Why and how should LCA be applied to humanitarian aid, despite the urgency and constraints in the field?
Perrine Sebastien and Carolina Szablewski
Humanitarian aid saves lives, but it also generates environmental impacts that are often invisible: long-distance supply chains, single-use packaging, and unmanaged waste.
Within the framework of the European project Bio4HUMAN, a Life Cycle Assessment (LCA) was conducted to identify hotspots and evaluate the relevance of introducing bio-based and biodegradable products in the DRC and South Sudan. This article explains what makes humanitarian LCA specific, the key insights it provides, and how these results can be effectively communicated and accepted in the field.
How does humanitarian aid LCA differ from LCA in other sectors?
A sector under extreme constraints
Urgency, large volumes, limited budgets, unstable contexts: in humanitarian aid, environmental concerns often come after the immediate response to critical needs. Yet, the accumulation of waste, open-air incineration, or the dispersion of plastics can generate health, social, and environmental impacts.
Supply and end-of-life: the hotspots
The LCA shows that two stages of the life cycle account for the majority of the impacts:
- Procurement of aid items, which often involves long-distance transportation and complex su
- End-of-life, often uncontrolled, dependent on local capacities and existing practices (waste dispersion in the environment or open-air burning).
Unlike other sectors, the life cycle of humanitarian aid is characterized by the diversity of actors involved as well as its rooting in the local community. This makes a cradle-to-grave LCA approach essential, incorporating a geographical analysis.
Bio4HUMAN: applying LCA to real humanitarian contexts
The Bio4HUMAN project overview
Bio4HUMAN is a European project aimed at identifying, developing, and deploying innovative bio-based solutions adapted to humanitarian contexts and closely linked to field realities. The project focuses on two humanitarian zones in Africa: South Sudan and the Democratic Republic of the Congo (DRC). To achieve this, Bio4HUMAN adopts a collaborative approach and brings together humanitarian organizations, actors from the bio-based sector, and circular economy experts.
As a project partner, WeLOOP conducted the LCA of four types of humanitarian aid kits (food, agriculture, non-food items “NFI,” and hygiene “WASH”), comparing bio-based items with their conventional counterparts.
Which items and end-of-life solutions were analyzed?
Packaging
Mosquito nets
Single-use or reusable sanitary pads
Biowaste treatments (composting, anaerobic digestion, bioconversion by black soldier fly)
Key results to remember
The bio-based components do not drastically reduce environmental impacts during the production phase.
Their main benefit lies in the reduction of end-of-life impacts thanks to biodegradability, particularly in conte
The durability and repairability of items would provide a strong leverage for reducing upstream impacts.
The end-of-life solutions studied show low environmental impacts (compared to the current end-of-life scenario, mainly landfill and open-air burning).
The valorization of biowaste at end-of-life (co-production of biogas, fertilizer, or animal feed) offers significant environmental and economic benefits.
How to get the recommendations accepted and implemented?
Raising public awareness
To share our findings and bring the study to fruition, the Bio4HUMAN consortium organized a series of 3 webinars for humanitarian aid actors in the DRC, led by WeLOOP. (See Resources – Bio4HUMAN)
The aim of this webinar series is to:
The attendees, some of whom were national coordinators and project managers working in the field, participated enthusiastically in the discussions, aware of the impact of environmental disruptions on their activities and vice versa. Their feedback allowed for a deeper understanding of the observations and conclusions of the Bio4HUMAN project.
The key challenge: communicating clearly without over-simplifying, and implementing in a way adapted to operational realities!
Dissemination to political institutions
To facilitate the sustainable integration of realistic environmental criteria within the humanitarian sector and overcome structural barriers, European institutions, donors, and local authorities play a central role.
The project's final deliverable (not yet submitted) presents a roadmap for policymakers to support replicability.
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