Project description

Title: Eco-industrial development
Commissioned by: German Federal Ministry for Economic Cooperation and Development (BMZ)
Country: India
Lead executing agency: Ministry of Environment & Forests, Government of India
Overall term: 2009 to 2012

Context

The development process in India is characterised by increasing industrialisation, which is closely associated with environmental risks. However, there are growing calls around the world to limit the consumption of natural resources, improve environmental performance and raise resource efficiency. Eco-industrial development (EID) is a promising strategy for promoting sustainable industrial development, while tackling environmental, economic and social problems in a balanced manner.

Objective

Solutions have been successfully tested and propagated for the environmentally-friendly and resource-efficient management of industrial areas, industrial clusters and the productive sectors.

Approach

The project uses a comprehensive approach to introduce ecologically sound practices in India’s industrial production. It addresses the prevailing problems in existing industrial parks and also contributes to the planning of new parks; and it provides supportive capacity development where necessary.

The project shares and replicates lessons learnt, and develops policy recommendations on the basis of these lessons. It also facilites a stakeholder dialogue involving actors from the public and private sectors in order to promote sustainable industrial development in India.

Results achieved so far

The principles of eco-industrial parks have now been introduced to more than 30 existing industrial parks in Andhra Pradesh. This means that the environmental infrastructure is strengthened with the building of expanded drainage and sewerage systems, common effluent treatment plants, plantations, solar street lamps and other measures.

Efforts are being made to upgrade two common effluent treatment plants in industrial parks in Gujarat so that they match the standards and replicate the business model and structures of an existing plant in Andhra Pradesh. Elsewhere, a transport, storage and disposal facility for hazardous waste disposal has become operational in Karnataka. This is used by around 330 industries, and about 42,000 tonnes of hazardous waste has so far been deposited at the facility. Seven Indian state governments have now asked for similar facilities to be established to serve their own industries.

In terms of new industrial parks, plans now exist to build a special economic zone in Andhra Pradesh, for which an eco-industrial assessment has already been successfully carried out.

The relocation of polluting industries is also an important aspect of the project. To this end, development at the Eco-Electroplaters Park at Karaisalkulam near Madurai in Tamil Nadu is nearly complete, to which some 45 companies are likely to move from their current locations in congested residential areas.

A number of individual industries have successfully boosted their resource efficiency by using the ‘EcoProfit’ tool to help bring savings in their consumption of materials and energy. The 14 industries supported by the project in the Hyderabad region made electricity, coal, furnace oil, water, materials and aggregated financial savings worth more than INR 20 million.

As the beneficiary of institutional capacity development measures provided by the project, the Central Pollution Control Board in Bengaluru has acquired a modern environmental laboratory.