On the introduction of a community resilience framework to Social Life Cycle Assessment

Paper in proceeding, 2020

SLCA according to the UNEP/SETAC guidelines attempt to measure the social impacts of a product or policy with human well-being as endpoint indicator. However, the methodological sheets do not provide clear and unambiguous definition of what human well-being is and are lacking with regard to a weak capacity to identify reliable indicators to include in both Type I and Type 2 impact assessment. The aim of this article is to explore the chance to introduce ‘community resilience’ (e.g. Magis 2013) as new topic for assessment in the SLCA, compared to human well-being (Soltanpour et al., 2019). The concept of community resilience is investigated via literature to understand how it can be related to ‘human well-being’ expressed in the guidelines and how it can be operationalized for impact assessment. Results will show the possibility of community resilience assessment in SLCA for both Type I and Type 2 assessment.