When water is scarce, who decides on water allocation, and how? New research examines integrity risks in water allocation in the face of climate change, with a focus on water permittings systems. "Transparent rules, public registries of water rights, clear sustainability limits, and accessible grievance mechanisms help ensure that water allocation adapts to scarcity and climate change without systematically disadvantaging certain groups." In brief: The systems built to decide who gets water, and how much, are struggling to keep pace with the new realities of climate change and unpredictable water flows. This research looks at different water allocation system and focuses on water permits, which are particularly vulnerable to corruption and integrity risk. Evidence from Zimbabwe, South Africa, Mexico, India, Pakistan, Indonesia, Tanzania and Spain shows that corruption, political interference, and opaque decision-making are undermining who gets access to water, and that climate change is making this worse. The paper proposes a framework for understanding integrity and integrity risks at two levels: the integrity of water allocation systems themselves, and the integrity of the administrative processes used to implement them. There is risk embedded in policy design, legal frameworks, and system structures, and these tend to disadvantage marginalised users. Fair, transparent and accountable allocation systems are essential for protecting human rights, supporting ecosystems, reducing conflict and building climate resilience. DOWNLOAD Strengthening Integrity in Water Allocation Systems in the Face of Climate Change June 2026 This research was supported by the Deutsche Gesellschaft für Internationale Zusammenarbeit GmbH (GIZ). Keywords: Water allocation | Water permits | Water governance | Water resource management | Water corruption | Climate adaptation | Water integrity | Regulation Suggested citation: Galvin, M.; Schreiner, B.; van Koppen, B. (2026). Strengthening Integrity in Water Allocation Systems in the Face of Climate Change. Water Integrity Research. Berlin: Water Integrity Network (WIN). As climate change intensifies droughts, floods and uncertainty, difficult decisions about who gets access to water are becoming increasingly common. Drawing on academic literature alongside in-depth practitioner interviews, this research looks at the systems built to manage these tough decisions and exposes their vulnerabilities. The paper looks at transboundary water allocation systems and national allocation systems. It zooms in on water permits, showing significant integrity risks at each stage of the water permitting cycle. These include burdensome application requirements that exclude small-scale and marginalised users; bribery to expedite permits or weaken conditions; manipulation of water availability models to justify allocations; political interference in decision-making; and selective enforcement that protects powerful users while penalising smaller ones. These are integrity risks to how the system is used and implemented in practice. There are also integrity risks in how the systems are conceived and financed. Interviews reveal how deep, systematic failures and exclusions can be built into the system. Climate change amplifies existing integrity risks. Increased scarcity raises the stakes of every allocation decision. Emergency or drought-response powers can be misused to bypass normal protections. Historical hydrological data is becoming less reliable, creating new opportunities for model manipulation. And already-marginalised groups are most exposed when water is scarce. Urgent action is needed to strengthen our systems. There are some good examples to learn from, including Kenya's tiered permit system that deliberately reduces administrative burden on small users, or community-based collective water concessions in Mexico. Based on these examples and more, the paper closes with practical recommendations for integrity, for government officials, civil society, international organisations, and donors working on water governance reform, water tenure, and climate adaptation.

How do residents of informal settlements decide where to get water in informal settlements of Khulna and what are the challenges they face in doing so? Is there transparent information available to them? Is there accountability for the systems that are built in the neighbourhood? A working paper by WIN partner, the Bangladesh Water Partnership Download the full working paper: Key topics covered: Integrity assessment; water integrity risk mapping, service delivery in informal settlements and the roles of NGOs, utilities, and communities in setting them up and managing them over time; water quality and maintenance challenges; corruption challenges. Key findings: Residents want more transparency on their water systems, water quality, and maintenance. There are also significant accountability concerns in how water systems are set up and maintained in informal settlements, including illegal abstraction linked to ineffective regulation enforcement, unclear mandates for service provision, and absence of mechanisms to share concerns or get responses. Geographies: Khulna, Bangladesh Who should read this: Researchers and practitioners focusing on service delivery in informal settlements, to understand root causes of service challenges. Abstract Access to safe water, sanitation, and hygiene (WASH) services in low-income and informal settlements in Bangladesh is constrained by governance weaknesses, lack of accountability, fragmented mandates, and uneven institutional responsiveness. This paper examines integrity-related barriers to WASH service delivery in Montu Kaloni and Nurani Mahalla in Khulna, both in the service jurisdiction of the Khulna Water Supply and Sewerage Authority (KWASA). Applying the Transparency, Accountability, Participation, and Anti-Corruption (TAPA) framework developed by the Water Integrity Network (WIN), the study adopts a mixed-methods design combining field observations, focus group discussions, key informant interviews, and structured household surveys (n = 40 per settlement). Integrity issues were assessed using a five-point Likert scale (Very low–Very high), standardized to a 1–10 scale, and subsequently aggregated through the Analytic Hierarchy Process (AHP) to derive weighted integrity deficiency scores and rankings. AHP prioritization assigns the highest normative weight to transparency (46.6%), followed by accountability (27.7%), participation (16.1%), and anti-corruption (9.6%), reflecting stakeholders’ perception of governance importance. Transparency is seen by communities as being critical for integrity