234
of a chain, rather than avoiding its creation. Furthermore, policies have been artifi -
cially compartmentalized for protection of naturally interconnected systems of air,
water, forests, agricultural lands and urban settlements via separate air, water and
waste acts. More than 30 years after its initiation, industrial ecology has evolved to
inform progressive sustainable policies in the developed world. These policies
include embedding life-cycle thinking in the European Union’s legislation and
intelligent design of infrastructure (Chertow et al. 2015 ). Learning from these signifi cant initiatives, developing countries need to progress towards this next generation of sustainable policymaking whose overarching vision should be to initiate,
support and enforce sustainable conditions.
IE provides an overarching framework for individual polices and schemes that
support sustainable urban, industrial and rural development while ensuring weeding
out, rather than locking in, of polluting technologies. Periodic monitoring of these
policies will ensure that progress is not made in a fragmented and unsystematic
fashion. For instance policies that focus on improving fuel effi ciency of automobiles may be blind to the requirements of increasing the amount of land utilized for
road transportation, the huge investment required for this infrastructure and the way
it locks development into favouring road transport and ownership of automobiles.
Such short-sighted policies may yield some benefi ts to the quality of life in the short
term but harm it in the long run.
Considering what has been achieved by industrial ecology in the developed
world and learning from experience is important to avoid reinventing the wheel and
losing out on one of our most precious resources – time. However, this is not the
only direction for learning to take place; this chapter highlights the fact that developing countries not only offer valuable, relatively uncharted landscapes for enriching our understanding of how industrial ecology can inform sustainable development
but also help uncover unexplored practices and technologies that can provide a similar level of social welfare by using far less resources.
2 What Has Been Achieved by IE in the Global South?
Taking the glass is half full” approach, let us begin examining what the glass contains with a brief history of IE in developing countries. Industrial ecology was fi rst
systematically introduced into developing countries in 1995, when Erkman and
Ramaswamy initiated a collaboration to disseminate and experiment on applying IE
in the Indian context (ROI 2010 ). This collaboration resulted in the publication of
case studies (Erkman and Ramaswamy 2003 ) and the establishment of the Resource
Optimization Initiative (ROI). In 1999, an Industrial Ecology conference was organized at the Indian Institute of Management, Ahmedabad (Erkman 2015, Origins of
industrial ecology in developing countries. Personal Communication via Email).
Around the same time, in 1997, the faculty of the Dalian University of Technology
(DUT) began its IE work in China .
M. Shenoy
of a chain, rather than avoiding its creation. Furthermore, policies have been artifi -
cially compartmentalized for protection of naturally interconnected systems of air,
water, forests, agricultural lands and urban settlements via separate air, water and
waste acts. More than 30 years after its initiation, industrial ecology has evolved to
inform progressive sustainable policies in the developed world. These policies
include embedding life-cycle thinking in the European Union’s legislation and
intelligent design of infrastructure (Chertow et al. 2015 ). Learning from these signifi cant initiatives, developing countries need to progress towards this next generation of sustainable policymaking whose overarching vision should be to initiate,
support and enforce sustainable conditions.
IE provides an overarching framework for individual polices and schemes that
support sustainable urban, industrial and rural development while ensuring weeding
out, rather than locking in, of polluting technologies. Periodic monitoring of these
policies will ensure that progress is not made in a fragmented and unsystematic
fashion. For instance policies that focus on improving fuel effi ciency of automobiles may be blind to the requirements of increasing the amount of land utilized for
road transportation, the huge investment required for this infrastructure and the way
it locks development into favouring road transport and ownership of automobiles.
Such short-sighted policies may yield some benefi ts to the quality of life in the short
term but harm it in the long run.
Considering what has been achieved by industrial ecology in the developed
world and learning from experience is important to avoid reinventing the wheel and
losing out on one of our most precious resources – time. However, this is not the
only direction for learning to take place; this chapter highlights the fact that developing countries not only offer valuable, relatively uncharted landscapes for enriching our understanding of how industrial ecology can inform sustainable development
but also help uncover unexplored practices and technologies that can provide a similar level of social welfare by using far less resources.
2 What Has Been Achieved by IE in the Global South?
Taking the glass is half full” approach, let us begin examining what the glass contains with a brief history of IE in developing countries. Industrial ecology was fi rst
systematically introduced into developing countries in 1995, when Erkman and
Ramaswamy initiated a collaboration to disseminate and experiment on applying IE
in the Indian context (ROI 2010 ). This collaboration resulted in the publication of
case studies (Erkman and Ramaswamy 2003 ) and the establishment of the Resource
Optimization Initiative (ROI). In 1999, an Industrial Ecology conference was organized at the Indian Institute of Management, Ahmedabad (Erkman 2015, Origins of
industrial ecology in developing countries. Personal Communication via Email).
Around the same time, in 1997, the faculty of the Dalian University of Technology
(DUT) began its IE work in China .
M. Shenoy