The number of industrial parks has increased steadily worldwide, especially in industrializing and emerging economies. However, most industrial parks are still being planned, built, and managed with little concern for resource efficiency and social and environmental impacts. In response, eco-industrial parks (EIPs) are currently being considered in many developing and transition economies. The absence of a replicable deployment method and a normative standard for EIPs, or even of a widely accepted definition, results in difficulties in finding a flexible, but robust management scheme and related indicators adapted to such complex industrial systems. The article on “Standards, requirements and roadmap for developing eco-industrial park in Vietnam” is published on Journal of Cleaner Production 188 (2018) aims to address EIP implementation and monitoring by providing a new approach to EIP development in Vietnam. Co-authors of the articles are: Guillaume Massard (BG Consulting Engineers SA, Switzerland), Heinz Leuenberger (University of Applied Sciences and Arts, Northwestern, Switzerland) and Tran Duy Dong (Department of Economic Zone Management, Ministry of Planning and Investment, Viet Nam). The article fills a gap in research about how to engage in EIPs at a national level when knowhow and general resource efficiency level are low. The methodology proposed establishes a bottom-up participative process adapted to transition and developing economies to foster EIP emergence and define minimum requirements, related indicators, and a continuous improvement method.

The article is result of findings from a two-day expert group meeting took place in Vietnam in September 2016.