Skip to main content

SCP Hotspot Analysis Tool

  • Published on January 10, 2019
The SCP Hotspot Analysis Tool is a methodology and an online application aimed at supporting countries in the design of science-based national strategies on sustainble consumption and production.
The SCP HAT is based on a unique methodology which combines in a single framework national environmental and social data (i.e. territorial accounts) with trade information for the estimation of supply-wide environmental pressure and impact indicators (i.e. footprints). Domestic data on pressures (e.g. material extraction) and impacts (e.g. deforestation) expressed in physical units (also called 'satellite accounts') are linked to monetary data on transactions among economic sectors and final consumers of different countries. This approach allows tracing all the pressures and impacts occurring at the different stages of even very complex supply chains and allocating them to the country of final consumption, or sectoral production. This is used to identify hotspots of unsustainable consumption and production. Based on this methodology, an online application, accessible by all, has been developed, which provides key data and approaches to analyze consumption and production hotspots within national economies, taking into accoung global value chains. Hotspots can be identified through several angles, including decoupling trends at national level and comparision with other countries or regions, sectoral impacts, trade information. The online application has three modules: a "country profile" module, which provides key information on a country's performance in the context of SCP-related policy areas (material use, GHG emissions and climate change, air pollution and land use); a hotspot analysis module which looks more closely at country performance, as well as sectoral performance within one given economy and trade, and a third module which provides countries with the possibility to input national data into the system for even more accurate results. The project is the result of a very fruitful and the first of its kind collaboration between the 10YFP Secretariat, the Life Cycle Initiative and the International Resource Panel, which resulted into the development of a concrete scientific approach and tool to assist countries in making strategic decisions.

External source(s)

You might also be Interested in