10/01/2025
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Life Cycle Assessment (LCA) is now the benchmark method for evaluating the potential environmental and social impacts of a product, a company, or a territory. It considers the entire life cycle and applies a multi-criteria approach.
Coupling LCA with the planetary boundaries framework changes the scale of decision-making. It moves beyond comparing one product or system against another, and instead asks whether the impacts generated remain sustainable in light of planetary boundaries.
To date, LCA has been applied mainly at product level: it enables comparison between an alternative and an existing or competing equivalent. This relative approach is useful, but it does not account for volumes or absolute thresholds that must be respected. As a result, it cannot confirm whether a product or service is truly sustainable. And too often, the answer is no.
For around 10,000 years, during the Holocene, Earth experienced climatic and ecological stability that enabled human societies to thrive. Since the Industrial Revolution, however, human activities have exerted growing pressure on natural systems, with the risk of irreversible disruption.
Fossil fuels and intensive agriculture are among the main drivers. They can profoundly disrupt the regulatory systems on which the planet’s equilibrium depends – an equilibrium that the Holocene should have preserved for thousands more years.
In response, researchers at the Stockholm Resilience Centre proposed the planetary boundaries framework in 2009. It defines nine major ecological processes and the thresholds that must not be crossed if Earth is to remain in a safe operating space for humanity:
Of these processes, climate change and biodiversity loss are considered the most critical, as each alone could destabilise the Earth system.
Figure 1: change in average global temperature over the past 100,000 years (Source: Planetary Boundaries: Exploring the Safe Operating Space for Humanity – Rockström et al., 2009)
Figure 2: presentation of the nine key ecological processes for France (updated 2023) – Source: CGDD
Today, seven of the nine planetary boundaries have already been crossed, the most recent being ocean acidification (September 2025).
Each boundary is associated with one or more control variables and a threshold value. Exceeding these thresholds can trigger abrupt system shifts, with severe consequences for humanity.
The planetary boundaries framework has now become a global compass for evaluating the sustainability of human activities.
It has also inspired other approaches, such as Kate Raworth’s Doughnut Economics (2012), which adds a social dimension: ensuring a social foundation while respecting the ecological ceiling.
Figure 3: representation of the Doughnut – Raworth K., 2012
The aim is to remain within the Doughnut’s safe and just space for humanity – between the social foundation and the ecological ceiling set by planetary boundaries.
LCA evaluates impacts. Planetary boundaries define what Earth can sustain. Combining the two leads to Absolute Environmental Sustainability Assessment (AESA).
Two main approaches exist for AESA:
This downscaling requires allocation rules: what share of the global ecological budget can be assigned to a sector, an activity, or a product?
Since 2015, several hundred scientific publications have explored this issue. In 2024, a global review summarised the state of research and highlighted the potential of LCA planetary boundaries to guide global governance and corporate strategy.
In short, this approach reframes sustainability assessment: no longer simply local or comparative, but within the collective framework of planetary boundaries. Integrating planetary boundaries into LCA also helps avoid overly narrow perspectives (e.g. focusing solely on climate) and ensures interconnected environmental challenges are addressed together.
LCA planetary boundaries can be combined with other methods and concepts:
Sufficiency and business models: rethinking the volume of physical flows and the sobriety of economic models is now essential to stay within limits.
France example
In 2023, France’s carbon footprint stood at 644 MtCO₂e, or 9.4 tCO₂e per capita (including imports). According to Bjørn et al. (2015), the sustainable threshold is around 985 kgCO₂e per person per year.
This means the average carbon footprint would need to be cut by nearly a factor of ten to stay within the climate boundary.
This threshold is open to debate, as Bjørn’s approach is egalitarian: each human being would have the same carbon budget, despite stark inequalities in living standards and development.
Digital scale
Producing and using a standard smartphone generates around 55 kgCO₂e across its life cycle.
In a digital sufficiency scenario, the carbon budget allocated to digital activities should represent 5–8% of the annual total, i.e. about 65 kgCO₂e per person (bearing in mind that the overall per capita threshold is 985 kgCO₂e).
A smartphone kept for two years equates to 27.5 kgCO₂e per year – already nearly half of the annual digital carbon budget.
Coupling LCA with planetary boundaries opens the way to more demanding and equitable assessments. It places human activities within a global framework of sustainability and clarifies the choices to be made – whether at the level of a product, a company, or a territory.
Mike Nunes, LCA and eco-design project manager at EVEA
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