Water Integrity: From Concept to Practice

Abstract

The adherence of water stakeholders and institutions to integrity principles is critical to improve water governance and sustainable water development. Integrity is strongly manifested in water decision-making, and the level of integrity plays a critical role in deciding the outcomes of decision-making, that is, who gets what water, when and how. In many countries, fragmented institutions obstruct accountability in a sector with high investment and aid fl ows, making the water sector particularly vulnerable to corruption. Governance failures such as corruption can take place at multiple levels and traverse all water uses, incurring huge cost for societies, environment and human development. This chapter provides insights into the role of integrity to improve governance and suggests an apparent need to include integrity and anticorruption-related issues in the analysis of and policy responses to water crises. Accountability in water supply services is used as an example to outline challenges and opportunities for strengthening integrity.

Accountability Mechanisms for Inclusive City-Level Public Services in Asia

“…Recognizing institutional arrangement lethargy as the core problem had steered numerous external organizations (donors, international institutions, nongovernment organizations, etc.) to focus their support to achieve national accountability on establishing stronger relationships between actors (Tropp, Jimenez, and Le Deunff 2017). An effectively functioning accountability mechanisms can offer better clarity of the governance arrangement and on the obligation of the actors responsible to manage fiscal resource, safeguard water resources and expand control over the actions of public and private stakeholders as well as guarantee minimum quality standards (UNDP Water Governance Facility and UNICEF 2015).…”

“…Transversal accountability (also known as hybrid) refers to the involvement of citizens and civil society (key players from the vertical accountability arrangements) in horizontal (state-to-state) processes of accountability. This type of mechanism helps to support the horizontal accountability systems, overcome the finite impact of conventional civil society approaches, and legitimizes the citizens' inclusivity in government oversight functions (UNDP-SIWI 2020; UNDP Water Governance Facility and UNICEF 2015; Tropp, Jimenez, and Le Deunff 2017).…”

“…Social accountability mechanisms can be used interactively between holding public officials accountable and strengthening the accountability link between services providers and users. In addition, specific accountability domains can be distinguished; in this sense, political, legal, financial, and administrative accountability are the relevant ones (UNDP-SIWI 2020; UNDP Water Governance Facility and UNICEF 2015; Tropp, Jimenez, and Le Deunff 2017).…”