Desenvolvimento de modelo de caracterização para potenciais impactos através do índice de escassez do recurso florestal madeireiro com base na abordagem funcional (WoodSI)

Abstract

The use of wood forest resources has taken place since prehistory. For society to continue using this indispensable resource, understanding current consumption is fundamental to planning and providing necessary measures to supply its future availability. The LCA tool is robust, scientifically approved and suitable for conducting such research. The progress of methods in the impact category of depletion of biotic resources has had little evolution in recent years and no method was recommended without considerable restrictions, thus, the development of the research in more depth and the construction of a consensus are necessary in this area. The present study aims to develop a characterization model that assesses the potential impacts generated by the loss of the availability of wood forest resources caused by consumption through a functional approach. Based on the model of operationalization for biotic resources proposed by Heijungs et al. (1992) and wood functionality through the substitution index proposed by Lima et al. (2018a) it was developed the characterization model, the wood forest resource scarcity index - WoodSI. The characterization factor considers the consumption, the renewability of the resource, the current stock and also the capacity to substitute the resource in each country in its calculation. WoodSI is a mid-point model and presents three scenarios (less conservative, more conservative, and medium) for practitioner choice. Characterization factors were calculated for 193 countries and about 60% of countries have some level of scarcity and share only 20% of world forest. The functions with the highest level of world shortage were charcoal and wood pulp. In general, countries with a large forests area or high growing rates do not have a scarcity index detected by the method (e.g. Brazil, Russia and Australia), but in countries with high consumption (such as USA, China) or few forests area, some scarcity have already begun to be detected.