Understanding the Stickiness of Commodity Supply Chains Is Key to Improving Their Sustainability

Commodity trade is central to the global economy but is also associated with socio-environmental impacts, for example, deforestation, especially in producer countries. It is crucial to understand how geographic sourcing patterns of commodities and commercial relationships between places and actors influence land-use dynamics, socio-economic development, and environmental degradation. Here, we propose a concept and methodological approach to analyze the geographic stickiness of commodity supply chains, which is the maintenance of supply network configurations over time and across perturbations. We showcase policy-relevant metrics for all Brazilian soy exports between 2003 and 2017, using high-resolution supply chain data from www.trase.earth. We find that the Brazilian soy traders with the largest market share exhibit stickier geographic sourcing patterns, and that the supply network configurations between production places and traders become increasingly sticky in subsequent years. Understanding trade stickiness is crucial for supply chain accountability, because it directly affects the effectiveness of zero-deforestation commitments

Using supply chain data to monitor zero deforestation commitments: an assessment of progress in the Brazilian soy sector

Zero deforestation commitments (ZDCs) are voluntary initiatives where companies or countries pledge to eliminate deforestation from their supply chains. These commitments offer much promise for sustainable commodity production, but are undermined by a lack of transparency about their coverage and impacts. Here, using state-of-the-art supply chain data, we introduce an approach to evaluate the impact of ZDCs, linking traders and international markets to commodity-associated deforestation in the sub-national jurisdictions from which they source. We focus on the Brazilian soy sector, where we find that ZDC coverage is increasing, but under-represents the Cerrado biome where most soy-associated deforestation currently takes place. Though soy-associated deforestation declined in the Amazon after the introduction of the Soy Moratorium, we observe no change in the exposure of companies or countries adopting ZDCs to soy-associated deforestation in the Cerrado. We further assess the formulation and implementation of these ZDCs and identify several systematic weaknesses that must be addressed to increase the likelihood that they achieve meaningful reductions in deforestation in future. As the 2020 deadline for several of these commitments approaches, our approach can provide independent monitoring of progress toward the goal of ending commodity-associated deforestation

A Commodity Supply Mix for More Regionalized Life Cycle Assessments

Supply chain information is invaluable to further regionalize product life cycle assessments (LCAs), but detailed information linking production and consumption centers is not always available. We introduce the commodity supply mix (CSM) defined as the trade-volume-weighted average representing the combined geographic areas for the production of a commodity exported to a given market with the goal of (1) enhancing the relevance of inventory and impact regionalization and (2) allocating these impacts to specific markets. We apply the CSM to the Brazilian soybean supply chain mapped by Trase to obtain the mix of ecoregions and river basins linked to domestic consumption and exports to China, EU, France, and the rest of the world, before quantifying damage to biodiversity, and water scarcity footprints. The EU had the lowest potential biodiversity damage but the largest water scarcity footprint following respective sourcing patterns in 12 ecoregions and 18 river basins. These results differed from the average impact scores obtained from Brazilian soybean production information alone. The CSM can be derived at different scales (subnationally, internationally) using existing supply chain information and constitutes an additional step toward greater regionalization in LCAs, particularly for impacts with greater spatial variability such as biodiversity and water scarcity

Disentangling the numbers behind agriculture-driven tropical deforestation

Tropical deforestation continues at alarming rates with profound impacts on ecosystems, climate, and livelihoods, prompting renewed commitments to halt its continuation. Although it is well established that agriculture is a dominant driver of deforestation, rates and mechanisms remain disputed and often lack a clear evidence base. We synthesize the best available pantropical evidence to provide clarity on how agriculture drives deforestation. Although most (90 to 99%) deforestation across the tropics 2011 to 2015 was driven by agriculture, only 45 to 65% of deforested land became productive agriculture within a few years. Therefore, ending deforestation likely requires combining measures to create deforestation-free supply chains with landscape governance interventions. We highlight key remaining evidence gaps including deforestation trends, commodity-specific land-use dynamics, and data from tropical dry forests and forests across Africa

