing regulatory and market demands for transparent, traceable environmental data further exposes these gaps.

To address these challenges, the Life Cycle Initiative initiated discussions with hundreds of partners across the world towards a Global LCA Platform: a connected, interoperable infrastructure to improve access to LCA data, methods, and capacity-building tools worldwide. The platform is not intended to replace existing databases or standards. Instead, it aims to provide a common technical and governance backbone that enables semantic alignment, structured data exchange, transparent quality assurance, and collaboration across regions and sectors towards aligned calculation rules. It builds on ongoing efforts such as GLAD and GLAM and aligns with UNEP’s Global Environmental Data Strategy. Following a kick-off workshop in Milan (Italy) on 10–11 July 2025, four technical working groups were established and have been designing the platform blueprint and initial components through 2025–2026. A workshop with LCA service providers during the TianGong Forum on 25 March is the next milestone.

We invite experts, institutions, and potential funding partners to collaborate in shaping this global effort. Contributions including technical, institutional, or financial, will be essential to building a robust and inclusive infrastructure that strengthens the credibility and accessibility of LCA worldwide.