The concept of "Sustainable Industrial Areas (SIA)" promotes sustainable industrial development by balancing environmental, economic and social aspects.
While industrial areas are a motor of industrialisation and technology development worldwide, they are often criticised as areas of extended resource consumption and environmental pollution. The concept of "Sustainable Industrial Areas (SIA)" of the Deutsche Gesellschaft für Internationale Zusammenarbeit (GIZ) GmbH answers to this criticism by highlighting organizational, environmental, economic and social features as indispensable requirements for industrial parks on its pathway to sustainability. This requires in particular management structures, which focus on resource and energy efficiency, environmental protection and social compatibility.
Thus, for the GIZ the SIA concept represents an important element of its advice to partners in the industrial sector. For many years, projects addressing various aspects of sustainable industrial development and sustainable industrial areas have been carried out by GIZ in many countries and significant knowhow and experiences have been accumulated in the organisation. The representatives of SIA projects and experts involved have formed the GIZ-Working Group on Sustainable Industrial Areas, which, together with its partners worldwide, permanently works on further developing the SIA concept.
GIZ, World Bank Group and the United Nations Industrial Development Organization (UNIDO) have recently partnered to provide further guidance on a broad definition of SIA or EIPs to ensure that they encompass park management, social, environmental and economic aspects.
The three organizations jointly published the International Framework for Eco-Industrial Parks to provide a common understanding of EIPs with minimum requirements and performance expectations as to how an industrial park can become an EIP. The International Framework for Eco-Industrial Parks will guide policymakers and practitioners on the critical elements that will help both governments and the private sector work together in establishing economically, socially and environmentally sustainable eco-industrial parks.
Furthermore, the Practitioner’s Handbook for Eco-Industrial Parks: Implementing the EIP Framework has been developed jointly by World Bank, UNIDO and GIZ. The EIP Practitioner’s Handbook is a practical, step-by-step guide that takes stakeholders through the entire process of operationalizing the International EIP Framework. The Handbook is intended to help practitioners operationalize the International EIP Framework at the national and /or park level, as well as specific EIP performance requirements set in the Framework.