Periodic Reporting for period 1 - PROTEAN (Prospective Environmental Assessment of Urban Agriculture Emerging-Systems)
Periodo di rendicontazione: 2019-09-01 al 2021-08-31
Urban and peri-urban agriculture have emerged as a more sustainable alternative to produce food. They include vertical farming, integrated greenhouse rooftops in buildings, local woodsheds and traditional agriculture around cities, among other productive systems. As these systems reach maturity, they are being designed to recirculate and minimise the use of resources such as nutrients, water, substrates and CO2, as well as reduce energy and water use providing benefits for air quality and biodiversity in cities. Therefore, it is expected that urban agriculture will provide low carbon, more sustainable food production compared to rural, more traditional agriculture systems.
Understanding and quantifying the effective contribution that urban agriculture will make to the environmental sustainability of cities requires the ability to both evaluate its environmental impacts in the future and to compare them to the impacts of traditional agriculture in the same future context.
The project PROspecTive Environmental AssessmeNt of Urban Agriculture-Emerging Systems (PROTEAN) focus on developing temporally-explicit environmental impact assessment for urban and traditional agriculture to determine the extent to which urban agriculture may contribute to the sustainability of future food production.
Understanding and quantifying the effective contribution that urban agriculture will make to the environmental sustainability of cities requires the ability to both evaluate its environmental impacts in the future and to compare them to the impacts of traditional agriculture in the same future context.
The project PROspecTive Environmental AssessmeNt of Urban Agriculture-Emerging Systems (PROTEAN) focus on developing temporally-explicit environmental impact assessment for urban and traditional agriculture to determine the extent to which urban agriculture may contribute to the sustainability of future food production.
PROTEAN's work was divided into six working packages, three on contents and three on management and dissemination. Below we elaborate on the three content WPs and their main achievements.
Work Package 1: Prospective Life Cycle Assessment (pLCA) of urban agriculture
This WP dealt with the inventory data collection for urban agriculture (UA) alternatives, which included several options and which we narrowed down to one case study to develop the proposal further.
We explore, rooftops and their use for food production including intergrated greenhouse rooftops (iRTGs). These inventories were based on data from ICTA-UABs experimental iRTG.
Further, in collaboration with The Metropolitan Laboratory of Ecology and Territory of Barcelona of the Barcelona Institute of Regional and Metropolitan Studies (LET-IERMB), we develop geographically explicit inventories for peri-urban agriculture production in the Metropolitan Area of Barcelona (AMB).
This was the chosen case to pursue further the research proposal.
Among the results of this WP we list two scientific publication related to the inventories of iRTGs and emissions of peri-urban agriculture i.e. Muñoz-Liesa et al. 2021 and Mendoza Beltran et al. 2022 (both specified in the publications section).
One more scientific publication is under revision. Here we have performed the regionalized LCA of peri-urban agriculture in the AMB, including the regionalized eutrophication impacts.
This study is the baseline necessary to setup the prospective LCA key in PROTEAN, further explore in WP2.
Work package 2: Contribution of UA to sustainable future food production
This WP comprised the integration of Integrated Assessment Model (IAM) scenarios with Life Cycle Inventory (LCI) databases to create prospective LCI (pLCI) databases for pLCAs.
This WP also included the use of such pLCI databases to calculate the selected systems´pLCA i.e. peri-UA production for the AMB.
Regarding the integartion of IAM and LCI data, key work within this WP, included the collaboration with researchers from the Paul Scherrer Institute (PSI) and the integration of the PREMISE tool outputs (Sacchi et al. 2022) within PROTEAN.
PREMISE integrated IMAGE scenarios of transport, cement, steel, fuel, electricity, etc. to develop pLCI databases for ecoinvent. These outputs were further used to calculate the pLCA for the case study in a publication currently under development. This work includes climate scenarios and also circular economy alternatives i.e. phosphorus supply from struvite recovery from wastewater treatment plants within the AMB and compost recovery from organic solid waste treatment. LCIs for these systems were determined within the URBAG project (ERC starting grant of Dr. Gara Villalba) and we are integrating them within PROTEAN.
Finally, under WP2, an additional collaboration with researchers from LIST Luxemburg, yielded an important development in pLCIA in which IMAGE data was integrated to produce future AWARE characterization factors to calculate water use impacts under climate change and baseline conditions (Baustert et al. 2022). This is an important development complementary to the key developments of PROTEAN as not only will the economy change in the future but also the biosphere will change, for instance, unders climate change.
Work package 3: Guidance to stakeholders
This WP aimed to translate the scientific work into more relatable information for varied stakeholders and non-expert audiences.
Two important pieces of work were developed.
The first is the drafting of a comment article, to be submitted by summer 2022 - as it is almost final, where we present a vision and a roadmap for streamlined use of pLCI databases development and use by the LCA community more broadly speaking. For this work, a collaboration with researchers from the Institute of Environmental Sciences (CML) of Leiden University and from PSI was established. We hope this comment will spark several fundamental discussions on how scenarios are developed and currently used by the LCA community.
A second piece, in this case an essay, has been published in the Landscape and Urban planning journal in collaboration with postgraduate researchers from the URBAG team (Langemeyer et al. 2021). In this essay we argue that UA deserves stronger consideration in land-use planning as it holds the potential to enhance urban resilience, global sustainability and multifunctionality - as a multifunctional nature-based solution. Considering these three aspects in land-use planning is therefore vital to give UA its true value. This piece is addressed to urban developers and intents to broaden our message to such community. LCA is essential in generating knowledge to understand these three aspects of UA.
