Eco-industrial parks in China: Key institutional aspects, sustainability impacts, and implementation challenges

To mitigate the negative impacts of industrial production the Chinese government initiated the eco-industrial parks programme in 2001. Enterprises within eco-industrial parks seek to reduce resource consumption and waste/pollution generation by reusing and recycling material and energy by-products. However, the actual sustainability outcomes of eco-industrial parks development and operation are still not clearly known. The aim of this paper is to provide a critical synthesis of the current evidence about the key institutional aspects, sustainability impacts, and implementation challenges related to eco-industrial parks development and operation through an institutional analysis based on the key policy documents and an extensive narrative-based review of the peer-reviewed literature. The results suggest that many stakeholders are involved in eco-industrial parks development and operation, with the main drivers of eco-industrial parks development anchored on the desire to sustain economic momentum without overburdening the environment, and the effort to reduce production costs and maintain economic competitiveness. However, eco-industrial parks development and operation has a series of positive and negative economic and environmental impacts, with some of the latter remaining rather pronounced, which suggests that good production practices do not often translate to positive environmental outcomes. There is practically negligible knowledge about the possible social impacts of eco-industrial parks, possibly due to their omissions from current standards. Some of the main challenges of the effective implementation of the eco-industrial parks programme include the (a) gaps of (and lack of adherence to) eco-industrial parks guidelines and standards, (b) disjoint between eco-industrial parks planning and implementation, (c) misconception and manipulation of key eco-industrial parks concepts, (d) limited scale of eco-industrial parks implementation, and (e) knowledge gaps and non-comprehensive assessment frameworks. (C) 2020 Elsevier Ltd. All rights reserved.