Life-Cycle Cost Analysis of Infrastructure Projects - Governing the Nexus: Water, Soil and Waste Resources Considering Global Change - page 118

sectors are resulting in strident constraints on basic amenities like water, sanitation
and power. And they are directly affecting food security in developing countries,
especially vulnerable regions like rain fed areas. The linkages between unsustain-
able resource use patterns and the sustainability of basic amenities and food security
are only vaguely understood at the policy level. At the same time, unsustainable
service delivery of basic amenities and unstable food security are putting pressure
on policy makers to improve services and promote sustainable resource use pattern.
Hither to, policy reactions to the problems have been in the nature of managing the
problems in the short run rather than solving the problems in the end. This requires
a systematic and scienti

c approach with judicious planning.
The development experience so far has been that issues or problems are taken up
or solved in isolation. Given the inter-connectedness of different sectors or sub-
sectors within a particular sector, there is need for a systems approach. In most
developing countries, there are no guidelines for project appraisal. In fact, in the
case of public infrastructure projects, project appraisals are hardly carried out,
though ex-post evaluations are most common. Over the last decade or so envi-
ronmental impact assessments are being made mandatory in large scale projects
(public as well as private) like irrigation, mining, power, etc. Of late, environmental
or natural resource impacts

find a place in ex-post evaluation of public funded
projects like watershed development, but they are not comprehensive enough to
incorporate environmental sustainability issues. One reason is that there are no
guidelines on how to go about environmental impact assessments, though they are
mandatory for getting approvals. As a result, environmental impact assessments are
carried out as a formality rather than to achieve any objective(s) (say sustainable
development).
The result is that the appraisals or evaluations remain partial in terms of
addressing the inter-connected issues and keep shifting the problem from one sector
to another. As revealed in this review, LCA is one of the most comprehensive tools
used to assess the environmental impacts of a product or service. LCA can be used
to compare different technologies not only on their financial or economic merits, but

also on their impacts on environment or natural resources. Combining economic
and environmental impacts provide the net returns to the technology. This provides
the basis for selecting sustainable technologies/products/services. Besides, it is
shown that adoption of LCA is also capable of ensuring sustainable services and
food security. This could be achieved not only due to the inter-linkages between
basic services and natural environment, but also due to its approach to cost analysis.
The merits of LCA in addressing environmental impacts are well recognized at
the international level. Following the UN life cycle thinking initiative, number of
European countries has initiated policy commitments to adopt LCA (Finnveden
et al. 2009 ). Its adoption in developing countries is yet to take shape. Apart from
low priority for environment at the policy level, awareness about LCA itself is very
limited. The adoption of LCA in the private sector is also quite low in the absence
of any policy guidance or regulations. At the same time, there is increasing
awareness about the environment among consumers though demand for such goods
and services are limited due to high environmental premiums (organic foods).