Data: Luns, 19 de febreiro de 2024
Hora: 11:00 h
Lugar: Rúa Benito Corbal, 45 (Pontevedra)
Enlace para retransmisión online aquí
Resumo do relatorio (asbstracts)
Environmental Accounting – Life Cycle Assessment, Emergy Accounting
Remo Santagata
Università Telematica Pegaso
Science presents highly specialization features requiring a specialized knowledge base. Reductionism contributed to the development of science and to many of the advances of human civilization, but it presents drawbacks as information overload, boundaries imposed to the flow of knowledge and oversimplification. It often neglects that “the whole is greater than the sum of its parts”, “the missing information is not wholly in the microscopic components or in identification of the parts” (Odum, 2007). A step back is thus required in order to see the big picture, to understand networks and investigate the performance of larger systems. Thus, science needs to adopt holistic perspectives to look at the problems at a larger scale, in order to see the complete picture. When analyzing systems or processes, the simultaneous application of different assessment methods may be advantageous to gain a multiperspective point of view. This is the case with the Life Cycle Assessment (LCA) and Emergy Accounting (EMA) methods. The two methods bring to separate conclusions, LCA results regarding the burdens and impacts of human activities and EMA showing the environmental support to complex, not only human dominated, systems. LCA focuses on a cradle to grave approach, while EMA expands over the biosphere time and scales, accounting for resources generation, ecosystem services and societal aspects embedded in direct and indirect labor. LCA adopts a ‘consumer-side’ perspective, while EMA a ‘donor-side’ perspective. Nevertheless, LCA and EMA show some similarities in the way they are carried out. Differences between LCA and EMA can be acknowledged and highlighted as complementary perspectives providing different insights and answers to different questions.