Industrial growth helps relieve developing and emerging economies from poverty, delivers goods and services, creates jobs and improves standards of living. But it also consumes resources, water and energy at a faster-than-sustainable rate, generates waste and pollutants.

Today’s companies are faced with the challenge of sustainable growth. Producers are constantly looking for ways to become more competitive in global markets by reducing their production costs. However, the current scenario demands that they do so by using fewer resources and reducing pollution.

Trying to increase production and reduce costs while simultaneously improving environmental performance can no longer be a trade-off.

Industrial Parks and sustainable growth

Industrial Parks tackle this problem by helping companies save both money and resources. In them, industries that would traditionally be apart are placed together in areas zoned and planned for industrial development where they share the same infrastructure and environmental services. Sharing common wastewater treatment facilities, for example, is a way of improving environmental performance at a cost that a single industrial facility could never achieve on its own.

Regrouping also lets companies exploit opportunities that turn one firm’s waste into another’s input, such as reusing or recycling resources like as water and plastics.

The companies set in the industrial estate are not the only ones to benefit.

Regulators also have a lot to gain. They can use Industrial Parks as a way to incentive certain industries to move away from urban centers and densely populated areas, improving the environmental quality in the areas from which they depart.

Industrial Parks are also particularly interesting to small and medium size enterprises (SMEs), since their size often inhibits them from using effective pollution-control technologies. Regrouping SMEs gives regulators the possibility to control their pollution, a task that otherwise would be quite difficult.

Having a group of companies together also decreases the amount of time and resources regulators need to monitor and inspect the pollution generated by the facilities, since don’t have to be concerned with the emissions from each individual company but from the Industrial Park as a whole.

UNIDO’s contribution

The establishment and management of Industrial Parks involve a range of technical, economic and policy aspects. UNIDO has a multidisciplinary group of experts which offers an integrated approach for their successful implementation.

The Programme for Country Partnership

UNIDO’s flagship initiative -- the Programme for Country Partnership (PCP), has the development of Industrial Parks at its center.

The PCP is UNIDO’s innovative model for accelerating inclusive and sustainable industrial development in Member States. Aligned with the national development agenda and focused on sectors with high growth potential, the programme supports a country in achieving its industrial development goals.

Through the PCP, UNIDO has assisted the government of Senegal in operationalizing the first phase of Diamniadio, the country’s first integrated Industrial Park. In Ethiopia, UNIDO is assisting in the establishment of four integrated Agro-Industrial Parks (IAIPs). In Peru, UNIDO is also working with the government to develop Industrial Parks and transform existing industrial zones.

The Green Silk Road Project

Another initiative is the Green Silk Road, which grants a certification to industrial zones which follow a set of guidelines that ensure their green development. Its goal is to strengthen economic cooperation in the region by promoting forms of industrial development that are sustainable.

These guidelines – established in partnership with local authorities – promote good practices which lead industrial parks to minimize waste, maximize resources and energy efficiency and drastically reduce the pollutants they generate.

The Green Silk road is an effort to make the Belt and Road Initiative (BRI) means to implement the Sustainable Development Goals (SDGs).

Eco-Industrial Parks

Another approach also fosters economic and social progress and help to protect the environment. Eco-Industrial Parks (EIP) are a future-oriented eco-industrial development concept that integrates industry and nature to offer businesses prospects for growth, improve eco-systems and foster innovation. They are different from usual Industrial Parks because they not only offer the possibility of sharing resources, but actively aim at promoting the exchange of services, materials, energy, water, waste and by-products.