Biodiversity impacts of the Peruvian fisheries, strongly influenced by El Niño-Southern Oscillation (ENSO), are not fully covered by current life cycle impact assessment (LCIA) models. While the recently developed Fisheries Impact Pathway (FIP) accounts for the impacts of marine biotic resource depletion, key methodological challenges, such as temporality, critical for impact assessment in dynamic fisheries, remain unattended. In the current study, we aim to develop characterization factors (CFs) for 10 relevant Peruvian fishing stocks, including Peruvian anchoveta, using an enhanced FIP framework. The methodological framework includes 1) optimization of CMSY++ performance using an exhaustive statistical analysis, to provide reliable estimates for subsequent CF calculations; 2) calculation of CF time series under an Exclusive Economic Zone (EEZ) approach; and, 3) statistical evaluation of enhanced CFs comprising typical uncertainty and sensitivity analyses, along with other tests addressing ecological soundness and stock management; and, 4). application of CFs in case studies to quantify biodiversity impacts from fishing for direct and indirect human consumption. Enhanced CFs deviate up to 4 orders of magnitude from previously reported values, usually showing lower values. These CFs also exhibit weak-moderate statistical correlation with typical ENSO indices, with sea level anomalies showing the strongest relationship. Furthermore, case studies framed in the Peruvian EEZ confirm the relevance of the enhanced CFs, unveiling significant differences in fishing impacts of stocks destined to direct human consumption during years with El Niño and La Niña events, and additional LCIA impacts, ranging from 0.1% to 61% in fishmeal and fish oil production among plants of a major producer, during years 2019 and 2021. Together, these findings suggest that addressing temporality is critical to refine LCA results, especially in systems with highly dynamic parameters. The enhanced CF time series more accurately represents stock population dynamics, under fluctuating climatic stressors and management regimes, than the original FIP method. Thus, our method responds to the call of international LCA guidelines for regionalized and temporally explicit impact assessment. We recommend using these CFs to assess biotic resource depletion in Peruvian seafood and aquaculture systems, and extending our methodology to other EEZs affected by similar ecosystem dynamics and fishing pressure.
Manrique-Muñante et al. (Thu,) studied this question.