Assessing WELBY Social Life Cycle Assessment Approach through Cobalt Mining Case Study

The interconnected nature of social, environmental, and economic sustainability aspects must be considered in decision-making to achieve strong sustainability. Social life cycle assessment (S-LCA) has been developed to better include social sustainability aspects into life cycle thinking. However, many of the current S-LCA impact assessment approaches have been developed only on a theoretical level, and thus more case studies are needed. We assess the challenges and opportunities of the S-LCA approach through a case study on cobalt mining in the Democratic Republic of the Congo. Data for the case study were collected from scientific literature, reports, newspaper articles, and interview material. The applicability and possible strengths and weaknesses of the WELBY approach for the case were interpreted. The results showed that applying the WELBY approach in practice is possible, even though there is a lack of existing case studies. However, there are several challenges that must be addressed before the approach can be more widely used. The main challenge with the WELBY approach is the overestimation of impacts when adding multiple impact categories, as is recommended in the S-LCA guidelines. More case-specific severity weights should be developed to address this challenge. Moreover, the interpretation of the results from the perspective of informal work should be executed carefully. Even though the WELBY approach is promising, more methodological development is still needed to build a more ethical and reliable S-LCA methodology.