GLOBAL: Killer kickbacks - corruption in water sector affects millions

Photo: Shamsuddin Ahmed/IRIN

Corruption in the water sector affects the lives and livelihoods of billions, says Transparency International

NAIROBI, 26 June 2008 (IRIN) - Corruption is one of the main causes of a global crisis that deprives more than a billion people of access to safe drinking water and more than 2.6 billion of access to sanitation systems, according to a new report by Transparency International.

“In perhaps no other area does corruption so profoundly and directly affect the lives and livelihoods of billions of people as in the provision of water,” Transparency chairwoman Huguette Labelle said in the preface to the watchdog’s 2008 annual report, Corruption in the Water Sector.

Wangari Maathai, a Kenyan activist who won the 2004 Nobel Peace Prize, writes in the report that the global water crisis is “of our own doing … a crisis of governance: man-made, with ignorance, greed and corruption at its core. But the worst of them is corruption.”

“Without increased advocacy to stop corruption in water, there will be high costs to economic and human development, the destruction of vital ecosystems, and the fuelling of social tension or even conflict over this essential resource,” the report warned.

Outlining the consequences of the water crisis, the report noted that in developing countries some 80 percent of health problems are related to inadequate water and sanitation that claim the lives of 1.8 million children annually.

“Corruption in the water sector is widespread and makes water undrinkable, inaccessible and unaffordable. It is evident in the drilling of rural wells in sub-Saharan Africa, the construction of water treatment facilities in Asia’s urban areas, the building of hydroelectric dams in Latin America and the daily abuse and misuse of water resources around the world,” according to the report.

Every region of the world and every aspect of the water sector: management of resources, the provision of drinking water and sanitation services, agricultural irrigation to massive hydropower dam projects, are adversely affected by corruption, the report states. From paying a meter-reader to reduce a domestic water bill to diverting public funds destined for a rural water project into the pockets of a few politicians, the problem is endemic across every level of the sector.

As well as detailing the extent of corruption in the water sector and its humanitarian ramifications, Transparency International explains how governments and policy makers can prevent and stem the scourge through improved monitoring, accountability and regulation.

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