Resource Flows in Countries and Industrial Parks towards Low-carbon Economic Growth

Abstract

In most recent times, the world has been battling with a lot of environmental externalities and this has led to the desired industrial development. In the midst of vast resources on our planet, 10% of the World’s population still lives in abject poverty. Diagnosis of resource flows in some countries and industrial parks towards low-carbon economic growth is very pertinent in global resource sustainability and the core of our research. The main tools of this research are material flow analysis, decomposition analysis, eco-industrial park transitioning, eco-efficiency analysis, policy analysis, and their combinations for the sustainable management of the earth’s resources. This research is divided into two tiers, the national level resource flow and the industrial park transitioning level. At the national level, this research was conducted on the carbon emissions and resource efficiency of Ethiopia and resource dynamism of Central Africa. At the industrial park transitioning level, we developed an eco-industrial park monitoring tool and applied to Ulsan eco-industrial park, Korea and addressed the Hawassa Eco-industrial Park transition, in Ethiopia. In national level study, firstly, the major determinants of energy-based CO2 emissions in Ethiopia were examined between 1990 and 2017 using Kaya identity combined with Logarithmic Mean Divisia Index (LMDI) decomposition approach. Main findings revealed that energy-based CO2 emissions were strongly driven by the economic effect (52%), population effect (43%), and fossil fuel mix-effect (40%), while the role of emission intensity effect (14%) was less pronounced during the study period. At the same time, energy intensity improvements reduced the CO2 emissions by 49% indicating significant progress towards reduced energy per unit of gross domestic product (GDP) during 1990-2017. Secondly, the economy-wide material flow analysis (EW-MFA) using four main categories and 13 sub-categories was conducted to characterize driving forces of domestic material consumption for Ethiopia within the African Perspective. Results indicated that Ethiopia predominantly depends on biomass, while Nigeria and South Africa depend on fossil fuels. There were fluctuations of material flows from 1980s to early 2000s, which in line with the domestic instability in Ethiopia, caused by international/domestic economic crisis. Ethiopia presented the Environmental Kuznets Curve (EKC)-like curve on its resource consumption and economic development, thereby indicated a need to strengthen the resource efficiency counter measures. Thirdly, the material flow from 1978 till 2017 for Cameroon, the Democratic Republic of Congo (DRC), and Gabon were analyzed, by applying an up-to date standardized methodologies of economy-wide materials flow accounting (EW-MFA). Decomposition analysis was used to examine the drivers of material use and the EKC hypothesis was tested to analyze undergoing dematerializing trends in this region. As per the results, Domestic Material Consumption (DMC) was highest in Cameroon (3.54%), followed by Gabon (3.33%) and lastly the DRC (1.84%). Material intensity (per capita DMC) for 2017 was highest in Gabon (5.87t), followed by Cameroon (4.09t), and lastly by the DRC (2.30t). Resource productivity in Gabon (1,567USD/t) was found to be very far ahead of Cameroon (362USD/t) and the DRC (178USD/t), indicating that the economy of Gabon is at high-end, and high-value oriented, with relatively low material intensity. In industrial park level, firstly, eco-industrial park transition monitoring method is proposed. The static approach in monitoring eco-industrial park progress accounts for all inputs and output of all companies in the industrial park at the reference year, and the monitoring year. But to collect all the quality data is almost impossible and time consuming with a negligible improvement at an early stage to attract stakeholder attention. The proposed dynamic approach in monitoring eco-industrial park was simply applied to the companies that were participating in the industrial symbiosis activities. This approach would have an advantage of reducing the administrative workload of data gathering, and this would translate into less time-consuming in tracking the workload. Theoretically, assuming that they are 5 companies in an industrial park and there is one network every year, company to company network is one, the Static approach should increase network efficiency annually, as 1/10, 2/10, 3/10…9/10, while the dynamic approach would result to 1/1, 2/3, 3/4…9/10. This method was then applied to the Ulsan Eco-industrial Park. Results indicated that the dynamic monitoring approach is more suitable to continuously monitor Eco-industrial Park performances. This dynamic monitoring approach can be easily applied to evaluate the economic, environmental, and social performance of EIP’s, and this will mobilize stakeholders such as policy makers, park managers and tenant companies, to support and participate in EIP activities even more. Additionally, Industrial Parks are effective tools towards the sustainable development of an economy. Green industrialization pathway by employing EIP development policy will go a long way to achieving economic buoyancy, sustainable industrial development, and an environmental appraisal in Ethiopia. This chapter is based on practicality of research into business development (R&BD), Korean EIP transition approach being applied to Hawassa Industrial Park in Ethiopia. This chapter presents industry situation and discusses the potential Industrial Symbiosis opportunities in HIP in Ethiopia by analyzing its demand for energy, utilization of its waste streams and locating potential symbiotic networks. Energy efficiency can be enhanced at company level by cleaner production technology such as compressed air, inverter, and LED lightening system. In addition, opportunities for water quality enhancement were identified in Hawassa Wastewater Treatment Facility (WWTF). Finally, sustainable sludge treatment was proposed by environmental infrastructure centered on IS business. This research proposes sustainable EIP transition potentials and draws insightful policy recommendations for HIP and Ethiopia. The dissertation potentially contributes to resource management/environmental engineering in general, and to industrial ecology application in particular, in a number of ways. Firstly, the dissertation developed and applied the Kaya identity tool for carbon emission analysis towards a low-carbon economic growth. Secondly, the resource efficiency of several countries was analyzed based on their material flows and sustainability policy implications were made. Thirdly, we proposed a new dynamic eco-industrial park monitoring tool and applied it to Ulsan Eco-industrial Park, Korea and addressed issues in the Hawassa Eco-industrial Park transition, in Ethiopia. Finally, this dissertation provided critical insights on materialization and carbonization in the developing world, thus extending the application of industrial ecology to regions not studied before.