Work Package 1: Prospective Life Cycle Assessment (pLCA) of urban agriculture
This WP dealt with the inventory data collection for urban agriculture (UA) alternatives, which included several options and which we narrowed down to one case study to develop the proposal further.
We explore, rooftops and their use for food production including intergrated greenhouse rooftops (iRTGs). These inventories were based on data from ICTA-UABs experimental iRTG.
Further, in collaboration with The Metropolitan Laboratory of Ecology and Territory of Barcelona of the Barcelona Institute of Regional and Metropolitan Studies (LET-IERMB), we develop geographically explicit inventories for peri-urban agriculture production in the Metropolitan Area of Barcelona (AMB).
This was the chosen case to pursue further the research proposal.
Among the results of this WP we list two scientific publication related to the inventories of iRTGs and emissions of peri-urban agriculture i.e. Muñoz-Liesa et al. 2021 and Mendoza Beltran et al. 2022 (both specified in the publications section).
One more scientific publication is under revision. Here we have performed the regionalized LCA of peri-urban agriculture in the AMB, including the regionalized eutrophication impacts.
This study is the baseline necessary to setup the prospective LCA key in PROTEAN, further explore in WP2.
Work package 2: Contribution of UA to sustainable future food production
This WP comprised the integration of Integrated Assessment Model (IAM) scenarios with Life Cycle Inventory (LCI) databases to create prospective LCI (pLCI) databases for pLCAs.
This WP also included the use of such pLCI databases to calculate the selected systems´pLCA i.e. peri-UA production for the AMB.
Regarding the integartion of IAM and LCI data, key work within this WP, included the collaboration with researchers from the Paul Scherrer Institute (PSI) and the integration of the PREMISE tool outputs (Sacchi et al. 2022) within PROTEAN.
PREMISE integrated IMAGE scenarios of transport, cement, steel, fuel, electricity, etc. to develop pLCI databases for ecoinvent. These outputs were further used to calculate the pLCA for the case study in a publication currently under development. This work includes climate scenarios and also circular economy alternatives i.e. phosphorus supply from struvite recovery from wastewater treatment plants within the AMB and compost recovery from organic solid waste treatment. LCIs for these systems were determined within the URBAG project (ERC starting grant of Dr. Gara Villalba) and we are integrating them within PROTEAN.
Finally, under WP2, an additional collaboration with researchers from LIST Luxemburg, yielded an important development in pLCIA in which IMAGE data was integrated to produce future AWARE characterization factors to calculate water use impacts under climate change and baseline conditions (Baustert et al. 2022). This is an important development complementary to the key developments of PROTEAN as not only will the economy change in the future but also the biosphere will change, for instance, unders climate change.
Work package 3: Guidance to stakeholders
This WP aimed to translate the scientific work into more relatable information for varied stakeholders and non-expert audiences.
Two important pieces of work were developed.
The first is the drafting of a comment article, to be submitted by summer 2022 - as it is almost final, where we present a vision and a roadmap for streamlined use of pLCI databases development and use by the LCA community more broadly speaking. For this work, a collaboration with researchers from the Institute of Environmental Sciences (CML) of Leiden University and from PSI was established. We hope this comment will spark several fundamental discussions on how scenarios are developed and currently used by the LCA community.
A second piece, in this case an essay, has been published in the Landscape and Urban planning journal in collaboration with postgraduate researchers from the URBAG team (Langemeyer et al. 2021). In this essay we argue that UA deserves stronger consideration in land-use planning as it holds the potential to enhance urban resilience, global sustainability and multifunctionality - as a multifunctional nature-based solution. Considering these three aspects in land-use planning is therefore vital to give UA its true value. This piece is addressed to urban developers and intents to broaden our message to such community. LCA is essential in generating knowledge to understand these three aspects of UA.
PROTEAN has generated essential knowledge of what the implementation of peri-UA means for global environmental sustainability for the AMB. For instance, we found the carbon footprint, the regionalized eutrophication impacts and the supply chain impacts of the feedstocks used for this local food production, among others.
PROTEAN internalized the more complete generation of pLCI databases by means of IAM scenario data and used them in the assessment of peri-UA for this region.
Eutrophication impacts were regionalized to represent the biophisical conditions of the AMB, showing the important of modelling at a relevant geographic scales.
Also, local-circular supply of nutrients from struvite and compost from WWTP and organic solid waste treatment have been calculated with pLCI databases, leading to environmental footprint estimates of producing such nutrients in the future.
Final work integrating all these developments will show how peri-UA can contribute to a new paradigm of local-circular-sustainable food production within the AMB.
Besides, additional work integrating IAM scenarios within LCIA, is work at the frontline of prospective environmental LCA.
We hope the active collaboration with the LCA community, with urban planners and with the metropolitan area of Barcelona, will lead to broader societal repercussions stired by the project´s findings.
PROTEAN internalized the more complete generation of pLCI databases by means of IAM scenario data and used them in the assessment of peri-UA for this region.
Eutrophication impacts were regionalized to represent the biophisical conditions of the AMB, showing the important of modelling at a relevant geographic scales.
Also, local-circular supply of nutrients from struvite and compost from WWTP and organic solid waste treatment have been calculated with pLCI databases, leading to environmental footprint estimates of producing such nutrients in the future.
Final work integrating all these developments will show how peri-UA can contribute to a new paradigm of local-circular-sustainable food production within the AMB.
Besides, additional work integrating IAM scenarios within LCIA, is work at the frontline of prospective environmental LCA.
We hope the active collaboration with the LCA community, with urban planners and with the metropolitan area of Barcelona, will lead to broader societal repercussions stired by the project´s findings.