Elsevier

Journal of Cleaner Production

Volume 366, 15 September 2022, 132862
Journal of Cleaner Production

Water supply scenarios of agricultural areas: Environmental performance through Territorial Life Cycle Assessment

https://doi.org/10.1016/j.jclepro.2022.132862Get rights and content

Highlights

  • Territorial LCA is used to assess various development scenarios for irrigated areas.

  • Comparison of scenarios is based on eco-efficiency ratios.

  • The water-energy-infrastructure nexus points out trade-offs between infrastructures.

  • Conditions under which the water-transfer scenario performs better are discussed.

  • The T-LCA framework successfully manages territorial multifunctionality.

Abstract

This paper aims to assess the conditions under which hydraulic projects can be considered as an efficient option, from an environmental point of view, to secure water supply of agricultural areas using the Territorial Life Cycle Assessment (T-LCA) methodology. Firstly, the environmental performance of three theoretical agricultural land-use planning scenarios are defined: (1) a business-as-usual case without irrigation, (2) irrigation with an Inter-Basin Water Transfer (IBWT) and (3) with an Agricultural Reservoir (AR). These are all assessed by computing the territorial eco-efficiency (i.e. a ratio between the services provided by land planning scenarios and their related environmental impacts). Secondly, Territorial Life Cycle Assessment methodology was used to assess the water-energy-infrastructure nexus between the two hydraulic projects. Results indicate that the eco-efficiencies of the scenarios vary according to the service considered and to the type of land use. For land management or economic functions, the scenario without irrigation can perform better, while hydraulic projects are more eco-efficient for functions related to biomass production. The analysis of the water-energy-infrastructure nexus highlights the trade-offs between the two types of project. On one hand, IBWT allows for the use of a low-stress water resource and less energy, but may require high material consumption. On the other hand, AR uses less material while relying on a more scarce water resource. IBWT performs better than AR if the pipe length is less than 100 km, with a water allocation of 1% (proportion of the infrastructure allocated to the considered agriculture area). This study underlines the importance of considering the territorial context in the environmental assessment of land planning projects in order to support decision-making.

Introduction

Agriculture is essential for humanity to meet its food requirements and employs more than a quarter of the world's population (The World Bank, 2021). However, it generates multiple impacts on the environment. Agricultural practices and soil occupation release between 15% and 24% of global greenhouse gas (GHG) emissions (Vermeulen et al., 2012). On one hand, agriculture is by far the primary consumer of water in the world, reaching 70%–80% of the total consumption in the arid and semi-arid zones (Fereres and Rabanales, 2007), and is one of the main drivers of biodiversity loss, ecosystem destruction and freshwater pollution (Rockström et al., 2020). On the other hand, agriculture faces challenges posed by worldwide issues such as climate change. This global change is expected to induce rises in temperature and atmospheric carbon dioxide (CO2) concentrations, precipitation changes, more frequent occurrences of pests and diseases and of extreme heat and drought, which in turn should affect crop yields and nutritional quality (Lobell and Gourdji, 2012). Hence, due to the global changes induced by human activity and a growing world population, food security is becoming one of the challenges of the coming century and adaptation solutions must be found (Vermeulen et al., 2012).

Irrigation contributes to increasing agricultural yields in dryland areas and is one of the main adaptation strategies implemented for agriculture in the face of climate change, as it makes it possible to secure production yields in the face of increasing drought and temperature (Mbow et al., 2019). Large-scale planning projects can be implemented to secure the water supply of agricultural territories such as water transfers (Piao et al., 2010) or reservoirs (Gorguner and Kavvas, 2020).

These hydraulic infrastructures have a long lifetime, lasting around 50 years (Raluy et al., 2005b). Therefore an ex ante environmental assessment is required to support local decision-making as well as assist territorial planners for the selection of the least impactful alternative for the environment. Indeed, territorial planners require a help-to-decision tool in order to take decisions without regretting the construction of long-lasting infrastructures that present high economical costs and environmental impacts. This assessment should take into account multiple categories of environmental impacts and a lifecycle perspective to avoid pollution transfers within the water-energy nexus (Sharif et al., 2019). Life Cycle Assessment (LCA) is a well-established and recognized methodology to be applied for quantifying the environmental performance of products and services (ISO, 2006a; 2006b). It is a multi-criteria environmental impact assessment method used to quantify the potential impacts of the life cycles of human activities on ecosystems, mineral and fossil resources as well as on human health.

Several studies have used LCA to compare the environmental impact of a variety of hydraulic structures (Byrne et al., 2017) such as water transfers (Muñoz et al., 2010), reservoirs (Ghimire et al., 2014), groundwater pumping (Pradeleix et al., 2015), water reuse (Maeseele and Roux, 2021) and desalinization plants (Raluy et al., 2005a). However, these studies calculate impacts for a functional unit of 1 m3 of water delivered to the end-user. The boundaries stop at the water supply gate. Therefore, they do not grasp the entire range of services provided by irrigation, such as the territorial socio-economic benefits resulting from agricultural yield conservation. These limitations are inherent of the LCA framework which is a product oriented method at a microscale and do not allow for the full integration of the territorial context, and multifunctionality (Loiseau et al., 2018). The choice of water source as well as the functional unit for water supply systems have been found to greatly contribute to the variability of the water supply impacts (Hospido et al., 2012). Moreover, the impacts of hydraulic infrastructures vary according to certain physical parameters such as lifetimes or length of the infrastructures, annual quantity of water supplied and energy consumption (Raluy et al., 2005b). Consequently, it is also paramount to consider the variability in the design of the hydraulic infrastructure parameters in order to select a specific land planning of water supply.

