Biodiversity and trade: mitigating the impacts of non-food biomass global supply chains
Biodiversity and trade: mitigating the impacts of non-food biomass global supply chains
Environmental Science & Technology, Volume 60, September 2026
Sedona Anderson, Solveig Størdal Tveit, Konstantin Stadler, Francesca Verones
The benthic zone provides the foundation for marine ecosystem health, yet seabed damage from anthropogenic activities remains mostly unrepresented in life cycle impact assessment (LCIA). Here, we present a globally applicable LCIA characterization framework for seabed damage from three major disturbance categories: bottom trawling, dredging, and structures on the seabed. We calculate 3,800 characterization factors (CFs) across 231 marine ecoregions (MERs), including 1,900 regional CFs and 1,900 globally normalized CFs derived using global extinction probability (GEP).
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Nature Scientific Data, Volume 12, 2025
Aafke M. Schipper, Martijn van der Marel, Michel Bakkenes, Paul Giesen, Mark M. P. van Oorschot, Harry C. Wilting, Mark A. J. Huijbregts & Alexandra Marques
There is an increasing demand for consistent methods and tools to quantify biodiversity footprints: the magnitude of biodiversity loss associated with all direct and indirect impacts associated with a given human activity or economic actor. Here, we present the intactness-based biodiversity impact factors (IBIF) dataset: a consistent set of country-level impact factors that can be used to attribute losses in local terrestrial biodiversity intactness to emissions and resource use associated with production or consumption in a given country.
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Environmental Science & Technology, Volume 59, October 2025
Sedona R. Anderson, Konstantin Stadler and Francesca Verones
Ocean acidification poses a critical threat to marine ecosystems. While life cycle assessment frameworks provide a method for assessing and combatting many anthropogenic impacts, marine impact models remain underdeveloped compared to their terrestrial counterparts. This study presents the first spatially explicit characterization model for quantifying the impacts of ocean acidification that includes both midpoint and endpoint characterization factors (CFs). Midpoint CFs were spatially delineated by using marine ecoregions and Food and Agriculture Organization fishing areas, leveraging spatially explicit fate and fate sensitivity factors.
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Chloe Stanford-Clark, Sedona Anderson, Francesca Verones, Arnaud Hélias, Stephan Pfister
Journal of Applied Ecology, Volume 62, April 2025
Liam Vezzani, Aafke M. Schipper, Wilfried Thuiller, Peter H. Verburg, Henrik G. Smith, Alexandra Marques
Pollinators are estimated to benefit the reproduction of three-quarters of global leading crop species and contribute to 3%–8% of the total global food production. Ongoing declines in pollinator populations have raised concerns about repercussions for food security. Thus, there is a need to better understand how agricultural yields depend on pollinator abundance.
Here, we established yield–pollinator relationships for 24 crops, capitalizing on a recently published global database with paired records of crop yield and pollinator abundance. We used linear mixed-effects modelling to relate relative yields to total pollinator abundance, accounting for differences in climate and farming practices.
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Environmental Pollution, Volume 372, May 2025
Māra Deksne, Peter M. van Bodegom, Laura Scherer
Eutrophication results from nutrient overload in aquatic ecosystems and affects primary productivity patterns, which impacts the living conditions of aquatic organisms. The rivers in the catchment area of the Baltic Sea are greatly affected by eutrophication, but impacts on fish functional diversity are poorly understood. This study, therefore, evaluates the effects of freshwater eutrophication on fish functional diversity in the rivers of the Baltic Sea catchment area.
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Jennifer Anderson, Eline Schoonhoven, Peter M. van Bodegom, Laura Scherer
Elisha Wilson, Martin Dorber, Laura Scherer, Alexandra Marques, Francesca Verones
Jennifer Anderson, Peter M. van Bodegom, Laura Scherer
ean-François Blanc, Peter M. van Bodegom, Laura Scherer
Elisha Wilson, Konstantin Stadler, Francesca Verones, Martin Bruckner
Nature Food, Volume 7, June 2026
Shuntian Wang, Livia Cabernard, Martin Bruckner, Maulana Permana Ajie, Stephan Pfister
Oil crop expansion threatens global biodiversity, yet its supply chain impacts remain poorly quantified. Here we analyse biodiversity impacts along oil crop supply chains from 1995 to 2020 using spatially explicit assessments, a hybridized multi-regional input–output framework, enhanced supply chain mapping and structural decomposition analysis. By 2020, oil crop cultivation caused the potential long-term loss of 1.5% of global species (plants and terrestrial vertebrates), with oil palm, coconuts and soybeans responsible for three-quarters of this effect. Tropical regions, occupying just under half of harvested area, bear almost four-fifths of impacts. More than half of this loss was outsourced through international trade, as major importers displace biodiversity burdens to tropical regions.
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The International Journal of Life Cycle Assessment, Volume 31, April 2026
Rubén Manrique-Muñante, Alejandro Deville, Ramzy Kahhat, Ian Vázquez-Rowe
Biodiversity impacts of the Peruvian fisheries, strongly influenced by El Niño-Southern Oscillation (ENSO), are
not fully covered by current life cycle impact assessment (LCIA) models. While the recently developed Fisheries Impact
Pathway (FIP) accounts for the impacts of marine biotic resource depletion, key methodological challenges, such as tem-
porality, critical for impact assessment in dynamic fisheries, remain unattended. In the current study, we aim to develop
characterization factors (CFs) for 10 relevant Peruvian fishing stocks, including Peruvian anchoveta, using an enhanced FIP
framework.
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Aquaculture, Volume 600, April 2025
Alejandro Deville, Ian Vázquez-Rowe, Angel Avadí, Fernando Miranda, Ramzy Kahhat
The anchoveta (Engraulis ringens) fishery in Peru, which is almost entirely devoted to the production of fishmeal and fish oil, is one of the largest fisheries in the world. It is volatile in terms of fishing stock availability, and the fishmeal industry has been subject to technological changes to upgrade its efficiency and reduce costs to maintain its competitiveness. The objective of this study is to apply the Life Cycle Assessment methodology to the production and exportation of fishmeal and fish oil products related to a relevant producer in Peru, representing 10 % of national production.
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Journal of Industrial Ecology, Volume 28, May 2023
Sidi Peng, Stephan Pfister
Life cycle inventory (LCI) databases, such as ecoinvent, are crucial for life cycle assessment (LCA), but lack country-specific resolution in activity details and trade between regional activities in the supply chain. For example, ecoinvent only provides rest-of-world and European datasets for photovoltaic panel production, consuming the same global consumption mix of photovoltaic cells. Global or continental activities and trade limit the use of existing country activities, such as electricity production, and the accuracy and granularity of LCA results. We addressed this issue by disaggregating ecoinvent's global and continental unit processes to the country level and by regionalizing trade using country-sector-specific consumption mixes of product origins from the multiregional input–output table EXIOBASE.
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Sidi Peng, Vassilis Daioglou, Konstantin Stadler, Ramin Roshandel, Martin Bruckner, and Stephan Pfister
Francesca Rosa, et al.
IPBES (2026)
Rueda X., Jones M., Polasky S., (eds.). IPBES secretariat, Bonn, Germany. Will be released in February 2026. Two BAMBOO members have been lead authors in the report.
