Luisa Paolotti

Environmental impact evaluation of conventional, organic and organic-plus poultry production systems using life cycle assessment

The concept of environmental sustainability is crucial for the development of human actions, and it is one of the most important concerns of the European Union that requires attention in all of the economic sectors. In particular, the potential environmental impact of livestock is well known and has been one of the most important constraints on the development of animal breeding in certain areas. The main aim of this paper is to compare the environmental impact of different poultry production systems: conventional, organic and organic-plus. Organic-plus has more restrictive requirements than the organic system for improving animal welfare (i.e., use of slow-growing strains and 10 m2 pasture/bird), and the quality of the product. For environmental evaluation, life cycle assessment (LCA) has been used in this review, which is a method to evaluate the environmental impact of products, activities and services, based on a ‘cradle-to-grave’ approach. This article provides information for improving the environmental impacts in a process of assessing the sustainability that is specific for poultry production. An important recommendation can be drawn from this study: great attention has to be paid to the feed production phase, since it contributes more to the systems than animal rearing does to the environmental impact of the overall system. With reference to the comparison among the systems, our results show that the organic system has the best environmental performance because it not only has the lowest impact values for two of the most important impact categories (i.e., respiratory inorganics and fossil fuels), but it also has the lowest values for most of the remaining categories. LCA provides important data and specific indicators that can be used in a wider process for the analysis of sustainability, and to adapt and improve production systems. Taking into account the entire life cycle, the organic system has shown a better environmental performance than the organic-plus system. On the other hand, the organic-plus system improves animal welfare and meat quality, which are not considered by LCA. Therefore, to reach an equilibrium among all of these factors (namely environment protection, animal welfare and meat quality), it would be necessary to find a production system that conciliates them into one coherent scheme.

Decision Support Systems for environmental management: A case study on wastewater from agriculture

Dealing with spatial decision problems means combining and transforming geographical data (input) into a resultant decision (output), interfacing a Geographical Information System (GIS) with Multi-Criteria Decision Analysis (MCDA) methods. The conventional MCDA approach assumes the spatial homogeneity of alternatives within the case study area, although it is often unrealistic. On the other side, GIS provides excellent data acquisition, storage, manipulation and analysis capabilities, but in the case of a value structure analysis this capability is lower. For these reasons, several studies in the last twenty years have given attention to MCDA-GIS integration and to the development of Spatial Decision Support Systems (SDSS). Hitherto, most of these applications are based only on a formal integration between the two approaches. In this paper, we propose a complete MCDA-GIS integration with a plurality of MCDA methodologies, grouped in a suite. More precisely, we considered an open-source GIS (GRASS GIS 6.4) and a modular package including five MCDA modules based on five different methodologies. The methods included are: ELECTRE I, Fuzzy set, REGIME analysis, Analytic Hierarchy Process and Dominance-based Rough Set Approach. Thanks to the modular nature of the package, it is possible to add new methods without modifying the existing structure. To present the suite, we applied each module to the same case study, making comparisons. The strong points of the MCDA-GIS integration we developed are its open-source setting and the user friendly interface, both thanks to GRASS GIS, and the use of raster data. Moreover, our suite is a genuine case of perfect integration, where the spatial nature of criteria is always present.

Assessing Rural Sustainable Development potentialities using a Dominance-based Rough Set Approach.

Rural Development is a priority in Europe and it is supported by specific, financial programmes. At the same time, sustainability is the key word for the European Union to construct programmes and policies for all human activities. However, measuring sustainability of rural areas is not easy, due to their particular features. The improvement of knowledge on sustainability in rural areas is important to build long term policies and strategies for those territories. The objective of this study is the development of a decision support system based on the Dominance-based Rough Set Approach (DRSA), to assess the level of Rural Sustainable Development in specific areas. We used DRSA to analyze the level of sustainability of the 92 municipalities of the Region of Umbria, Italy. The results were synthesized in a final ranking, taking into account the equilibrium and the integration between development and sustainability of each municipality. DRSA showed a high potential in the context of management or planning, and for supporting Decision Makers. DRSA is able to give a ranking as well as an explanation of the main factors driving sustainable development in rural areas.

