1st African Water Integrity Summit 2014 Brochure

ConCept note1st African Water Integrity Learning Summit “Accelerating Towards a Water Secure World”29-30 April | Lusaka, ZambiaEmpowered lives. Resilient nations. IntroductionIn 2009, the African Water Vision 2025 outlined the challenges to the sustainable management of water resources on the con-tinent. In the face of competing demands for basic water supply and sanitation, food security, economic development, and the environment, it recognised the ‘disastrous consequences’ of continuing business as usual. It named inappropriate governance and institutional arrangements as one core ‘human threat’ to sustainable water management: “There are numerous governance factors in Africa. They include: lack of accountability, transparency and good governance, resulting in ineffective management of water resources; inadequate cooperation and coordination in the management of national and international water basins; and inappropriate institutional arrangements resulting in poor management and low capacity in human resources. [...] A lot of work remains to be done on this constraint.” [1] The vision called for fundamental changes in policies, strategies and institutional arrangements, the adoption of participatory approaches, as well as for openness, transparency and accountability in decision-mak-ing processes as a key success factor. The problems we faceThe extend of the African water challenge was summarised in AMCOW’s 2012 snapshot: 322 million people in Africa gained access to an improved drinking water source since 1990 – but in the same time period the population relying on unimproved sources increased by 65 million to 344 million people [2]. According to UN estimates, more than 300 of the 800 million people in sub-Saharan Africa live in water-scarce environments, and 115 people die every hour from diseases linked to poor sanitation, poor hygiene and contaminated water. According to the Global Corruption Report 2008, 25% of all water investments – about 50 billion dollar - are lost to corruption every year [3]. Citizens bear the direct cost of paying bribes, but also indirect cost of substandard services ranging from minor nuisances to loss of life when infrastructure and disaster response is affected. Poor anddisenfranchised populations are rarely compensated when profitable projects affect their livelihoods. The importance of good governance to solve the water crisis has been recognised in many international processes, as well as in numerous declarations and conventions. The Report of the High-Level Panel of Eminent Persons on the Post-2015 Development Agenda and the 6th World Water Forum both linked effective governance to integrity and control of corruption. Integrity challenges come in many forms, involving financial transactions, manipulation of knowledge and information, discrimination in all forms, illegal or irresponsible water abstraction and waste discharge, as well as biased rules and processes that favour power and short-term interests over equity, fairness, societal welfare and long-term sustainability. Fragmented institutions, high investment sums and state monopolies make the water-sector structurally vulnerable to such risks.Lack of water-related integrity incurs huge cost for societies, in lost lives, stalling development, wasted talent and degraded re-sources. Unethical practices reduce economic growth, discourage investments, violate human dignity, increase health risks and decelerate poverty reduction. But the impacts of corruption are much broader than on economic growth and service delivery. It also undermines social capital and trust, human and democratic rights and the rule of law. Increasing water integrity contributes, therefore, to socio-economic development and poverty reduction in multiple direct and indirect ways.“Among the many things I learnt as a president, was the centrality of water in social, political and economic affairs of the country, the continent and the world.”(Nelson Mandela)ConCept note1st African Water Integrity Learning Summit “Accelerating Towards a Water Secure World”29-30 April | Lusaka, ZambiaEmpowered lives. Resilient nations. The Regional ProgrammeBuilding the integrity level in a country requires the different actors to play their respective roles with integrity and to build the capacity of all the different actors together. In 2008, the UNDP-Water Governance Facility at SIWI together with Cap-Net and Water-Net mapped regional and national policies, institutions, laws and regulations, as well as projects active in promoting transparency,accountability and integrity in the water sector in the Southern African Development Community (SADC) region. One of the key recommendations was the need for capacity building of staff at regional, national and local level, including river basin organisa-tions, government and municipal entities.In response to this demand, the UNDP-Water Governance Facility together with its partners UNDP Cap-Net, WIN and SIWI, with funding by the Swedish Development Cooperation Agency (Sida), implemented the 3-year Regional Capacity Building Programme promoting and developing water integrity in Sub-Saharan Africa.Through partnership with ECOWAS, EAC-Lake Victoria Basin Commission and SADC, the programme targeted water sector stakeholders (management of water resources and of integrated water supply and of sanitation services) at regional, basin and national level with roles and responsibilities in regulation, controlling, planning, policy development and decision making, as well as stakeholders less directly involved in water management, but with a key role in strengthening or demanding accountability, such as media, water users associations and advocacy organisations. More than 500 water