An Ecological Approach for the Next Decades
SMEs do often not have the necessary economic and human resources to introduce innovation in their production processes. On top of that, “environmental awareness” seems to be less developed and is often seen purely as a cost and not a competitive factor. From a territorial standpoint, SMEs’ growth, if not properly “managed” by policy makers, can significantly increase the consumption of local natural resources and local natural environments. The operation “ECOLAND-New approaches to sustainable SME clusters” focuses on exchanging experiences on the efficient use of EU Structural Funds for creating a favourable “external environment” for SME competitiveness. Overall objective / Objectif général The operation aims to support SME development by strengthening and improving local development policies based on sustainable criteria. More specifically, the partnership will elaborate and test an innovative model to plan, design and promote industrial areas equipped according to innovative technological and environmental standards. It will also establish guidelines with a view to offering transferable solutions to other regions. Expected results / Résultats attendus The operation will result in more innovative local and regional development policies. It will produce a tested and transferable model to support SME development based on sustainable criteria with a potential to reducing landscape “erosion” deriving from scarce attention to business localisation policies and increasing SME competitiveness by reducing structural costs related to resource consumption and waste production.