Promotion of Eco-Innovation to Leverage Sustainable Development of Eco-Industry and Green Growth

Abstract

In the modern world, ecology and the economy are on cross roads. With the increasing pace of globalization and economic liberalization, giving birth to the rapid growth of consumerism by the modern civilization, there is growing consciousness to move gradually towards green growth with sustainability. This is now becoming possible by enhancing eco-consciousness both among the producers as well as the consumers. The chosen path is obviously to go in for more and more eco-innovations to provide complementarily to industrial production without sacrificing much on the production as well as economic front. Renewable alternate technologies – widely known as eco-technologies, are now being developed with massive investment on R and D activities by several research organizations across the world to achieve this mission. To leverage the gains from eco-innovations and achieved through proactive and carefully planned organizational and R and D support, there seems to be a surge in the growth of Eco-industries; which in turn, are getting increasingly organized as a chain of eco-industry, by constantly evolving replicable as well as sustainable eco-industrial models in the emerging sectors of economy, prominently in the EU countries. The paper takes a holistic and strategic review on how the Eco-innovations and their eco-specific promotional and developmental efforts are stimulating the sustainable development of Eco-industries and enhancing Green growth by setting up of demonstrable Eco-industrial models in multi-sectoral areas in Europe and the other parts of the world. The paper also provides a brief account of various corporate and entrepreneur initiatives taken in developing sustainable Eco-industrial business models and the methodologies to measure the impact of eco-innovation projects.