Multiple-challenge regional industrial transitions: The example of chemical regions

Abstract

While climate change is arguably the most urgent global environmental challenge, there are further, and often related, worrying human overshoots of planetary boundaries. These multiple challenges can express themselves differently in regions and have, therefore, implications for the course and shape of regional industrial transitions. This article focuses on specific regional industrial transitions which are particularly complicated but have attracted scant scholarly attention so far. As the example of the chemical industry shows, the environmental challenges that some regions face are multiple in the sense that industrial transitions in these regions have to respond not only to the global challenge of climate change but also to local environmental challenges such as various types of toxic pollution associated with adverse impacts on the natural environment and public health. Due to their particularly sophisticated demands, multiple-challenge regional industrial transitions merit more scholarly attention.