Industrial parks have been promoted as cornerstone strategies for economic development in countries around the world, including Viet Nam. The transformation of conventional industrial zones (IZs) into eco-industrial parks (EIPs) presents an effective opportunity to attain inclusive and sustainable industrial development, as well as increasing the economic competitiveness and resilience of industrial parks. This paper presents and discusses the interventions, key results, and lessons learned from the Ministry of Planning and Investment (MPI) and UNIDO’s work on EIPs in Viet Nam as part of the Project “Implementation of eco-industrial park initiative for sustainable industrial zones in Viet Nam”. The Project was undertaken with the objective of developing policies and guidelines to facilitate the transformation of industrial zones into eco-industrial parks and implementing EIP principles in five existing industrial zones in the provinces of Da Nang (Hoa Khanh IZ), Can Tho (Tra Noc 1 and 2 IZs), and Ninh Binh (Khanh Phu IZ and Gian Khau IZ), which serve as pilots to support replication and upscaling across Viet Nam. The application of the Project’s policy, company, and park-level interventions demonstrated their value in contributing to the development and implementation of EIP practices in the country. Rather than stand-alone solutions, multi-disciplinary EIP concepts are most effective if applied as part of an integrated top-down approach (policy support as entry point for interventions) combined with a bottom-up approach (industrial park as entry point). The issuance of Decree 82/2018/ND-CP on the management of industrial parks and economic zones is a new policy outlining the requirements and process for transforming industrial zones into EIPs. The Decree is thereby an important driver for EIP development. Legal challenges with regards to EIPs still exist, including the lack of available and reliable data and the need for detailed standards and guidelines on reusing by-products, wastes, and wastewater. The final adoption of minimum EIP requirements in Viet Nam for social, economic, and environmental aspects is a key issue for scaling up implementation. The work undertaken as part of the Project will continue through the Global EIP Programme, in which Viet Nam is one of the participating countries.

The transformation of conventional industrial parks into eco-industrial parks (EIPs) presents an effective opportunity to attain inclusive and sustainable industrial development. UNIDO has acquired broad experience of EIPs by implementing a number of EIP projects in developing countries. To support these, a UNIDO EIP Toolbox was developed in order to (a) provide a practical set of customized and flexible tools to assist practitioners with the development and implementation of EIPs and related initiatives, and (b) to support EIP implementation and decision-making processes in relation to existing and new industrial parks. The EIP Toolbox currently covers tools on selecting industrial parks for EIP projects, stakeholder mapping, policy support, assessing industrial parks against the International EIP Framework, industrial symbiosis identification, monitoring impacts from company-level Resource Efficiency and Cleaner Production (RECP) assessments and park-level EIP opportunities. The focus of this paper is the application of the developed EIP tools in Viet Nam, supported by learnings from their application in other countries (e.g., China, Colombia, India, Morocco and Peru). The application of the EIP tools to date has demonstrated their value in contributing to the development and implementation of EIP practices. The added value of the tools is to support decision-making and stakeholder consultation processes on specific EIP topics of interest. An overall lesson learned from the tools’ applications is that they are useful in identifying and prioritizing “tip of the iceberg” symbiosis and RECP options as well as park-level EIP opportunities through interactive stakeholder consultations or workshops, possibly led by park management, and in guiding the discussion through a step-by-step structured approach. As such, rather than a stand-alone solution, the tools are best placed to be used as a supplementary instrument, in conjunction with other pragmatic and detailed implementation approaches. The current version of the UNIDO EIP Toolbox represents version 1.0. It is envisaged that the set of tools will be updated and expanded to reflect insights from their application in EIP projects. It is hoped that this paper will create further interest among EIP stakeholders and the academic community in applying the UNIDO EIP Toolbox as well as feedback from users in developing, transition and developed countries to further strengthen and expand the tools.