The rhetorical zeal for green enterprise as a global fix for the tripartite challenges of economic recession, environmental degradation and social inequality is increasingly visible in state and non-state pronouncements around the globe under the banner of ‘The Green Economy’. In particular, many policy-facing statements call for transitions leading to a transformation in development practices. Yet there is little detail either in policy or research regarding the types of transitions needed and how they are to be initiated, nor agreement about what a transformed economy might look like. Despite this, there are emergent activities within the cleantech arena which are being heralded as actually existing examples of green economy activities. One means through which these activities are seeking to exert influence over development trajectories is by clustering both at the subnational and transnational level. While diverse in formation, many of these clusters are hybridised, involving actors from public, private and civil society sectors. Critiquing the efficacy of mainstream industrial cluster theory to analyse hybridised cleantech clustering, this paper presents a unique synthesis of current thought on multiscalar environmental governance and socio-spatial formations to explore the practices and potentialities of these hybridised cleantech clusters. Surveying the landscape of cleantech clustering and meta-clustering, before focusing in depth on one case study, the contribution of clustering to transitioning towards a transformed green economy is considered. Despite strong forces, both within and beyond cleantech clusters, for maintaining neoliberalised approaches to cleantech activity, it is concluded that for as long as cleantech clusters remain open and inclusive of actors proposing alternative pathways they do represent potential, albeit provisional, assemblages for transformation.
The Global Cleantech Innovation Index (GCII) programme investigates where, relative to GDP, entrepreneurial clean technology companies are most likely to emerge from over the next 10 years – and why.
Part of a series of four entitled Urban Patterns for a Green Economy, this guide argues that strategic investment in physical infrastructure with the diversification of economies allows cities to play a specialised role in polycentric urban development.
The green growth concept has both strategic and analytical merit. It has strategic merit by turning a negative debate about a costly constraint (on emissions) into a narrative about potentially attractive opportunities.
Achieving global goals for poverty reduction, economic growth and environmental health will require widespread innovation and implementation of new and appropriate “green growth” technologies.