Review of 40 LCA datasets from Malaysia, Brazil and Thailand completed

The Life Cycle Initiative has been supporting UNEP in technical support to national LCA databases since late 2014. One of the key requests from countries has been for technical support on the peer-review of their LCA datasets. This particular effort had to be organized and completed over a constrained timeline of six months and covered 40 datasets from several emerging economies — Malaysia, Brazil and Thailand. It consisted in developing a set of review criteria, establishing a review process including legal aspects (non-disclosure agreement), and reviewing and reporting on each dataset.

As a first- of-its-kind exercise, a number of challenges had to be faced, but thanks to the great willingness and openness of the parties to cooperate, those difficulties were overcome. UNEP gratefully acknowledges the database managers of the three countries (SIRIM, IBICT and MTEC) and the valuable experts from the LC community who have provided coordination of or contribution to the reviews: Guido Sonnemann and Bruce Vigon (as coordinators and reviewers) and the reviewers: José Adolfo de Almeida Neto, Rodrigo Alvarenga, Ben Amore, Martin Baitz, Jonas Bengtsson, Guy Castellan, Ernani Choma, Andreas Ciroth, Angela Fiore, Craig Jones, Charongpun Musikavong, Ana Passuelo, Thapat Silalertruksa, Mili-Ann M. Tamayao, Marta Torrellas, Cassia Ugaya, Chandramouli Venkatesan, Viganda Varabuntoonvit, Nattanee Vorayos, Marc-Andree Wolf and Mingjia Yan. Without them, it would not have been possible to accomplish this work. Thanks also to Andreas Ciroth, Chris Foster, Jutta Hildenbrand, and Alessandra Zamagni for developing the review criteria.

This hands-on activity provided valuable insights into gaining global consensus and creating guidance on LCA data review. Beyond this time-constrained effort, a broader discussion on dataset review criteria and process at the international level is desirable.

We propose to initiate/continue this discussion in a workshop on ‘review criteria and processes’ in Nantes (side meeting to SETAC Nantes conference), on Friday 27 May 2016 from 8:30 am to 6pm (time and agenda to be confirmed). If you are interested, please get in touch with anne.claire (at) lifecycleinitiative.org.