The environmental balance: An application to an industrial district of southern Italy for supporting strategic sustainable planning

In this study the environmental balance of the industrial district of the Potenza town (Southern Italy) is presented. This study represents the first attempt of analytically evaluating the relationships between the industrial activities, their impacts and environmental quality, setting up a reference document for analysing the monitoring trends and for describing the state of the environment over a chosen time horizon. A careful and appropriate choice of environmental indicators was made, according to the guidelines of the European Environmental Agency and to the Driving Forces-Pressure-State-Impact-Response model (DPSIR). In particular, data on the economic assessment, raw materials, water and energy consumptions, air emissions, waste disposal are presented. These results provide a useful baseline for the evaluation of the state of the environment and its variations over the time horizon and to define the feasibility of environmental policy targets as well as the effectiveness of recovery strategies.