An Assessment of Inter-firm Networks in a Wood Biomass Industrial Cluster: Lessons for Integrated Policy Planning

摘要

Bio-economy based on effective biomass use is emerging in many parts of rural Asia, offering new avenues toward energy independence and reinvigorating local economy. Traditional wood biomass use in many parts of the region is generally confined to small-scale household uses, which includes firewood, charcoal, forest residue etc. On the other hand, modern wood biomass relates to large scale uses of commercial biomass, and usually substitutes for conventional fossil fuel energy sources where it is a cheaper option. Wood biomass waste includes forest raisings, wood process residues and energy crops of various tree species. In countries like Japan, the economics of use may well include savings on the costs of having to dispose of the wood biomass material in some way where it is waste product of an industrial process. In Japan, wood industries are main agro-industrial activity in rural fringe areas and for past one decade and there has been a steep increase in environmental concerns, in particular overthe disposal of high volume of biomass from wood industries. The total biomass waste generated by wood industries totaled 15 million tons in Japan (MAFF, 2006). Less than 50% of them is recycled or reused for meaningful purposes, posing a great challenge for industries, communities and the government. Despite troubling implications of current trends in biomass waste generation, rural development planning and policy formulations have focused on maximizing wood production and optimizing its use with farless emphasis on evaluation of environmental, social and economic performance of bio-regions. This imbalance provoked many communities to innovate new integrated development models to support the growth of bio-economy.