Many of LCIA methods for assessing environmental impacts caused by resource consumption have been proposed since early 1990s, but there are few consensus internationally. One of the reasons of this insufficiency is that there are very few research paying attention to the impact on ecosystem caused by resource mining, although a huge amount of ecosystem were lost by land use change. This article surveyed current status of LCIA studies of resource consumption and introduced a method evaluating damage on ecosystem caused by resource mining. The calculation procedure and example of damage factor are also explained. Damage factor, an output of LIME2 enables LCA practitioners to apply this to case studies measuring potential damage on biodiversity. Several advanced companies have already attempted this and published their calculated results to validate their environmental performances.
Finally, the authors surveyed current situation and raised problems in LCIA method for resource consumption. Establishment of assessment method of environmental impacts on ecosystem and human health caused by unexpected leakage of overburden and mining tailing and development of method measuring social impacts of resource mining in developing countries are required.