Rebalancing Life Cycle Assessment (LCA): A Development-Just Framework for Palm Oil and the Global South

This article examines how Life Cycle Assessment (LCA) is used in the sustainability assessment of palm oil, especially when global methodologies do not fully reflect the context of producer countries in the Global South. The research aims to formulate a more equitable LCA framework for development, with a case study on Indonesian palm oil. Through a qualitative literature review of LCA studies, climate justice, carbon accounting, certification, and smallholder governance, this article finds that LCA results are significantly influenced by the choice of system boundaries, data, allocation, time period, and treatment of land use changes. When local data is underrepresented, the compliance burden can be heavier for producers and smallholders. This article offers a Development-Just LCA framework based on co-governance, local data sovereignty, transparency of uncertainty, proportional burden sharing, and recognition of development rights and palm oil productivity improvements.