Building a consensus model for assessing impacts of water use in LCA – First results of the UNEP/SETAC Life Cycle Initiative working group

While the general methodology for water footprinting has been harmonized by means of ISO 14046, a harmonized impact assessment model which promotes a commonly agreed and consistent application of water footprinting is still lacking. This work presents the current status of the methodological consensus building project of the UNEP/SETAC Life Cycle Initiative’s working group on water use in LCA (WULCA). Including method developers and experts from the fields of LCA, hydrology, ecology, etc., WULCA is developing consensus-based indicators to assess impacts from water use on water stress, human health, and ecosystems. This paper focuses on the water stress impact pathway and presents three alternative characterization models describing the potential that water consumption will deprive another user of water in the same river basin. Unlike previous water stress indexes, the characterization models address both ecosystems and human water demand in comparison to freshwater availability and size of the basin. The resulting characterization factors, which have been determined for more than 11,000 basins, are currently discussed, tested in case studies, and will be presented at CILCA 2015 in Lima, Peru.JRC.H.8-Sustainability Assessmen

Consensus building results on the new scarcity indicator from WULCA

Life Cycle Assessment (LCA) has served as a decision-support tool to help reduce environmental impacts for a few decades already. Recently, the methodology has been used to assess impacts related to water and group them in a new water footprint concept, now framed in ISO 14046:2014 (ISO, 2014). While this document provides principles, requirements and guidelines, no specific impact assessment method is recommended ,although several have emerged in the past 5 years to assess impacts from water use (Kounina et al. 2013). The need for consensus-developed and recommended methods is clear and the challenge was undertaken by the Water Use in LCA (WULCA) working group, founded under UNEP-SETAC Life Cycle Initiative in 2007. Including method developers and experts from the fields of LCA, hydrology, ecology, etc., the group is developing consensus-based indicators to assess impacts from water use, which can be used to comply with the requirements of the ISO document. This work presents the progress of the working group on the consensus method development and provide first applicable characterization factors for water use. Materials and methods WULCA commenced a new two-year activity in January 2014 aiming at developing consensus-based indicator(s) for water use impact assessment. The first steps defined a framework (based on previous WULCA deliverable (Bayart et al. 2010; Kounina et al. 2013)) and led to the identification of the three sets of indicators on which to focus: 1) The impact pathway leading to damages on human health is already modeled by different methods and ready for harmonization (Boulay et al. 2014). Hence it was included in the work and a consensus-based methodology defining this impact pathway is under development. 2) The ecosystem impact pathway includes several methodologies with possible complementary assessments (Kounina et al. 2013). A sub-group was formed to harmonize the different impact pathways in this category, by defining a consistent framework and possibly identifying a midpoint indicator early in the impact pathway, with the goal of developing a complete and consistent framework. 3) Answering the demand from industry for a generic (not human- or ecosystem-oriented) and recommended stress/scarcity indicator, a specific sub-group focused its efforts on the development of such a metric. It was set out as an indicator independent of other impact pathways and not leading directly to any endpoint damages. This paper is presented by the sub-working group focusing on this last stress-based midpoint indicator and presents results of the findings to date.JRC.H.8-Sustainability Assessmen

