Cleantechs are decisive means to maintain the planet livable for the years to come, with immediate critical issues and local problems to cope with in many parts of the world. They also represent a huge growing market, worldwide, and altogether a fundamental knowledge base to be shared within and among all societies and human beings ; in other terms a set of common goods to be elaborated and put to work everywhere.
What are cleantechs ? It is an emerging flag concept for a series of technological and organizational means to confront environmental challenges of all kinds and at all scales, for the short and moreover the medium and longer term, so as to ensure quality of life for individuals and communities of today as well as of tomorrow. Its borders are unclear, as all fashionable concepts, but its core concerns are well identified : preserving natural resource and chances for next-to-come generations, while supporting as much as possible the efficiencies which our contemporary life style requires or if necessary alternative and innovative solutions satisfying collective basic needs and future-oriented aspirations. Other notions pointing out to a similar « ends-means » perspective are : green technologies, sustainable development, environmental-friendly technologies, etc.
The big debates of today, in this domain of preoccupations have to do with how our contemporary societies can pursue their innovative journey and their economic growth and the same time transforming past habits little concerned with waste, polluting effects, resource exhaustion or climate change into economically-consistent and yet environmental-sensitive ways of producing, allocating and consuming material as well as social wealth. Cleantechs are no magical pencils, but gradual quests for improvement and collective-problem solving in their own terms.
This portal is designed to show, evaluate, share and promote such capacities. Cleantechs are technologies, of course, but they also convey specific types of processing know-how, organizational forms and business models, inasmuch as they are needed.
