Interview with Keynote Speakers at the Water Integrity Forum

With Daniel Valensuela, OIEAU

Daniel Valensuela – OIEau. Daniel Valensuela is a co-convener in one of the Work Streams at the Water Integrity Forum. He has worked with the GWP Secretariat for six years, where he focused on IWRM and partnerships in countries (mainly Africa), and then joined INBO and IOWater, working on institutional reform, IWRM at basin scale, water governance at national, basin and trans-boundary levels. Here he shares his expectations on the first Water Integrity Forum and his thoughts on water integrity in general.

 

What are your expectations from this Forum?

Better understanding from participant about what water integrity means and some commitment for it, particularly until the next WWF 7 in Korea (why not a handbook on water integrity for instance?).

 

How do you think that this Forum can help increase water integrity?

In term of concrete results, we have to stay humble at first …. But at the same time, this forum can clearly put the concept of integrity (and in more details, corruption, participation, transparency, information, …) at a high level in the agenda of future events (maybe something to think about for the General Assembly of INBO in Brazil, Fortaleza 11 – 17 August 2013 for instance) and particularly help to put INTEGRITY in the agenda of the Korea World Water Forum – in my opinion the next WWF should be not focus only on technical aspects …
Also, some tools and ways of managing can be a starting point for participants to be used in their own contexts (country, basin …).

 

Which specific actions do you think could promote participation and transparency in the water sector?

  • Develop a handbook on practical / concrete actions which help government and all bodies to go towards more integrity in water sector in different scales.
  • Develop as example a set of training sessions about it and implement at least one session in every region

 

What current and future challenges do you see to reducing corruption in this sector?

  • How to include the private water sector (which is absolutely needed for success).
  • Information = power, therefore, who has information does not always want to share it.
  • To show, to demonstrate, to prove that integrity and its all components (participation, transparency etc…) can be win- win for all, including the richest and powerful people …

 

What can you do?

You can take simple steps to launch an integrity change process. Here are the tools to help you.

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