Abstract
Special industrial zones are favored over scattered industries from an environmental management perspective, but poor management can lead to conflicts. This paper presents an analysis of the environmental conflict that arose between the state, society, and industry stakeholders in an industrial zone of the Eastern Seaboard Development Program of Thailand. This paper seeks to determine the effectiveness of policy measures implemented by the state to resolve the conflict. The purpose of this study is to draw lessons for industrializing nations that adopt the industrial zone model to foster environmentally sustainable industrial development. The study revealed that blatant violation of land-use planning regulations and expansion of the industrial zone into community areas was a root cause of the conflict. Through legal action, civil society has been successful in forcing the state and industries to halt unplanned expansion of industrial areas and practice better environmental governance. However, inadequate commitment by the state and industry stakeholders seems to perpetuate the conflict, threatening the sustainability of economic gains. A Geographic Information Systems (GIS)-based analysis confirmed that the policy interventions of the government to resolve the conflict have not produced significant results. This paper highlights the need for GIS-based environmental quality monitoring for guiding industrialization-based urban development towards sustainability.
Highlights
Since the 1960s, some countries in Asia have pursued industrialization-based urban development [1].Among them, Japan and South Korea have experienced endogenous development of their urban and industrial sectors
This paper examines the usefulness of Geographic Information Systems (GIS)-based monitoring to complement conventional environment monitoring and public informing
The first half of this paper presented the chronological evolution of the environmental conflict at the
Summary
Since the 1960s, some countries in Asia have pursued industrialization-based urban development [1]. Japan and South Korea have experienced endogenous development of their urban and industrial sectors. Foreign direct investments (FDIs) have played a major role in the industrialization of countries like Thailand, Malaysia, and Vietnam [2]. Industrialization-based urbanization is associated with massive transformation of the physical, social, economic, political, spatial, and environmental facets of urbanizing areas. Environmental problems associated with urbanization and industrialization that contravene sustainable development include haphazard sprawl of built-environment, land-use conflicts, natural resource depletion, environmental pollution, ecological destruction and public health impacts. If environmental management is done poorly, industrial zones pose greater threats due to the accumulation of pollution loads beyond the carrying capacity of the ecosystem
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