Section: New Results

Environmental pressures associated with material flows

This work is the follow-up of a previous study dedicated to material flow analysis of the French cereal supply chain at various spatial levels [12] . The goal was twofold:

• trace the flows to their initial geographic origin or final destination,

• couple material flows with a series of environmental pressures associated to them.

For the first goal, we used an Absorbing Markov Chains model where transient states represent raw or semi-products and absorbing states correspond to final consumption products. For the second goal, we used pressure ratios for environmental pressures most relevant to cereals, namely energy use, GHG emissions, land use, use of pesticides and blue water footprint. The model is based on physical supply and use tables and distinguishes between 21 industries, 22 products, 38 regions of various spatial resolution (22 French regions, 10 countries, 6 continents) and 4 modes of transport. Illustrative examples were taken in order to demonstrate the versatility of the results produced, for instance: What is the fate/supply area of a region's production/consumption? What are the production and consumption footprint of a region? These results are designed to be a first step towards scenario analysis for decision-aiding that would also include socioeconomic indicators [13]