Collaborative Industrial Ecology in Asia

Project Overview

“Collaborative Industrial Ecology in Asia” was a three-year grant funded by the Henry Luce Foundation in ­­­2001. The project is premised on a desire to institutionalize the understanding and use of industrial ecology in Asia. The four key components of the project are 1) educational materials, 2) student scholarships, 3) faculty exchange/visiting scholars, and 4) executive education. The unifying theme of these components is to “train the trainers,” so that the project can have a lasting effect well after the grant funds are consumed. 

The project partners include Tsinghua University in Beijing, China, the Centre for Environmentally Sound Technology Transfer (CESTT) in China, Shanghai JiaoTong University Management School in Shanghai, China, and the National University of Singapore.

 

The second Luce Fellow, Professor Duan Weng, from the Materials Science Department of Tsinghua University, joined the F&ES faculty from November 2002 through March 2003.  In addition to teaching in several industrial ecology-related courses, Prof. Weng translated Greening the Industrial Facility and continued his research on the topic of eco-materials. In addition to faculty exchanges, the grant has supported student scholarships and FES internships in Asia, as reported in the IEM Annual Report.

 

Subsidized subscriptions to the Journal of Industrial Ecology (JIE) are being provided to libraries at universities and leading organizations in Asia.  These subscriptions include both conventional print copies of the JIE and institution-wide electronic access. Subscriptions are in place at nearly 20 institutions. Ongoing efforts are being made to identify additional appropriate contacts. Abstracts of all of the articles published in the JIE are being translated into Chinese. (The translations of 5 volumes—twenty issues—have been completed and are being reviewed for accuracy.)  These will be posted on the JIE’s website and announcements will be sent to several hundred news outlets and organizations throughout Asia and the world.

 

A “Train the Trainer” workshop is planned for October, 2004 in Beijing, as the capstone event of the project, with the goal of bringing together Asian educators for a seminar on industrial ecology and how to teach it. Support materials, such as textbooks, journal articles, and case studies, that have been developed throughout the “Collaborative Industrial Ecology in Asia” project will be made available to participants for use in disseminating industrial ecology research and principles.