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International audience; Evaluating holistically environmental impacts of land planning policies implies to take into account several aspects, intimately related both to territorial features and to production-consumption patterns, which have a specific local character and a potential impact at different scales. To address these chal- lenges, life cycle thinking and assessment methods are crucial. Indeed, beyond the traditional application of Life Cycle Assessment as a product-oriented methodology, a new LCA-based approach called "terri- torial LCA" has gradually emerged to assess geographically or administratively defined systems. This paper aims to analyze how this new LCA-based approach differs from conventional LCA, highlighting main differences and added values. Territorial LCAs can be divided into two main approaches, i.e., i) type A, which focuses on the assessment of a specific activity or supply chain anchored in a given territory, and ii) type B, which attempts to assess all production and consumption activities located in a territory, including all environmental pressures embodied in trade flows with other territories. These two ap- proaches are described and compared according to the four LCA phases to highlight differences and similarities with conventional LCA. This comparison is based on a detailed case study analysis for each territorial LCA type and it shows that most of the differences are in the goal and scope definition, especially for the territorial LCA of type B where the functional unit definition is no more the starting point of the assessment. Concerning territorial LCA of type A, there are no main divergences with conventional LCA as territorial contextualization already exists in some LCA applications, even if not systematically applied. Improvements in the application may entail a comprehensive contextualization of the four LCA phases, developing the synergies with the use of Geographic Information System (GIS) tools. Other specific challenges affecting both type A and B are related to i) territorial unique intrinsic multi- functionality determined by all human activities located within its boundaries, ii) specific territorial characteristics (i.e., spatial variability and organization), and iii) multiscale issues and the consideration of interactions between territories.

International audience; Water utilities draw different water sources (surface and groundwater), including increased use of alternative sources (e.g. desalinated water, reused water, inter-basin water transfers) to supply freshwater to different users (domestic, agriculture, etc.). The combination of water sources and technologies (including infrastructures and energy) results in a regional water supply mix (WSmix) for each specific use. Existing Life Cycle Inventory (LCI) databases used in Life Cycle Assessment (LCA), do not include these mixes when modelling processes, leading to a poor representation of water supply systems and related environmental impacts. To fill this gap, this paper proposes a consistent framework for modelling a regional WSmix at worldwide scale. The WSmix framework includes the scope and system boundaries definition as well as a standardisation of terminology and classification of water sources and users. To facilitate implementation of theWSmix, this paper provides a worldwide database of water source mixes per user and a technology matrix linking water sources to water production technologies, including the connection with the local electricity mix. The relevance of including the WSmix in LCI databases for proper water-use impact assessment is demonstrated with an illustrative case study. The paper finally concludes on the need of using the regionalized WSmix in routine LCA, which is just as straightforward as the use of the regionalized electricity supply mix. Besides, the developed WSmix provides interesting insights beyond the LCA scope to support the strategic management of water sources at various scales including the global scale.

International audience; ife Cycle Approaches to Sustainable Regional Development explains the ways life cycle methodologies and tools can be used to strengthen regional socio-economic planning and development in a more sustainable manner. The book advocates the adoption of systematic and long-term criteria for development decision-making, taking into account the full life cycle of materials and projects. It describes life cycle practices from both a scientific and a practitioner point of view, highlighting examples and case studies at regional level. The applications are relevant to key economic sectors, as well as for internal planning and administrative procedures. It concludes with a synthesis chapter that distills the key messages from the authors into practical guidance points on how best to use such approaches to enhance sustainability in regional development. The book is essential reading for regional and urban planners who are integrating life cycle thinking into their policy regimes, as well as for researchers working to further evolve life cycle methodologies.