Consensus building results on the new scarcity indicator from WULCA

The need for consensus-developed and recommended methods for water use impact assessment is clear in order to perform a water scarcity footprint consistently with ISO 14046:2014 and for consistently assessing water consumption impacts in LCA. This challenge was undertaken by the WULCA working group, of the UNEP-SETAC Life Cycle Initiative in 2013. Including method developers and experts from different fields, the group developped a consensus-based indicator to assess impacts from water comsumption at the midpoint level, complying with the requirements of the ISO document. This work presents the recommended methodology for performing a water scarcity footprint including a case study application. The process started with the identification of the question to answer and three proposals which emerged from the three expert workshops held in Zurich, San Francisco and Tzukuba in 2014. The group then selected criteria used to evaluate the proposals which led to a preliminary recommendation presented in 2015. From this recommendation and the testing phase that followed, additional specific and influential modeling choices were identified, analyzed and adjusted accordingly, and sensitivity analysis were performed on the most uncertain aspects. These choices and analysis are presented, which include the span of the indicator, the different choices of spatio-temporal aggregation and their meaning when the native resolution of the indicator cannot be used, and the sensitivity of the environmental water requirement (EWR) parameter. The resulting and consensus-based single metric, covering the entire globe, modelled at various temporal and spatial scales for application in LCA, is presented in details along with the interpretation and application on the rice case study. The group is proposing the result of its work and new consensus-based indicator with the expectation that it will be adopted widely and hence decrease disparity and confusion when it comes to applying the new ISO standard on water footprinting, by providing an internationally approved, robust and simple indicator for assessment of potential impacts from water consumption.JRC.H.8-Sustainability Assessmen

Insecticide concentrations in stream sediments of soy production regions of South America

Concentrations of 17 insecticides were measured in sediments collected from 53 streams in soy production regions of South America (Argentina in 2011-2014, Paraguay and Brazil in 2013) during peak application periods. Although environmental regulations are quite different in each country, commonly used insecticides were detected at high frequencies in all regions. Maximum concentrations (and detection frequencies) for each sampling event ranged from: 1.2?7.4 ng/g dw chlorpyrifos (56-100%); 0.9?8.3 ng/g dw cypermethrin (20-100%); 0.42?16.6 ng/g dw lambda-cyhalothrin (60-100%); and 0.49?2.1 ng/g dw endosulfan (13-100%). Other pyrethroids were detected less frequently. Banned organochlorines were most frequently detected in Brazil. In all countries, cypermethrin and/or lambda-cyhalothrin toxic units (TUs), based on Hyalella azteca LC50 bioassays, were occasionally >0.5 (indicating likely acute toxicity), while TUs for other insecticides were 1 were collected from streams with riparian buffer width < 20 m. A multiple regression analysis that included five landscape and habitat predictor variables for the Brazilian streams examined indicated that buffer width was the most important predictor variable in explaining total insecticide TU values. While Brazil and Paraguay require forested stream buffers, there were no such regulations in the Argentine pampas where buffer widths were smaller. Multiple insecticides were found in almost all stream sediment samples in intensive soy production regions, with pyrethroids most often occurring at acutely toxic concentrations, and greatest potential for insecticide toxicity in streams with minimum buffer width < 20m.Fil: Hunt, Lisa. University Of California Berkeley; Estados UnidosFil: Bonetto, Carlos Alberto. Consejo Nacional de Investigaciones Científicas y Técnicas. Centro Científico Tecnológico Conicet - la Plata. Instituto de Limnología "dr. Raul A. Ringuelet". Universidad Nacional de la Plata. Facultad de Cs.naturales y Museo. Instituto de Limnología ; ArgentinaFil: Resh, Vincent H.. University Of California Berkeley; Estados UnidosFil: Forsin Buss, Daniel. Instituto Oswaldo Cruz; BrasilFil: Fanelli, Silvia Laura. Consejo Nacional de Investigaciones Científicas y Técnicas. Centro Científico Tecnológico Conicet - la Plata. Instituto de Limnología "dr. Raul A. Ringuelet". Universidad Nacional de la Plata. Facultad de Cs.naturales y Museo. Instituto de Limnología "dr. Raul A. Ringuelet"; ArgentinaFil: Marrochi, María Natalia. Consejo Nacional de Investigaciones Científicas y Técnicas. Centro Científico Tecnológico Conicet - la Plata. Instituto de Limnología "dr. Raul A. Ringuelet". Universidad Nacional de la Plata. Facultad de Cs.naturales y Museo. Instituto de Limnología ; ArgentinaFil: Lydy, Michael J.. Southern Illinois University; Estados Unido