Economic Geography

What to look for in an environmental 
economic geography
If economic geography students were to investigate the ways in which environ-
mental and resource concerns are impacting the operations of industrial 
firms today, at least among many large multi-national firms, they would find a
variety of significant activities underway, ranging from environmental supply
chain management to investment and technology change designed to enhance
energy and materials efficiency of economic activity and improve environmental
performance. Many firms are now setting specific quantitative goals for enhanc-
ing energy and materials efficiency and reducing waste flows. What has been
called the ‘greening of industry’, the efforts of individual firms and industries to
improve environmental performance, provides one important focus for an envi-
ronmental economic geography. Research in this area remains quite preliminary
with even such basic questions as the scope and scale of greening underway, and
the significance of these activities for overall environmental performance, very
much in question. At the same time, many of the challenges that firms are deal-
ing with, such as how to foster learning and innovation around energy and envi-
ronmental performance in a large, complex production network, are at the heart
of some of the contemporary debates in economic geography on learning
networks, supply chains, and technological change. Indeed, it is quite striking the
degree to which the analysis of the greening of industry draws easily and with real
value upon theory and conceptual insights that have been generated by existing
research in economic geography.
Towards an environmental economic geography
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Three topics illustrate the kinds of research questions that economic geogra-
phers might engage with within the domain of ‘greening of industry’. First, and
as previously indicated, one of the key issues that has emerged for firms seeking
to improve environmental performance is the management of supply chains and
production networks within large business enterprises. Firms are now attempting
to manage global production networks not just from the perspective of cost, qual-
ity and time-to-market, but also with respect to environmental performance.
There is beginning to emerge some initial evidence to suggest that the introduc-
tion of environmental performance into the management calculus of firms is
impacting the organization and geography of production networks, focusing
production on a much narrower set of suppliers who can meet the environmen-
tal performance requirements of the parent firm. Concerns are being raised in
developing economies that the environmental requirements being introduced
into supply chains may foreclose some of the opportunities for industrial upgrad-
ing that have supported poverty-reducing economic growth (Rock and Angel
2005). Economic geographers are well placed to examine the likely conse-
quences of these changes in global production networks for economic develop-
ment at the regional and national scale. That is to say, the significance of the
greening of industry goes beyond environmental impacts per se to studies of 
the ways in which efforts to improve environmental performance are impacting
the organization and geography of production networks.
A similar cross-over between issues of environmental performance and 
existing research foci in economic geography is observed around issues of inno-
vation, learning and technological change. In attempting to meet requirements
to improve energy and resource efficiency, eliminate toxic substances from prod-
ucts and production processes, and reduce waste and emissions, firms practice
learning, innovation and technological change. How these processes of learning
and innovation take place, and in particular the geography and spatiality of these
processes, has been a longstanding area of research focus for economic geogra-
phy. In the case of innovation around environmental performance, much of the
activity of firms is structured by either actual or anticipated regulatory require-
ments. This has led to a growing literature seeking to assess whether tough 
environmental regulation stimulates innovation and improved economic and
environmental performance. But there are other dimensions of this linkage
between environmental regulation and innovation. For example, partly in response
to the difficulty of assuring compliance with multiple different country-based
environmental standards, some large multi-national firms are adopting firm-based
global environmental standards that define performance levels to be adhered to
by all of the firm’s facilities around the world, even where this entails going beyond
local regulatory requirements. These firm-based standards are themselves becoming
an important platform for firm-based learning, where solutions to environmental
challenges identified within one part of the firm are shared throughout the 
enterprise (Angel and Rock 2005).
Thirdly, the greening of industry raises important questions regarding flows 
of capital, technology and information that are at the heart of current debates
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