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Short abstract:

The European PEF methodology, rooted in Life Cycle Assessment (LCA), serves as a framework to quantify environmental impact. Figures produced for scoring food's impacts spurred a counter-calculation framework (PlanetScore). The paper unpacks the political and epistemological debates it created.

Long abstract:

A European methodology (PEF*) and a French tool (EcoBalyse) were developed to quantify food's environmental impact. The need to convert the concept of environmental impact into quantifiable figures arose from the 'Green Claims' regulation of the European Commission and the 'Affichage Environnemental' project of the French government, aimed at addressing the greenwashing dilemma. While demonstrating fraud in qualitative claims can be challenging, numerical data provides objective insights.

The data generated and made publicly available during the French regulatory experimentation (Affichage Environnemental) in 2021 has raised societal concerns. Questions have been raised as to why the scores suggest intensification as the optimal method for reducing environmental impacts and why organic farming appears to have a bigger impact on ecosystems than conventional farming. The Life Cycle Analysis framework used to develop the institutionnal methodology is contested.

In response, a counter-analysis utilizing another conceptual framework, datas and calculation process, known as PlanetScore, has been developed during the experimentation. This approach has garnered support from environmental and consumer associations, as well as agricultural technical institutes. By challenging the institutional proposition (PEF-EcoBalyse), this alternative proposal reintroduces political and epistemological considerations into the public discourse on environmental impact assessment.

As coordinator of the CESIAe*, created in 2023 to produce an independent expertise on the methodological issues, I am both an observer and part of the pluralization of expertise on this topic. I propose to retrace the origin of the dispute, its trajectory and its content.

*Product Environmental Footprint

*Interdisciplinary Scientific Expert Group on Sustainability Scoring