Economic Geography

David P. Angel

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around economic globalization. One of the most crucial issues with respect to
environmental and resource conditions in rapidly industrializing and urbanizing
economies is the extent to which the scale effects of industrial and urban growth
can be offset by improvements in energy, materials and resource efficiency. With
new capital investment comes the opportunity to take advantage of cutting-edge
technologies that are potentially far more energy and resource efficient than 
older capital stock. With much of the technology and capital equipment being
deployed in developing economies sourced from OECD countries, this raises
fundamental questions regarding the diffusion and adoption of technology on a
global scale, and the way in which such technology transfer is structured by
processes of foreign direct investment and supply chain linkages. In addition,
patterns of technology transfer, adoption and use typically involve intersections
between international flows of capital and technology, and local, regional and
national conditions that influence the rate and effectiveness of technology adoption.
These classic ‘global–local’ intersections are at the core of economic geography’s
analysis of the dynamics of regional economic development.
For all the opportunities for economic geography to engage with the greening
of industry, the approach described above does not address fully the significance
of an engagement with issues of environment and resources for theory develop-
ment in economic geography. In most cases research within this framework takes
existing economic geography theory and applies this work to the domain of the
greening of industry. In addition, emerging research into the greening of indus-
try tends to be focused on individual firms and industries, and does not engage
in the type of structural analysis that has been an important part of theory devel-
opment in economic geography over the past three decades. But perhaps most
fundamentally, work within the greening of industry framework does not engage
fully with the material basis of economic activity. The environment is examined
as inputs and outputs to economic change rather than constituting and theoriz-
ing these processes of economic change as simultaneously material and social 
in form.
To go beyond the greening of industry is to be engaged in what might be
called a political ecology of industrial change. Then the question becomes how
to theorize industrial change as a process that is as much about flows of materi-
als and resources as it is about flows of capital, technology, products and services.
This is a field of enquiry that is in its infancy within geography and other disci-
plines (although arguably ecological economics has gone someway to developing
methodologies for assessing economic change in these terms). There are many
broad questions of interest. For example, to what degree are the current ‘worlds
of production’ and attendant geographies of economic activity predicated upon
existing resource and material foundations, or more generally, upon currently
constituted human-environment relations? Would a substantial shift toward renew-
able sources of energy, away from the use of certain toxic chemicals, toward less
water-intensive production processes, or any number of other changes in the mate-
rial foundation of economies be of significance for the organization and geogra-
phy of industrial activity – beyond the price effects that are part of the current
Towards an environmental economic geography
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calculus of economic analysis? This is in part the question that ecological
modernization is asking with respect to institutions and governance in capitalist
societies (the capacity to achieve dramatically different human environment rela-
tions in the context of existing dominant capitalist social relations).
Earlier in this chapter two axes of geographical scholarship were described,
one defined in terms of studies of human-environment relations and the other in
terms of spatiality of economic and social processes. An environmental economic
geography has the potential to make important contributions at the intersection
of these two axes of enquiry. Within an environmental economic geography,
economic change and attendant livelihood and development effects remain of
central concern. But these dynamics of economic change are theorized as both
material and social processes, and are measured in terms of their impacts on envi-
ronmental quality and resource footprints, as well as jobs created, products sold
and profits made. Certainly these issues are of compelling public concern, and for
many firms and industries, they are an increasingly important part of the day-to-
day management of industrial activity.
Note
1. RoHS is the European Union directive on the restriction of the use of certain
hazardous substances in electrical and electronic equipment.