As a response to the economic crisis and sustainability challenges the world is facing, the discussion related to green growth and green economy was launched by the Organisation for Economic Co-operation (OECD) and United Nations Environment Programme. Green growth and green economy have been seen as opportunities to foster economic growth and development, while ensuring that natural assets continue to provide the resources and ecosystem services on which our well-being relies. The central message is that greening the economies can help to generate new jobs and skills, promote clean technologies, and reduce environmental risks and poverty. This report summarises the key results of a PEER project analysing the green economy. The project explored green economy concepts and 10 practical cases from Finland, France, Germany, the Netherlands and Denmark. The work is based on three article manuscripts and thus divided into three parts: 1) a conceptual and methodological framework for the implementation and the monitoring of the different dimensions of a green economy (Loiseau et al., 2015), 2) critical factors for achieving a green economy in practice (Pitkänen et al., 2015), and 3) governance factors with respect to institutional frameworks that may facilitate a transition to a green economy (Droste et al., 2015). The concept of a green economy can encompass several meanings and be related to different economic theories, concepts and practical approaches aiming to achieve environmental, economic and social benefits. In order to measure the effects of these solutions, different assessment tools can be used. The concepts and practical approaches related to the green economy are varyingly implemented in the cases of enhancing green economy in practice. For instance, principles of industrial ecology lie behind several of our case study approaches. Similarly, circular economy and waste hierarchy concepts were present in several of the studied cases, combined for instance with energy or material efficiency approaches. The results emphasise that transitioning to green economies is never purely based on win-win solutions, but requires taking into account potential trade-offs among multiple goals, across sectors and international leakage. The case studies indicate the need for far-sighted and multiple-source planning of funding of green economy initiatives. The results emphasise a better and more holistic integration of research in green economy initiatives and projects from the beginning. As illustrated by our study, the complexity and multi-sectoral nature of the green economy calls for a broad co-integration of policies bridging the environment, innovation, transport, housing, energy, agriculture and spatial planning. Our case studies also illustrate the need for comprehensive analysis of the effects of regulation and legislation. Many of our cases also illustrate the importance of stakeholder commitment, good leadership and coordination. Transforming the economy requires innovation in terms of available technology, organisational support, market and broader societal conditions, and an overarching governance framework, but most of all, political will. The practical implementation of the green economy is related to a multiplicity of factors and causalities depending on the context. Some solutions are more compliant with the mainstream economy and require few changes (e.g. cleaner production), whereas other solutions are more system-oriented and based on profound transformations in the patterns of production and consumption (e.g. industrial ecology).

International audience; Since the implementation of the European Directive on strategic environmental assessment (2001), local authorities are in charge of carrying studies on the environmental impacts of land use planning policies. However, they are facing with a lack of standardized approaches to perform such assessement. Methodological developments are therefore needed for the environmental assessment of spatial planning policies adopted on a territory. In order to achieve this, different kinds of tools and methods can be used. Among them, LCA has been identified as a promising tool as it has the ability to avoid burden shifting between environmental impacts as well as between life cycle stages. Yet, no study which performs the environmental assessement of a territory as a whole has been reported. The aim of this presentation is twofold. Firstly, the main methodological bottlenecks which can partlty explain the lack of applications of LCA to territories have been identified and discussed, i.e., (i) functional unit definition, (ii) boundary selection, (iii) data collection and (iv) the refinement of LCIA indicators in order to provide useful information for land planning policies. Secondly, for each bottleneck, proposals have been made to overcome it and to provide a general framework adapted to land planning issues. One of the main adaptations relies on the functional unit definition. The territory (defined by its geographical boundaries) and its related land planning scenario will now be considered as the reference flow. The adapted framework will hence deliver two kinds of indicators (calculated outputs), the environmental impacts and a set of services provided by the territory. This adapted framework offers a new perspective on the issue of the environmental assessment of land planning policies by proposing a global approach which include all the activities located on a territory, avoiding burden shifting between territories, prioritizing environmental issues and identifying the most polluting activities on a territorial context which could need a complemetary analysis (e.g., environmental risk analysis).

International audience; During the last two decades, Life Cycle Assessment (LCA) has been increasingly used in the agri-food sector with a shift from focused applications in industrial eco-design to a broader range of products. In France, publications of LCA studies on agricultural feedstock started in the late 90s focusing on bioenergy production. With environmental assessment close to become a prerequisite in most sectors, the number of LCA practitioners in France has rapidly increased with a diversification of actors, such as researchers, consultants or governmental agencies. Research actors in LCA work in research institutes such as INRA1, CIRAD2 or IRSTEA3. The collaboration platform ELSA4, created in 2008, brings together numerous actors from these institutes in Montpellier as well as researchers form the universities Supagro and Les Mines of Alès. It is currently the biggest French team on LCA of agro-bioprocesses. Experts on industrial eco-design, agricultural and social sciences work together on several projects that aim to both provide expertise and develop knowledge on LCA. Activities within ELSA also consist in disseminate scientific knowledge on LCA or industrial ecology through Ph.D. thesis supervision, educational and vocational training. Lately, scientists within the team have been working specifically on four scientific challenges: 1) modeling the complex agro-bioprocesses, 2) dealing with uncertainty in LCA, 3) building causal chains related to specific environmental or social impacts, and 4) refining life cycle inventories (LCIs). Further information on ELSA and possible collaboration ways can be found under www.elsa-lca.org. Researchers from CIRAD actively contribute to activities within ELSA. They are particularly involved in researches dealing with tropical crops. Specific challenges in the tropics concern notably methodological developments and data collection to better account for very diverse cropping systems such as perennials or agro-forestry cropping systems.

