How useful is the Berlin Centre of Competence for Water for the urban management of water supply? A contribution to an inter-organisational analysis in the field of sustainable innovation

Thomas Blanchet (1)

1 CMB - Centre Marc Bloch

In 1999 the municipality of Berlin sold 49, 9% of its water utility shares to a consortium made up of two multinational enterprises: RWE and Veolia. In this context, Veolia built, in 2001, the Berlin Centre of Competence for Water. Through the cooperation between heterogeneous actors, the purpose of this organisation is to promote the research into "sustainable" water management. Relying on a qualitative investigation based on document analysis and semi-structured interviews, the aim of this study is to describe the context of the foundation of this organisation, and to try to assess the scopes and limits of such joint-work in the field of urban water management at local and international levels.

Mots clés: Knowledge management; public private partnership; sustainable development; urban water; water privatization

Domaines: Environnement et Société

Thomas Blanchet. How useful is the Berlin Centre of Competence for Water for the urban management of water supply? A contribution to an inter-organisational analysis in the field of sustainable innovation. 8th World Wide Workshop for Young Environmental Scientists WWW-YES-2008: Urban waters: resource or risks?, May 2008, Créteil, France. ⟨hal-00593634⟩