Session: Social LCA

COMMUNITY - What LCA Ignores
Jeremy Burnham,^*   The Natural Step

Tipping Point - that's where we are on the planet, and we need every discipline to bring its best to the table (metaphor of white-water rafting on rapids with a landslide thrown in) - brief highlights of the current environmental melt-down will be given.

What has caused it is the lack of effective human communication. Many people know what's happening and the remedial steps we should be taking today, but we lack mechanisms to influence those who can take those steps. Our politics and corporates have made themselves immune to responsibility.

What has reduced our ability to communicate effectively is the breakdown of community in this mobile age of fast-food employment and dormitory suburbs. The corporatised global village has turned meaningful craft and work into jobs and careers. Supply chains have become so long that workers no longer have any relationship with their customers.

LCA should factor this effect into its impact analyses. In South Africa we say, "local is lekker". There may be a time (the other end of the rapids) when virtual community replaces real communication, but given our current levels of skills and technology we need to do all in our power to build, not collapse, inter-personal connections and chains of responsibility. It is not good enough for LCA's to measure only inanimate impacts - it is LIFE Cycles we are assessing, and to omit conscious life may make the maths convenient but renders the conclusions meagre.

What is the impact of this or that intervention on vibrant community life? - some examples will be given where this has been taken into account with remarkable results.

We could take this one step further to include the factor of life itself as a quantifiable and highly depletable resource which could/should be included in LCA. If land-based biomass were to include the total living organisms (indirectly photosynthesised product) in the soil, and if maintaining or improving that were considered a vital component of sustainability, then we would be bringing the language and challenge of LCA's closer to what our politicians need to respond to. It is no longer valid to use "cradle to grave" language on a planet whose very survival depends upon our thinking and talking cradle to cradle.

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