Life-cycle biodiversity assessment of global crop production: Advances, framework, and outlooks.

Biodiversity loss driven by agricultural expansion and intensification poses a major threat to global sustainable development. Life Cycle Assessment (LCA) has emerged as a key tool for quantifying the biodiversity impacts of agriculture; however, a comprehensive synthesis of empirical applications and methodological advances to date remains lacking. In this study, we conduct a systematic review of the literature, outline a dedicated LCA biodiversity framework for agriculture, and discuss future research priorities. Previous studies were often geographically concentrated, limited in scope and spatial resolution, and inconsistent in impact assessment. European countries were the focus of previous studies, while biodiversity-vulnerable regions such as Africa and Asia were underexamined. Staple crops were much more frequently studied (33%) than specialty crops like fruits and vegetables. Most studies (86%) focused on direct biodiversity impacts from agricultural production processes, especially land use (43%) and fertilizer application (18%), while impacts of upstream processes were often neglected. Through a structured evaluation of widely used LCIA models, we find that LC-Impact and ReCiPe might be the most suitable to date for assessing the life-cycle biodiversity impacts of agriculture. To improve the estimation of global agriculture's direct and indirect biodiversity impacts, future research should strengthen data collection in underrepresented, high-risk regions; expand to cover more specialty crops, upstream processes, and the various pathways through which agriculture affects biodiversity; incorporate broader biodiversity indicators than species richness; and validate models with updated field data to improve model reliability and policy relevance.

• Publication year

  2025

• Venue

  Journal of Environmental Management

• Publication date

  2025-08-12

• Fields of study

  Agricultural and Food Sciences, Medicine, Environmental Science

• Identifiers
  DOI 10.1016/j.jenvman.2025.126934PMID 40803111
• External record

  Open on Semantic Scholar

• Source metadata

  Semantic Scholar, PubMed

• No claims are published for this paper.

• No concepts are published for this paper.

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