The importance and risks of identifying corruption in the water sector

In launching their Global Corruption Report for 2008, the NGO Transparency International drew attention to one of the reasons why 1.2 billion people in the developing world still lack access to safe water, 2.6 billion don’t yet have access to sanitation, why pollution still threatens precious ecosystems and small farmers often don’t get the water they are entitled to irrigate crops. Corruption in the water sector means that a sizeable chunk of investments being provided to try and reach the Millennium Development Goals (including halving by 2015 the number of people without access to water and sanitation) goes missing or doesn’t get used properly. Corruption leads to bad decision making and choices of technology that mean many systems won’t go on working to provide a source of water day after day. It means poor people often pay more to access water than the rich. In slums, bribes are paid to get illegal access to the city water system.

The report argues that the crisis of water is a failure in governance, not a scarcity of water or shortage of money but the way we use the water and money we have, with corruption as one root cause. Examples and estimates of the losses due to corruption vary widely, from 10% up to even 90% in one case. Given its secretive nature, it is obviously difficult to identify exactly how big an issue there might be in a given place. But a compelling case is made that there is a serious problem that must be urgently addressed. Problems are identified from top to bottom, from the kickbacks paid by multi-national companies to secure contracts to the ‘speed money’ paid by consumers for a lower meter reading.

Since providing water is mainly a public business in developing countries – there has been a retreat from the rather unsuccessful attempts to privatise water operations promoted by the World Bank and donors in the 1990s – sharing evidence of malpractice and poor performance might be viewed by some as an attack on a public sector that must be protected. After all, water is a basic human right. Might publications about corruption in a public service be a means to move privatization back up the agenda? It is a dangerous, and probably unnecessary, argument. There isn’t much appetite these days for privatization, and the modern fashion for public-private partnerships seeks to keep public agencies firmly in the driving seat while drawing upon skills of the private sector where needed. There is rather a risk that if the mainly public water sector doesn’t share evidence of its performance and efforts to improve services with consumers, to whom they should be accountable, they will face a bigger backlash when problems come out into the open.

There is also a real danger that readers of the report in Europe (especially taxpayers funding development aid and politicians keeping a keen eye on how well that aid is used) will decide that if corruption in water is such a big problem then they better stop putting money into it. This would be unfortunate and it’s a line of thinking that causes problems in itself. Administration costs are often seen as unnecessary waste when we should be seeking to spend every dollar on a pipe to convey sewerage or concrete to line a well. However, this is not ‘waste’ and we would expect to see a lot of corruption in a programme with no administration costs. Monitoring and learning from mistakes in order to solve problems costs money. So does the planning and enforcement that can help ensure that boreholes drilled in rural Africa go closer to the poor rather than next to the houses of corrupt leaders.

The report identifies much that can be done and makes a strong case that we need to invest in improving governance too, not just trying to install wells, pumps, and pipes. Some of the precious Euros of the poor paying for water in Africa, and the better off in Europe donating money to help, should be invested in helping governments write laws, reform institutions and build management capacity, for NGOs to use Freedom of Information Laws that can hold bureaucracies to account, and to build integrity pacts that make paying and seeking bribes more unacceptable.

This piece by John Butterworth was adapted from an article originally published in Spanish in the Herald de Aragon, 19 July 2008. This text was published on the occasion of the presentation of the Global Corruption Report in the water sector at the Expo Zaragoza 2008. John Butterworth is a Senior Programme Officer at the IRC International Water and Sanitation Centre.