Abstract
Although industrial activity has brought about rapid economic growth, it also faces the dual challenges of resource constraints and environmental pressure. Industrial ecology (IE) and ecological modernization (EM) are two theories regarding the conceptualization and implementation of sustainable development that emerged from the natural and social sciences, respectively. Over the past three decades, scholars have conducted copious amounts of theoretical and applied research on IE and EM, but comparative studies from an interdisciplinary perspective on the relationship between the two remain relatively rare. On the basis of a bibliometric analysis, this study offers a comprehensive examination of the background, theoretical connotations, and main content of IE and EM, also exploring the role of both theoretical perspectives in the promotion of sustainable industrial development. The findings are fourfold: (1) the research on IE and EM has been increasing year by year, particularly in the past decade; (2) the research is mostly concentrated in developed countries such as the United States and European Union member nations, and contributions from China have increased significantly in recent years; (3) IE has a broader research community than EM and has evolved clearer and more specific research contents and methods; and (4) IE, which analyzes the problems of specific industrial systems, and EM, which constitutes a higher-level institutional policy design, exhibit a trend of cross-fertilization. This study provides a reference for building a more systematic and comprehensive theoretical system of ecological transformation and discusses the future research directions in this field.
Highlights
Economic development and technological progress have raised the standard of living and improved the overall quality of global human life, but at the same time, the shortage of resources and environmental pollution resulting from the industrialization process has increasingly become a bottleneck that limits the development of human society [1,2,3]
This paper examined the historical literature published on industrial ecology (IE) and ecological modernization (EM) from a bibliometric perspective
IE has a larger number of papers, a broader network of collaboration among authors, and a clearer and specific research content and methodology
Summary
Economic development and technological progress have raised the standard of living and improved the overall quality of global human life, but at the same time, the shortage of resources and environmental pollution resulting from the industrialization process has increasingly become a bottleneck that limits the development of human society [1,2,3]. The intensification of environmental hazards and the emergence of the global energy crisis have raised awareness in human society regarding the environmental crisis, spurring the exploration of a green, circular, and sustainable development model to improve the ecological environment [5]. IE applies a bottom-up research approach, starting from specific industrial systems that produce pollution, and seeks to prevent and treat pollution in the whole process through clean production, circular economy, and industrial symbiosis to achieve green development. Eco-industrial development and IS practices have led to economic growth and low-carbon development with improved eco-efficiency [13]
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