The last decade has seen life cycle assessment (LCA) stand out as methodological reference for the quantitative assessment of environmental impacts of a product or a production system. Although already widely used in economic and policies circles (eco-design, corporate social responsibility, eco-labelling), the methodological LCA framework is always a subject of extensive study for the scientific community. This article describes a number of research issues for this community and how the French research team Elsa address them., La dernière décennie a vu l’analyse du cycle de vie (ACV) s’imposer comme cadre méthodologique de référence pour l’évaluation quantitative des impacts environnementaux d’un produit ou d’un système de production. Bien que déjà largement utilisés dans les sphères économiques (éco-conception, responsabilité sociale des entreprises) et politiques (éco-étiquetages), le cadre méthodologique et les outils de l’ACV sont toujours un vaste objet d’étude pour la communauté scientifique. Cet article décrit un grand nombre de fronts de sciences de cette communauté et la manière dont le pôle de recherche français Elsa les aborde.

Territories are submitted to environmental assessment through regulation such as the European Directive n°2001/42/CE which states that an environmental assessment is carried out of certain plans and programmes which are likely to have significant effects on the environment, like those related to territorial planning. However, managers are confronted to a lack of methodology to perform such assessments. This statement highlights the need to develop a tool able to assess the impact of a territory as a whole. Firstly, this reports defines the notion of territory as well as its spatial boundaries. Then, it outlines the tools applied to the environmental assessment of this complex system. It includes tools developed for the assessment of sites (risks analysis), of economies (material flow analysis), or of products or services (life cycle assessment, emergy). Finally, the report compares the tools so as to propose a comprehensive method overcoming their major shortcomings., Avec la mise en ½uvre de la directive européenne n°2001/42/CE, les territoires peuvent désormais faire l'objet d'une évaluation environnementale. La directive stipule que "certains plans et programmes susceptibles d'avoir des incidences notables sur l'environnement soient soumis à une évaluation environnementale". Cette règle s'applique donc pour les plans et programmes en lien avec l'aménagement du territoire. Cependant, dans la pratique, les gestionnaires peuvent faire face à l'absence de cadre méthodologique formalisé. Il est donc nécessaire de développer une méthodologie permettant de faire l'évaluation environnementale d'un territoire dans sa globalité. Dans un premier temps, ce rapport explicite la notion de "territoire" et précise ses frontières géographiques. Puis, une description des différents outils et méthodes déjà appliqués à un tel système est réalisée. Elle intègre les outils développés à la base pour l'évaluation d'un site (analyse de risques), d'une économie (analyse de flux de matières) ou d'un service, bien ou procédé (analyse de cycle de vie, émergie). Ces outils et méthodes sont ensuite comparés afin de proposer une démarche générale palliant les défauts des méthodes actuelles.

The aim of the study is to analyze how water use is taken into account in environmental impact assessment methodologies. The study will focus on the Life Cycle Assessment methodology, which quantifies all the consumptions and emissions of a good or a service from cradle to grave. Firstly, we will show that LCA considers water as a compartment like air or soil, and thus quantifies the environmental impacts done on this compartment (eutrophication, acidification, aquatic ecosystem toxicology). Although water is already studied in LCA as a compartment, water is also a resource such as petrol or copper. Methodologies have been developed to assess this kind of resources; nonetheless water is a specific resource with a lot of particularities (lifecycle, origins, use, and so on). In order to fill this gap, researchers have proposed new indicators. They have been defined thanks to the concepts of Virtual Water and Water Footprint, and by using water stress indicators. Consequently, after describing these concepts, we will show how they have been applied to LCA and what are the next challenges on LCA.; L'objectif de cette synthèse est d'étudier les méthodes d'évaluation des impacts environnementaux prenant en compte les différents usages de l'eau. Cette étude fera plus particulièrement le point sur la méthodologie de l'ACV, qui quantifie toutes les émissions et les consommations des biens et des services tout au long de leur cycle de vie (c'est à dire « du berceau à la tombe »). Dans un premier temps, il faudra définir le concept de l'ACV et montrer que l'ACV considère l'eau comme un compartiment, au même titre que le sol et l'air, et donc quantifie les impacts subis par l'eau (eutrophisation, acidification, écotoxicologie aquatique). Bien que l'eau soit déjà étudiée dans l'ACV en tant que compartiment, l'eau est également une ressource comme le pétrole ou le cuivre. Néanmoins, l'eau est une ressource à part, ayant des caractéristiques propres (cycle de vie, origines, usages, etc.). Afin de prendre en compte ces aspects, des équipes de recherche ont proposé de nouveaux indicateurs. Ils ont été définis sur la base des approches de l'eau virtuelle et de l'empreinte sur l'eau, et en utilisant les indicateurs de stress hydrique. Par conséquent, après une présentation de ces concepts, il sera montré comment ils ont été intégrés dans la méthodologie de l'ACV et quels sont les futurs axes de recherche à développer.