Authors
Ko, Nathanael
Abstract
The environmental impact and financial gain resulting from a global value chain of a product areoften distributed unequally amongst the participating countries of the value chain. The question „How to make this unequal distribution visible?“ serves as the guiding question of this paper. This question is discussed based on three major ingredients: life cycle assessment, added value and distributive justice. The life cycle assessment (LCA) can calculate the environmental impacts over the value chain of products. With a hierarchic LCA-model it is possible to calculate country specific environmental impacts for an entire product, individual life cycle phases or even individual components.The added value in Euro can be calculated based on the LCA of a product. The basis for this calculation can be found in the LCWE-method, which assesses social impacts of a product. Distributive justice is split further into three aspects: ability, responsibility as emitting party (direct responsibility), responsibility of the beneficiary (indirect responsibility). Three indicators are assigned to the three aspects. The ability of each country is represented by the inequality-adjusted human development index (IHDI). The responsibility as emitting party is quantified through the results generated in the LCA. The added value represents the responsibility of the beneficiary. These three indicators are combined to form two new indicators, which can indicate the unequal distribution within a value chain. The two indicators are defined as the weighted environmental intensity and the weighted environmental added value