While "climate change" has become a buzzword in the past two decades, it is not the only phenomenon that concerns human and biodiversity survival. Scientists and environmentalists have been raising concerns about many environmental issues that are directly or indirectly interlinked and have a significant impact on the survival of all living beings currently inhabiting the planet. We will take a look at some of the concerns.

1. Global warming

The planet's warming in the interglacial phase is not surprising. Earth periodically undergoes ice-age and interglacial stages, where it cools down and warms up. During the interglacial stage, the warming up of the planet helps support live forms and makes the earth habitable. Issues the world has been encountering for the past 100 years, increasingly for the past three decades, are due to the Anthropocene's impact on the ever-changing climate. Recent unprecedented rainfall leading to flooding in 73 districts in Pakistan in August-September 2022, in Bengaluru in India in September 2022, and in Bangladesh, while prolonged drought in East Africa has left many countries on the brink of famine, are all attributed to climate change by climate scientists.

2. Water Crisis

The earth's hydrological cycle ensures water is an infinite source covering more than 70% of the world; however, only 3% of it is fresh water for humans and terrestrial animals and plants. More than two third of freshwater is trapped in frozen form in glaciers, making water a finite source. Changes in the microclimatic conditions induced by rapid climate change along with global climate change and changes in land use - land cover have altered the water table dynamism in the past 100 years. According to UNICEF, 4 billion people are victims of severe water scarcity for at least one month yearly, and more than 2 billion people reside in inadequate water countries. The situation is predicted to worsen by 2030 when more than 700 million people are estimated to be displaced due to water scarcity. In India, water scarcity is severe primarily due to improper water resource management, unplanned developmental projects, and changes in the climatic conditions leading to more extended drought periods and frequent extreme rainfalls. Despite receiving more than 4000 billion cubic meters (BCM) of precipitation annually, India struggles to satisfy the utilization demand of 1123 BCM. Apart from scarcity, water contamination poses severe threats to human health. Industrial pollution has increased arsenic concentration in groundwater and has altered the soil ecology. Arsenic-related health issues have increased in West Bengal, Jharkhand, Uttar Pradesh, Assam, Manipur, and Chhattisgarh. Arsenic contamination in India has increased by 145% since 2016, with the chief cause attributed to improper discharge of heavy metal-contaminated wastewater from industries.

3. Fossil resource energy:

The UN identified access to affordable and clean energy as goal #7 in SDG. Clean energy sources are renewable and have a low emission footprint. Energy is a fundamental and essential ingredient for the development and existence of the human population. The global demand for energy for various human use in 2021 was 167,431 TWh (terra-watt hour), growing at an average rate of around 1-2% per annum. This demand is sourced from fossil resources such as oil (29%), coal (25.21%) and natural gas (22.8%), and non-fossil resources such as hydropower (6.34%), nuclear (3.99%), wind (2.76%), solar (1.53%), biofuel (0.65%) and others (7.65%). IPCC warns that limiting the rise in average global temperature by 1.5°C in this century is essential for avoiding severe global warming and climate change impacts. WRI reports that almost 72.9% of greenhouse gases are emitted by the energy sector, with the most significant chunk of energy being sourced from fossil resources with high GHG emission footprints.

4. Ocean crisis:

The world's oceans face a multidimensional ecological crisis caused by Anthropocene activities such as overfishing, plastic pollution, ocean acidification, and climate change. Changes in ocean morphology and physiology have posed severe threats to living forms living inside and outside oceans. An increase in global GHG has been raising the mean ocean surface temperature by 0.11°C (0.20°F) per decade since the 1970s resulting in the expansion of the sea and causing sea-level rise. Apart from this, the rise in the sea-surface temperature has increased marine phenomenon such as cyclones and tsunamis. Indian subcontinent is the world's worst affected region by tropical storms, exposed to 10% of total tropical cyclones but accounting for more than 80% of global fatalities.

5. Human health:

Clear air, safe drinking water, nutritious food, and secure shelter- forms fundamental rights and rudimental requirements of humans. Climate change has altered all the components of the earth resulting in detrimental effects on human health. By 2050, climate change-related human deaths are estimated to be 250,000 per year resulting from malnutrition, malaria, heat stress, and diarrhea, and cost US$ 2-4 billion per year. Also, air pollution-related deaths have touched 7 million per year, with most affected populations residing in developing nations. WHO reports one-third of lung cancer, stroke, and heart diseases are caused by air pollution.

Monitoring impact on the environment: Growing economies and industries demand an emphasis on environmental impact analysis of all products and services to monitor and limit environmental stressors from increasing beyond the recommended levels by organizations like IPCC. Environmental impacts can be assessed and monitored by integrating life cycle assessment (LCA) into an organization's sustainability model. LCA helps organizations to frame policies, identify environmental hotspot zones in the production process chain and provide suggestive alternatives. This is achieved using various Life Cycle Impact Assessment methods and providing quantifiable ecological impacts for the assessed product or service.

LCIA methods widely used for assessing the impact point are mentioned in table 1. LCIA methods can have single or multi-indicators and are used depending on the extent of LCA scope and goal.

Table 1: Industrial concerned issues and their assessing LCIA methods

Industrial concerned issues	Single indicator LCIA method	Multi-indicator LCIA method
Global warming	GHG protocol, IPCC GWP 2013	BEES+, CML, ReCiPe 2016, IMPACT 2002+
Freshwater scarcity	AWARE, Hoekstra et al. 2012 (water scarcity), Pfister et al. 2009 (water scarcity)	BEES+, CML, ReCiPe 2016
Energy crisis	Cumulative energy demand (CED)	CML, ReCiPe 2016, IMPACT 2002+
Biodiversity extinction		USEtox, BEES+, CML, ReCiPe 2016, IMPACT 2002+
Damage to human health		USEtox, BEES+, CML, ReCiPe 2016, IMPACT 2002+