Earlier this month, news outlets reported that Day Zero — the day that Cape Town, South Africa would officially run out of water — will no longer fall this year.
Whatever form it takes, corruption and lack of integrity in the water sector has profound effects because it ultimately makes water services more difficult to access, and especially the poor, marginalized and voiceless are affected most.
Acknowledging the role of corruption in growing water scarcity is important because too often the problem is examined only as a climate change issue.
This is not to negate the importance of addressing climate change as a factor — but without a comprehensive understanding of how the effects of climate change are exacerbated by poor governance, solutions that are put forward for climate-related problems such as water scarcity may be rendered ineffective.
In a handbook TI has designed for journalists interested in covering climate finance corruption, it is stated that the “stakes involved in financing such programmes are high; how these funds are spent could save the lives of millions now, and ensure billions in the future are set on a safe path.” But they also warn that the governance structures involved in responding to climate change problems may not be strong enough to manage the threats effectively, pointing out that “some of the most climate-vulnerable countries in the world also fare the worst on their Corruption Perceptions Index.” A noteworthy example from TI’s research and investigations into tracking where climate finance actually ends is that of $3.1 million of national climate funding being used to build ‘climate resilient housing’ in south-west Bangladesh, in the aftermath of Cyclone Aila.
Water scarcity is more and more so being viewed as a climate change problem, a problem that will inevitably require climate finance in order to fund projects that make the water sector more ‘climate ready.’ In 2014–2015, around US$4.1 billion was given to the Water Supply and Sanitation sector globally, making up about 9 per cent of total climate-related development finance.
Connecting the dots — the role of journalists What investigations into climate finance by organisations such as TI and GermanWatch bring to fore is that climate finance is not something that can simply be slapped on to climate change problems such as water scarcity.
Rather as TI puts it, ‘we need to highlight corruption cases in climate finance to make climate finance work better, not because we think climate finance is a bad idea.’ The workshop organised by TI and WIN in February aimed to emphasise two main points; first, that some very pertinent and relevant societal issues are aggravated by corruption, and second, that journalists need to make that connection in their reporting so as to improve wider understanding of how these problems are being mismanaged, and what factors might hinder the effectiveness of their solutions.
From WIN’s perspective, investigations into the water sector are pivotal to revealing corrupt practices that affect water availability.
TI’s presentation on climate change highlighted that ‘climate change communicators have done a good job of turning technical topics such as greenhouse gas emissions into a widely understood and recognised problem’; however, journalists need to bring the conversation further by shedding the same light on the solutions available for these problems, starting with climate finance.