professionals have since been trained. The programme developed a comprehensive training manual to assist capacity builders in developing training and educational programmes. The 1st African Water Integrity Learning SummitThe Water Integrity Summit: Accelerating Towards a Water Secure World is the concluding part of the Regional Capacity Building Programme. It will bring together water sector stakeholders from Western, Southern and Eastern Africa who have been trained in water integrity over the last three years. It serves to encourage and stimulate dialogue on learning how corruption can be addressed in the water sector at a regional and national level.With effective operationalisation of anti-corruption tools as final goal, the purpose of the summit is to share know-how, experiences, successful tools and challenges when implementing water integrity action plans. It will contribute to building politic al ownership for water integrity practice, assess the gaps and develop a way forward for further enhancing integrity in the water sector.This background paper has the purpose to provide a frame for the debates during the summit. It is a living document. Together with all participants, we will build on this base, adding new insights, challenges, tools, instruments, and ways forward. This paper is thus only the beginning as we develop the reports and outputs of the 1st African Water Integrity Summit.The summit is expected to achieve three core objectives:1. Participants use the summit as platform to share experiences and know-how, brief each other on their experiences in the development, usage and enforcement of particular tools, institutional arrangements and integrity action plans.2. Successes, challenges and bottlenecks in the process of raising integrity in the water sector are identified and documented.3. Political ownership for further capacity development activities in the region is established and commitment towards developing a second phase based on the lessons learned is realised. As a political leverage tool, a Summit Declaration will be forwarded to AMCOW’s political process, requesting substantial progress in good governance practice, and specifically in water integrity, reflecting the insights and outcomes of the summit discussions.ConCept note1st African Water Integrity Learning Summit “Accelerating Towards a Water Secure World”29-30 April | Lusaka, ZambiaEmpowered lives. Resilient nations. Conference ThemesThe main theme of the summit is Accelerating Towards a Water Secure World. This comprises of three sub-themes: 1. Demonstration of Social Accountability ToolsThere is wide agreement that increased advocacy is needed to stop corruption in water sectors. Meeting the challenges and provid-ing such advocacy needs broad collaboration and involvement of the civil society. Water professionals in many societies face a vi-cious cycle of corruptions breeding corruption, as integrity and cooperation is undermined and penalised. Refusing to participate in wide-spread corruption can even lead to social exclusion [4], [5]. No actor can facilitate change alone. But pilot programmes have shown that even very poor communities, when mobilised and informed, can exert pressure and hold local politicians and service providers to account. Social accountability is an approach to governance by which citizens, civil society organisations (CSOs), and other non-state actors hold government and services providers accountable for their performance, using an array of mechanisms. Participation seems to be the one tool that is common to anti-corruption work in all the subsectors, but in practice it takes many forms and it has become clear that there is no “one size fits all” approach. Rather, combining tools, modifying approaches, and tweaking existing strategies helps create approaches that fit a particular country or region’s experiences. This theme explores expe-riences and collects evidence on circumstances under which such approaches deliver effective and sustainable routes to achieving water resources management and water services objectives.2. Developing infrastructure and integrity hand in hand?The water sector is vulnerable to corruption, in part because of particular traits of the sector. Water management is capital-in-tensive; processes of investments are accompanied by important money-flows. As such they can augment the risks of unethical practices in planning, tendering and procurement processes. Large infrastructure, irrigation or dam projects are complex, making procurement manipulation lucrative and difficult to detect. Clientelism and kickbacks in contracting are common in all water sectors around the world. Decision-making in the water sector is dispersed across many political and administrative jurisdic-tions and defies legal and institutional classification, creating loopholes that can be exploited. Studies suggest that corruption decreases efficiency of African utilities by more than 60% [3]. Some water practitioners are advocate that building institution-al water integrity before any infrastructure investment process have started is an important precondition. Others see theseinvestment processes as ideal moments through which to strengthen integrity on the job, allowing immediate learning-by-do-ing opportunities. Tools such as Integrity Pacts can be introduced at the starts of investment programmes, establishing soundpractices for any particular project and equipping involved officials with valuable experiences for future practice. This theme is the occasion to discuss these complex thematic relationships.3. Building water integrity capacitiesOver the past two decades, awareness increased on the need for integrity related capacity development across the water sec-tors. Programmes like the African Regional