16 - Eco-industrial Networks

Summary

Several activities around the world appear to be focused on the search for comprehensive solutions to ever increasing environmental burdens attributable to wastes and other contaminants of industrial origin. Some of the most important initiatives include:

1. efforts of the International Council of Chemical Associations [Watkins, 2002],

2. ongoing inter-governmental dialogues on the need to adopt the precautionary principle [Hileman, 2002] and related aspects of environmental policy in developing countries [Bell and Russell, 2002],

3. significant analysis of development imperatives with special reference to India [Parikh, 2002; Parikh and Parikh, 2002; Kathuria and Gundimeda, 2002; and Thomas, 2002],

4. assessment of the state of environment in India [UNEP, 2001],

5. Global Integrity Project [Westra et al., 2000]; and

6. Global Environment Outlook initiative of the UNEP [2000].

7. evolving a culture of industrial compliance has also been proposed as a useful strategy for reducing the intensity of externalities [Keene, 1999].

The initiatives and authors referred above argue that in spite of knowing all consequences, unbridled industrial pollution continues to impose an everincreasing burden on the environment. They further point out that economies, which perpetrate growth that becomes precarious due to environmental perturbations are become unsustainable, because aggregate demands on the environment far exceed the capacities of natural systems for and maintaining waste absorption productivity. Contemporary social and technological interventions, merely appear to delay more intensive ecological backlashes. Technological advances arguably create the illusion of unaltered carrying capacities.