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Renewable Eco‐industrial Development
Author(s) -
Wells Peter,
Zapata Clóvis
Publication year - 2012
Publication title -
journal of industrial ecology
Language(s) - English
Resource type - Journals
SCImago Journal Rank - 2.377
H-Index - 102
eISSN - 1530-9290
pISSN - 1088-1980
DOI - 10.1111/j.1530-9290.2012.00487.x
Subject(s) - industrial ecology , sustainability , context (archaeology) , renewable resource , scope (computer science) , sustainable development , non renewable resource , renewable energy , business , economics , natural resource economics , ecology , environmental resource management , geography , computer science , biology , programming language , archaeology
Summary This article reviews the scope of the discipline of industrial ecology and, in the context of an urgent requirement for substantial and rapid change in the face of global sustainability challenges, argues that the discipline could embrace a more proactive, interventionist stance in the form of renewable eco‐industrial development. Existing eco‐industrialism is presented as flawed, with many cases premised on the use of nonrenewable resources. Renewable eco‐industrial development, while still nascent, has the potential both to resolve some sustainability challenges and to offer a new area of endeavor for industrial ecology, albeit one with its own unique difficulties, such as conflict with food production. Renewable eco‐industrial development is further argued to bring industrial ecology into a more socially critical stance as it concerns the future allocation of scarce resources.