capacity development effort being were initiated as a consequence of this insight. Lessons have already been learnt, tools have already been tested and applied and policies, rules and changes in institutional mechanism have been undertaken, addressing un-ethical practices involving different type of actors across local, national and international levels, in public-public, public-private and public-consumer interactions. However, it is critical to promote evidence based water integrity measures. Policy frameworks for natural resources management, as well as anti-corruption programmes, have a history of unintended side-effects, undermining livelihoods, criminalising the rural poor, and even aggravating environ-mental impacts. Identifying the right mechanisms to target anti-corruption measures and integrating them into natural resource management is, therefore, highly relevant. This theme is the opportunity to take stock of the main challenges and the hurdles that impede making progress in integrity building.ConCept note1st African Water Integrity Learning Summit “Accelerating Towards a Water Secure World”29-30 April | Lusaka, ZambiaEmpowered lives. Resilient nations. ProgrammeThe summit programme will be split into two main sections:Day 1: Thematic workstreams, aiming at knowledge and experience sharing, as well as at stocktaking of success, challenges and bottlenecks. Day 1 will attempt to maximise cross-fertilisation between regions and address the summit sub-themes based on case studies.Day 2: Strategic outlook, aiming at reflections and building consensus orienting the following phase Water Integrity activities in Sub-Saharan Africa. Day 2 will identify priorities in regional sessions, and develop a common strategic outlook in plenary sessions. If possible, a shared vision for the way forward will be documented in the final Summit Declaration and submitted for consideration in relevant regional fora including the AMCOW General Assembly.How to ParticipateRegistration to the summit is free, and includes catering and conference materials. Places in the learning summit are limited. Please register for participation as soon as possible online via www.amiando.com/african_water_integrity_summitUnfortunately, we are not able to cover travel and accommodation to the conference. A limited number of travel grants will be available to support accepted presenters (see below). Registration will be closed on March 31st, 2014.Location of the summit will be:InterContinental HotelHaile Selassie AvenueLusaka, 10101ZambiaPhone: +260-211-250000How to ContributeThe organisers call on former participants of the regional capacity building programmes to share experiences and know-how, and brief each other on experiences in the development, usage and enforcement of particular tools, institutional arrangements and integrity action plans.Presenters of selected case studies will receive a full travel grant supporting their participation in thelearning summit.Please submit your case study electronically via the submission page by March 17th 2014. Please provide the title, abstract, sub-theme and regional origin of the proposed case study, and attach a full summary of the planned presentation using the templateto outline the background, challenges, activities, impacts and lessons-learned of the case study.Selected authors will be invited to hold a 10 minute oral presentation during the conference, further authors will be invited to contribute poster presentations. The case summaries of all selected authored will be published in full in the conference handbook and online.Selection of case studies will be based on their fit to the conference sub-themes, the potential to showcase essential lessons from the regional programme, their potential to inform future capacity building programmes on water integrity, as well as regional balance.ConCept note1st African Water Integrity Learning Summit “Accelerating Towards a Water Secure World”29-30 April | Lusaka, ZambiaEmpowered lives. Resilient nations. The ConvenersThe 1st African Water Integrity Summit is hosted by the Zambian Ministry of Mines, Energy and Water Development and organ-ised together with the UNDP-Water Governance Facility, The Water Integrity Network (WIN), UNDP/Cap-Net, WaterNet and the Stockholm International Water Institute (SIWI), in collaboration with the regional partners of the capacity development programme, the Economic Community Of West African States (ECOWAS), the East African Community - Lake Victoria Basin Commission (EAC - LVBC), and the Southern African Development Community (SADC).• For more information see: www.watergovernance.org/integrity/summit • For questions regarding the conceptual framework and programme please contact: alsummit@ellen-pfeiffer.de • If you have general questions regarding the Water Integrity Summit, please contact: helene.ledeunff@siwi.orgReferences[1] Economic Commission for Africa, African Union, and African Development Bank, “The Africa Water Vision for 2025: Equitable and Sustainable Use of Water for Socioeconomic Development,” 2009.[2] African Ministers’ Council on Water (AMCOW), “A Snapshot of Drinking Water and Sanitation in Africa – 2012 Update. A regional perspective based on new data from the WHO/UNICEF Joint Monitoring Programme for Water Supply and Sanitation,” 2012.[3] Transparency International, Global Corruption Report 2008: Corruption in the Water Sector. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2008.[4] B. Dong, U. Dulleck, and B. Torgler, “Conditional corruption,” J. Econ. Psychol., vol. 33, no. 3, pp. 609–627, Jun. 2012.[5] M. A. Guerrero and E. Rodríguez-Oreggia, “On the individual decisions to commit corruption: A methodological complement,” J. Econ. Behav. Organ., vol. 65, no. 2, pp. 357–372, Feb. 2008.