PhD Position Integrating Feedback Dynamics into Life Cycle Assessment

Back to jobs listing

INRAE presentation

The French National Research Institute for Agriculture, Food, and Environment (INRAE) is a major player in research and innovation. It is a community of 12,000 people with 272 research, experimental research, and support units located in 18 regional centres throughout France. Internationally, INRAE is among the top research organisations in the agricultural and food sciences, plant and animal sciences, as well as in ecology and environmental science. It is the world’s leading research organisation specialising in agriculture, food and the environment. INRAE’s goal is to be a key player in the transitions necessary to address major global challenges. Faced with a growing world population, climate change, resource scarcity, and declining biodiversity, the Institute has a major role to play in building solutions and supporting the necessary acceleration of agricultural, food and environmental transitions.

CONTEXT

The BIOCaP-LCA1 project aims to advance consequential Life Cycle Assessment (LCA) methods to evaluate the environmental impacts of bioeconomy deployment scenarios at the scale of France. While LCA is widely used to assess products or compare technologies, it has limitations when applied to large-scale, long-term transitions that involve complex socio-economic and biophysical dynamics. The project focuses on some key challenges specific to the bioeconomy, including accounting for land use and land-use change (LULUC), impacts on climate and biodiversity, and feedback loops between natural systems (the ecosphere) and human systems (the technosphere), which are not well captured in traditional LCA. To address these issues, BIOCaP-LCA proposes an innovative approach that combines LCA with biophysical and socio-economic models in a dynamic and forward-looking framework. 

The project is funding three PhD theses that will lead to methodological advances in these research areas, including the PhD thesis described in this offer.

Work environment, missions and activities

The PhD student will be hosted within the ITAP research unit located on La Gaillarde campus (about a 10-minute bike ride from the city centre and the train station). Within ITAP, you will join the ELSA research team composed of researchers and engineers specialized in advanced LCA modelling.

The student will be co-supervised by Dr. Pierre Jouannais (INRAE) and Dr. Eléonore Loiseau (INRAE), both of whom have extensive expertise in LCA, particularly in CLCA and in coupling LCA with other modelling approaches.

Historically, LCA has relied on a strict division between the technosphere (human production systems) and the ecosphere (natural systems). Within this framework, LCA primarily quantifies the impacts of the former on the latter. However, this one-directional perspective constrains its ability to represent feedback mechanisms whereby environmental changes influence human systems in return.

Such limitations have been increasingly highlighted in the literature, particularly within Consequential LCA (CLCA), where the emphasis on causality calls for modelling approaches that transcend this rigid boundary. In reality, environmental and socio-economic systems are deeply interdependent. For instance, emissions of fine particulate matter can deteriorate human health, increasing demand for healthcare services, which in turn generates additional emissions—creating reinforcing feedback loops. Despite their importance, such dynamics remain largely absent from current LCA practice.

This PhD work aims at tackling this absence by exploring the coupling of LCA with System Dynamics, a modelling approach which is particularly suited for dynamic feedback modelling. Rather than attempting a simple integration of the two frameworks, the project will leverage the causal and temporal structure of SD to explicitly identify, formalize, and analyze feedback loops linking emissions, environmental impacts, and product demand.

The PhD thesis consists in an interdisciplinary and explorative modelling work whose main challenges will be:

• Navigating the modelling interdisciplinarity
• Select, build and study relevant environmental feedback loops
• Extract relevant indicators from SD feedback loops to integrate into LCA
• Assess the substantial uncertainty inherent to the SD framework and to prospective modelling

1.  https://doi.org/10.1007/978-94-015-9900-9
2. https://doi.org/10.1007/s11367-017-1398-4
3. https://doi.org/10.2307/3010125

The empirical focus will be on the bioeconomy, where feedback mechanisms are particularly pronounced. Agricultural and biomass-based systems both depend on and alter ecological processes, including biodiversity dynamics, water cycles, air pollution, and human health. These tightly coupled interactions make the bioeconomy a critical domain for advancing feedback-aware assessment methods.

At a time when human activities increasingly destabilise the environmental systems that underpin societal well-being, this PhD thesis offers an opportunity to push the methodological frontier of sustainability assessment. By enabling LCA to capture environmental feedbacks, the research aims to support more robust, forward-looking, and scientifically grounded decision-making, and to better anticipate risks of systemic environmental degradation.

 

Training and skills

We are seeking a curious and proactive student with a strong inclination toward systems thinking, and holding a Master’s degree (M2).

Experience in quantitative environmental modelling is required, whether in System Dynamics or LCA. While expertise in both is not expected, a clear interest in bridging these two approaches is important. Solid mathematical skills are valued, particularly familiarity with differential equations, which underpin System Dynamics.

Candidates must have excellent English writing and communication skills.

INRAE's life quality

By joining our teams, you benefit from (depending on the type of contract and its duration):

- up to 30 days of annual leave + 15 days "Reduction of Working Time" (for a full time);
- parenting support: CESU childcare, leisure services;
- skills development systems: training, career advise;
- social support: advice and listening, social assistance and loans;
- holiday and leisure services: holiday vouchers, accommodation at preferential rates;
- sports and cultural activities;
- collective catering.

How to apply

I send my CV and my motivation letter