Industrial Clusters and Environmental Management

The chapter deals with relationship between industrial policies and territorial environmental policies in industrial clusters. Because of the globalisation processes, the European SMEs operating in industrial clusters are showing difficulties in maintaining their market competitiveness and nourishing their capability to achieve economic performances; this crisis, with the addition of an increased and increasing care to environmental protection, stimulated the need of new planning and managerial tools, both at territorial and firm levels. By relying on the nature of the industrial processes, social relations and tight interactions between stakeholders existing within a so-called “industrial cluster”, the methodological approach detailed in the paper aims at applying tools typical of environmental management to industrial clusters, making them useful to SMEs and local communities requirements. Within these territorial agglomerations of industrial activities, there are often significant environmental problems caused by the high concentration of pollutant production processes. Moreover, due to the large number of similar industrial activities, there is a “cumulative” effect for many environmental aspects (such as the amplified impact of the same emission to air produced by many different firms, or the amplified traffic problem induced by the transportation of intermediate goods within the cluster). These environmental problems are caused by the interactions between firms in the local supply chain: a co-operative approach is needed in order to favour an integrated management of the environmental aspects. In particular, this method encompasses the implementation of the different steps foreseen by the EMAS Regulation at the cluster level. This approach was experimented in a European Life - Project, involving the Lucca Paper Cluster, in Tuscany Region. After describing the theoretical background of the “cluster approach” to the environmental management, and after detailing the phases that compose this approach, the chapter describes all activities that were carried out within the Lucca industrial cluster and main related emerged results. In particular the article focuses on the territorial and sectoral indicators used in the Initial Cluster Environmental Review and their adoptability in a cluster environmental performances monitoring perspective. The results show not only the adoptability of the proposed model in a long term vision, but also the effectiveness of this managerial tool in respect to the local environmental performances. Data and performance indicators about the improvement of the environmental conditions are showed, in order to demonstrate the effectiveness of the presented model. In the final part of the article some conclusive remarks are furnished.