Eco-industrial development for Aceh

Erita Narhetali, Jakarta

Several initiatives have been declared to implement sustainable development in the rehabilitation and reconstruction of post-tsunami Aceh, including to the plan to design Aceh as a green province with 40 percent of its area to be protected as limited utilization areas. The usage of local materials in building houses has also been encouraged.

However, we must be careful in our of the use the term "green" so as not to narrow our understanding of sustainable development to merely mean saving trees.

Essentially, sustainable development is about creating and assisting a new lifestyle and mindset that fully understands communities as living systems embedded in natural systems. It therefore requires working on solutions with a multisectoral approach such as energy, industry, materials, consumption, design and communities. As a result, improvement in the quality of human life is achieved in harmony with improving and maintaining the health of ecological systems; and where a healthy economy's industrial base supports the quality of both human and ecological systems.

Sustainable materials, in terms of not using illegally logged timber, are indeed important. Yet, this approach does nothing to address the critical question of how to make more efficient use of limited resources in the context of a growing population, high demand and tightened economic situations.

One of the most promising strategies for sustainable development is known as Industrial Ecology, which provides a conceptual framework and an important tool for the planning of economic development, particularly at the regional level. Combining conceptual frameworks with a practical approach to sustainability, it represents one path to provide real solutions to the question -- "How can the concept of sustainable development be made operational in an economically feasible way?"

As a relatively new field of research that is rapidly emerging on a global scale, industrial ecology focuses on the sustainable co-existence of the environment, technology and society. Processes in nature, where cycles are closed and waste from one process is input for another, are models for socio-technological processes. Frosch and Gallopoulos (1989) first introduced the term Industrial Ecology together with the concept of Industrial Ecosystems, referring to the design of production sites in analogy to natural ecosystems. By taking lessons from nature, where waste from one process is raw material for another and cycles are closed, society may develop towards sustainability.

It is also important to highlight that the word "industrial", in the context of industrial ecology, refers to all human activities occurring within a modern technological society. Thus fisheries, housing, medical services, transportation, agriculture, etc., are all a part of the industrial system.

The rehabilitation and reconstruction phase in Aceh provides us with a huge opportunity to model sustainable development using an industrial ecology approach. Public planners and local officials now face a number of pressures in planning for economic growth and managing local environmental issues especially after the tsunami.

Such developments must be socially just, economically fair, and ecologically healthy, while also enabling the recovery of physical, psychological and social systems. Meanwhile, aid has to be given to support sectoral developments like housing, health services, and education, as a matter of urgency.

As consequence, revising local and regional spatial plans should reckon ongoing activities relative to the environmental, social and economic capacity of local people. Poor planning will reduce potential land use, or interfere with urban activity or important natural ecosystem biodiversity. This is where the bulk of industrial ecology design should take place.

Applying industrial ecology to the development at the local level implies looking at activities from a life-cycle perspective -- from cradle-to-grave, including energy and materials at the location but also in a wider perspective.

Let say, for example, we are going to design a system of sustainable fisheries. There are materials needed to build boats, but these materials are made in industrial processes which also require energy. So the nature of the boats and scale of industry determine the life-cycle impacts of the fishery system and its infrastructure and there is a need to look for more sustainable materials.

An alternative for fueling fishery boats could perhaps be biofuel. Bio-diesel can be made from plants - vegetable oils, or sugar, that will also open an alternative local agricultural opportunities. It also fits into the scale and support for local energy self-sufficiency.

In closing cycles and waste streams, it is worth processing fishery waste to be used as feed for local fish ponds, or in shrimp farms. The by-products could also serve as fertilizer, while waste water from the industry could be purified in a small local waste water treatment plant, together with household organic waste.

Management of these activities would be chain management. Closing cycles, re-using waste streams or looking at waste as a resource, sharing facilities and infrastructure belong to the most important of industrial ecology principles.

Where, for example, there are several different industrial activities in the same area (for example, coal mining, fisheries, power plants, and housing altogether in a city), the development of an eco-industrial park (EIP) is strongly recommended.

The most acknowledged model of an eco-industrial park is the Danish coastal city of Kalundborg. In this city, the main industries and the local government turn by-products into raw materials by trading and making use of their waste streams and energy resources. Kalundborg community and other similar cases developed entirely through market forces.

In dealing with the energy crisis, industrial ecology strategy goes further than just cutting consumption or applying an end-of- pipe approach. It supports eco-efficiency because a regional circular economy is encouraged. Therefore, the objectives of sustainable development are more feasible to achieve. Public planners and policymakers would be well to examine these concepts for application in post-tsunami Aceh so that the available aid used optimally.

The writer is a member of Kolaborasi Nurani. She can be reached at melati747@yahoo.com.