These limitations can be overcome by using Territorial LCA (T-LCA), an adaptation of the conventional LCA framework, to assess the performance of a territory at a mesoscale and an associated land planning scenario while considering its multifunctionality (e.g. economic, social or environmental land use functions) (Loiseau et al., 2013). Compared to a conventional LCA, the starting point of territorial LCA is no longer the definition of a main function for the studied systems, but the definition of the boundaries of a territory, and associated planning scenarios. Subsequently, two types of indicators must be quantified for each of these scenarios, i.e. environmental impacts and a set of services provided. These indicators are then used to compute eco-efficiency ratios. These have been defined by (Seppälä et al., 2005) as the ratio between services provided by the territory and its environmental impacts. These ratios can help compare the environmental performances of different agricultural scenarios such as in dairy farms (Iribarren et al., 2011) and vineyard irrigation (Canaj et al., 2021). Eco-efficiency allows for a trade-off to be identified between economy and environment to achieve a certain level in the environmental performance of a society (Huppes and Ishikawa, 2005).

A few studies have presently implemented territorial LCA approaches on agricultural areas to support decision-making in the design of land planning scenarios for example in the French Brittany region (Avadí et al., 2016) and Aube department (Borghino et al., 2021) or in the Walloon region of Belgium (Ding et al., 2020). However, none of them have compared the impacts of planning scenarios that integrate the hydraulic infrastructures.

From an environmental point of view, the main objective of this study is to assess the conditions under which hydraulic projects can be selected as an efficient option for securing the water supply of agricultural areas. This can be performed thanks to territorial LCA methodology. Generic conclusions are drawn from a theoretical case study, located in the South of France. The case study is a theoretical agricultural perimeter of 700 ha (size of a small municipality), where water resources ought to become a challenging issue for agriculture within the coming next decades due to climate change (Giorgi and Lionello, 2008). Three main planning alternatives (described in detail in section 2.1.2) will be compared based on a combination of crops and on the implementation or not of hydraulic infrastructures. The latter rely on the use of surface water resources, distinguishing two types of sources, and their dedicated infrastructure, i.e. a local resource consisting of storm water run-off stored in an Agricultural Reservoir (AR), and an imported resource taken directly from a river through an Inter-Basin Water Transfer (IBWT). These water projects have long lifetimes, and local planners and decision-makers need to identify the “no regret” scenarios. This study also addresses the water-energy-infrastructure nexus, and discusses the design conditions under which hydraulic projects can be considered, from an environmental point of view, as viable options for securing agricultural territories.

Section snippets

Material and methods

The general methodology adopted in this study follows the territorial LCA approach, and is described according to the four main LCA stages, i.e. (i) goal and scope definition, (ii) life cycle inventory (LCI), (iii) impact assessment, and (iv) results interpretation.

Results

In this section, the results of the study are presented according to the three main objectives defined in Table 1.

Supporting decision making

This paper proposes a novel approach for defining the conditions under which the environmental performances of a hydraulic project varies higher or lower than another type of project, while taking into account biophysical constraints. The tipping lines that were computed according to the main parameters of the designed inter-basin transfer illustrate that the impacts of this type of project can vary both higher or lower than the impacts of a project based on a local water resource such as an

Conclusion

This study aimed to assess, from an environmental point of view, the conditions under which hydraulic projects can be considered as an efficient option in order to secure the water supply of agricultural areas. However, as the different scenarios do not provide the same range of services, it is impossible to perform conventional LCA for comparison purposes on the basis of the same functional unit. The present paper demonstrates the feasibility and relevance of the territorial LCA approach as

Associated contents

The S.I. contains the LCI data set for PGI and CDO grapevines as well as all the crops yields, information about the different civil engineering operations necessary for the construction of the hydraulic infrastructure as well as a condensed LCI dataset for them. The S.I. also contains the water balance and energy consumption related calculations as well as the equations and curves supporting section 3.3.

CRediT authorship contribution statement

Nicolas Rogy: Conceptualization, Methodology, Investigation, and, Writing – original draft. Philippe Roux: Conceptualization, Methodology, Investigation, and, Writing – review & editing. Thibault Salou: Conceptualization, Methodology, Investigation, and, Writing – review & editing. Charlotte Pradinaud: Conceptualization, Methodology, Investigation, and, Writing – review & editing. Agata Sferratore: Conceptualization, Methodology, Investigation, and, Writing – review & editing. Nicolas Géhéniau:

Declaration of competing interest

Nicolas Rogy reports financial support was provided by Occitanie Region. Nicolas Rogy reports financial support was provided by ELSA-PACT industrial chair. Nicolas Géhéniau reports a relationship with BRL Ingénierie that includes: employment and funding grants. Agata Sferratore reports a relationship with Societe du Canal de Provence et d’Amenagement de la Region Provencale that includes: employment and funding grants.

Acknowledgments

The authors are members of the ELSA research group (Environmental Life Cycle and Sustainability Assessment, http://www.elsa-lca.org/) and thank all ELSA members for their advice. This work was financed by the Occitanie Region, and the industrial partners (BRL, SCP, SUEZ, GRDF, Bonduelle and Ecofilae) of the Industrial Chair for Environmental and Social Sustainability Assessment “ELSA-PACT”. The authors also acknowledge Joséphine Ras for the English proofreading as well as artists from the

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