Eco-industrial parks in China

Published: August 26, 2008, 5:49 pm

Topics:

IntroductionChina is a large country in terms of population and the total amount of natural resources, but a small country in terms of per capita resources. China’s per capita major natural resources are far less than the world’s average level. Per capita cultivated land (Eco-industrial parks in China) and water resources amount to just 1/3 and 1/4 of the world’s average level, respectively, and per capita reserves of raw coal, hydropower, petroleum and natural gas account for just 55%, 80%, 10% and 4% of the world’s average level, respectively. During the ten years from 1995 to 2004, gross domestic product (GDP) averaged an increase of 8.9% annually, gross industrial output value averaged growth of 9.3%, and the total quantity of industrial pollutants discharged annually rose an average of 2.3%. The rapidly growing speed of national economic development and the industrial level make substantial demands on on the supply of natural resources such as water, land, energy, raw materials, etc., worsening the conflict between population, resources and environment.

With regard to the rapid economic growth, China’s environmental system capacity cannot sustain the production system of high input, low output, high consumption and low efficiency, thus a coordinated economic development mode is being pursued to establish economic development within the threshold of ecological capacity.

Figure 1. Allocation of national Eco-Industrial Parks (EIPs) approved by the State Environmental Protection Administration of China (SEPA) (up to 2007 January)

Industry is an important “resource allocator” as well as “controller” of resource consumption and pollution. At present, China’s traditional industry is still dominant, thus the environmental performance is low and ecological technological renovation is a hard task. Therefore, realize industrial sustainability is a key task during the optimization of the overall structure of the economic system. For this reason, the central government proposes to guide the overall economic and social development with a scientific development approach and establish the strategic objective of developing a recycling economy and constructing a resource-saving and environmentally friendly society.

Eco-Industrial Parks (EIPs) are a new type of industrial organization designed according to the principles of industrial ecology (IE). They are a type of industrial park in which businesses cooperate with each other and with the local community in an attempt to reduce waste and efficiently share resources (such as information, materials, water, energy, infrastructure, and natural resources) with the intention of increasing economic gains and improving environmental quality. EIPs establish a network of material and energy flows among enterprises, so as to realize the highly effective utilization of resources and energy and the minimum discharge of waste by simulating the natural ecosystem. They are one form of a larger phenomenon called industrial symbiosis—the exchange or sharing of resources made possible by geographic proximity.

To promote the development of EIPs, the State Environmental Protection Administration of China (SEPA) initiated the pilot construction of eco-industrial demonstration parks in 1999 and established the Standard for the Construction and Management of Eco-Industrial Parks (on a trial basis) in 2006. As of January 2007, 24 national EIPs had been established throughout the country (see Table 1 and Figure 1).