Measuring Environmental Sustainability of Intensive Poultry-Rearing System

Sustainability of human activities is one of the most important concerns of the European Union. Consequently, the need to assess the level of sustainability achieved both at local and at government level is increasing. This process involves all economic sectors, including agriculture and, in particular, livestock. Until several years ago livestock production systems were mainly focused on production efficiency and qualitative characteristics of meat. However, nowadays rules regarding animal welfare and environmental impact are becoming more and more compulsory and require attention by all the poultry chain. European subsidies are in many cases linked to an environmentally sound behaviour of farms. However, there is still an ongoing discussion regarding the definition of sustainable-agriculture strategic objectives, the criteria to take into account, the actions to develop, and the methodological tools to use for the evaluation. This chapter provides suggestions for improving the environmental evaluation part of a process of sustainability assessment specific for intensive poultry production. The environmental sustainability of an intensive poultry-rearing system is evaluated through the use of three different methods: Emergy Evaluation, Ecological Footprint Analysis and Life Cycle Assessment (LCA). For each of the three methods a review of its application in agriculture, and specifically in poultry breeding, is presented. Through Emergy Evaluation we found that diet is the most important impact factor for the analysed system, accounting for more than 82% of the total emergy flow. Our results obtained from Ecological Footprint Analysis point out that cropland, which is connected with chicken diet, is the main land component in the indicator, accounting for 73% of the total. Particularly, the high quantity of maize and soya needed for feed requires much cropland. Finally, using LCA, we found that feed production is the element which contributes the most to the environmental impacts of the system, influencing the impact category ‘land use’. As Ecological Footprint, LCA regards the cultivation and the transformation of maize and soya as the processes with the strongest impact. Therefore, although the three methods use specific indicators and methodology, they come to the same conclusions for the system investigated. After applying each method to the poultry system, we propose a comparative analysis between the three methods, based on four different criteria: representativeness, verifiability, reproducibility, comprehensibility. By comparing the methods according to these criteria, we found that each of them shows both positive and negative aspects, strengths and weaknesses, but all of them are effective in representing the environmental features of a given activity, and the results can be used as input in the sustainability assessment process. The choice to use Emergy Evaluation, Ecological Footprint Analysis, or LCA can depend upon the main objective of the assessment process. However, in many cases it is not necessary a choice because the three methods can be used together, and the results can be integrated to build combined indicators, capable to ensure a wide and complete analysis.

A model for measuring the environmental sustainability of events

Like all human activities, events can generate significant pressures on environmental resources, unless they are well-managed and monitored. Therefore, it is becoming more and more important to develop models that can measure their environmental sustainability. Although increasing attention is being paid to this sector, there is currently no standard protocol or method to assess the eco-sustainability of events. This article presents an innovative assessment procedure to measure the environmental sustainability of events. It is based on several indicators, combined by means of a multi-criteria approach and aggregated into a final index, which we called METER (Measuring Events Through Environmental Research). The METER index uses nine major operational categories, divided in sub-categories and detailed items, which cover all the main aspects concerning environmental sustainability of an event and are evaluated for all its phases, i.e. planning, organisation, implementation, post event. The index is fairly analytical, and is thus able to represent the numerous aspects to be taken into consideration in the environmental assessment of an event. At the same time, it is simple to apply and user-friendly, thanks to its graphics and effective communication of the web platform within it is implemented. Moreover, METER is based on a participatory approach using the bottom-up model and on the principle of subsidiarity. All official international documents regarding sustainable development now require subsidiarity. However, it is not being currently applied as part of any certification or with any evaluation tool. Therefore, although the index is still a prototype, it represents an innovation in the field of environmental management. A simple exemplary case is presented, about a European Spring School held at University of Perugia (Italy) in 2014, in which the application of METER showed a sustainability assessment score of 638 points out of 1000, with an excellent management of waste, catering, internal travel and participation aspects.

DISSESTO SUPERFICIALE E GESTIONE AGRICOLA DEL SUOLO: UN’APPLICAZIONE DEI ROUGH SETS BASATI SULLA DOMINANZA

La difesa del territorio dai fenomeni di dissesto idrogeologico e un tema molto sentito e attuale sia a livello nazionale che internazionale. Ogni anno tali fenomeni provocano a livello mondiale enormi danni non solo ambientali ma anche sociali ed economici. L’attivita antropica, soprattutto in relazione alla modifica dell’uso del suolo e all’intensificazione dell’agricoltura, e fra i principali fattori che incidono sulla stabilita dei suoli. Per una gestione adeguata del territorio in termini di prevenzione e controllo del dissesto idrogeologico, e fondamentale l’uso di strumenti in grado di conciliare il supporto al decisore pubblico con l’analisi territoriale. Lo scopo del presente lavoro e quello di illustrare l’utilizzo dell’integrazione tra Geographic Information Systems (GIS) e analisi multicriteri (MCDA) per un caso di dissesto superficiale relativo al bacino del Menotre in Umbria, proponendo in particolare il Dominance based Rough Set Approach, sviluppato in GRASS GIS 6. Parole chiave: dissesto idrogeologico, DRSA, integrazione MCDA-GIS