in service provision, while anti-corruption actions are given the lowest rating largely because they are seen as intransigent issues that are hard to address. Aggregated deficiency results reveal a contrasting empirical pattern in informal settlements. Across the study area, accountability-related deficiencies account for 69% of total integrity deficiency, compared to 22% under transparency, 7% under participation, and 2% under anti-corruption. Overall integrity deficiency is 2.32 times higher in Montu Kaloni than in Nurani Mahalla; specifically, Montu Kaloni records 1.99, 2.44 and 1.80 times higher deficiencies under transparency, accountability, and participation respectively, while anti-corruption-related deficiency (2%) is observed only in Montu Kaloni and is absent in Nurani Mahalla. Transparency deficiencies constitute 21% of total integrity gaps in Montu Kaloni and 24% in Nurani Mahalla, while participation deficiencies represent 7% and 9% respectively. Resident fetching water from community tube well in Nurani Mahalla - photo courtesy of the author (Banlgadesh Water Partnership) Issue-level AHP and Likert-based ranking clarifies the drivers of integrity deficiency. The highest-ranked issue—indiscriminate use of submersible groundwater systems—reflects weak regulatory enforcement, inadequate service coverage, and ineffective oversight of groundwater abstraction and water quality management. Political mediation required for new connections in disputed settlements ranks second, revealing dependence on informal power structures and the absence of clearly operationalized legal mandates for service provision in contested land areas. Lack of knowledge regarding grievance submission procedures and limited awareness of formal application processes indicate failures in public communication on services and institutional responsibility for ensuring that communities understand their rights and entitlements. Collectively, these findings demonstrate that while transparency carries the highest theoretical weight, structural accountability failures—stemming from unclear mandates, land tenure constraints, weak enforcement, limited grievance redress, and fragmented institutional coordination—dominate in practice. Participation gaps reflect restricted community engagement, donor-driven planning processes, and limited awareness of civic rights, while anti-corruption concerns remain comparatively limited but embedded within broader governance weaknesses. By presenting TAPA weightage alongside aggregated integrity deficiency and ranked issue-level evidence, the study demonstrates a clear divergence between normative governance prioritization and empirical integrity breakdown in informal settlements. Strengthening WASH governance therefore requires integrated improvements across all TAPA dimensions, with particular emphasis on institutionalized accountability, improved transparency of service standards and tariffs, inclusive participation mechanisms, and enforceable anti-corruption safeguards to achieve equitable urban service delivery. Shallow tube well (Lobon Panir Kall) - photo courtesy of the author (Banlgadesh Water Partnership)

by Barbara Schreiner, Executive Director, Water Integrity Network In 2006, a small group of people came together to do something that had never been done before: to name corruption as a water and sanitation crisis, and to do something about it. Founded by IRC, SIWI, Swedish Water House, Transparency International, and the World Bank Water and Sanitation Programme, the Water Integrity Network was born out of growing concerns among water and anti-corruption stakeholders that integrity failures were undermining the sector's ability to serve people, especially the poorest. “Globally, the water sector is riddled with corruption that often negates the impact of development and hits the poor most severely. Corruption reduces water supply, quantitatively and qualitatively, and increases scarcity and pollution. It distorts decision-making for new projects and misallocation of existing schemes. Corruption also skews democratic principles, reduces the domain of public action and ultimately undermines the rule of civil society. Corruption stunts water development and makes it harder and costlier to reach the Millennium Development Goals on poverty, water supply and sanitation services and environmental sustainability.” (WIN 2007) Twenty years on, the mission is the same, but the world around us has changed and demands an innovative response. --- What two decades of work has built For a long time corruption in the sector was widely acknowledged in hushed tones and rarely addressed head-on. WIN helped change that. Today, WIN works with over 65 network partners and allies, running country programmes in Bangladesh, Kenya and Uganda as well as projects across Southern and Eastern Africa and Latin America. WIN develops practical integrity risk mitigation strategies with civil society, utilities, small service providers, regulators, and local governments. We train more than 200 water professionals on integrity topics every year and contribute extensively to global and national research and integrity advocacy. Together with partners, we have made it clear that the sector benefits from integrity: not just accepting the status quo and the losses from corruption. We have also shown there are many ways sector stakeholders can promote change, starting from within the sector.Utilities serving over 13 million users in Bangladesh, Kenya, Bolivia, Peru, Mexico and Uganda have used integrity tools to diagnoses internal risks and work on procedural changes for field operations, improved accounting systems, as well as stronger grievance mechanisms, public hearings and user communications. This means they lose less and account for more, and in the process, they reduced non-revenue water levels, improved reputation and position in regulatory rankings, improved response time for connections and repairs, and closed off easy opportunities for fraud. In Kenya, Mexico, Bangladesh, and Nepal, integrity management improvements among community groups—often starting small, with posting tariffs publicly or setting up user communication channels, recording expenses, or building links to local officials—rebuilt trust between users and providers and improved their financial position enough to pay off bills and expand their systems. We expanded accountability mechanisms in multiple programmes: with regulatory reforms towards formalisation in Honduras and Kenya and especially with support to social accountability campaigns and groups. In Kenya, youth parliaments developed tools to monitor whether politicians delivered on their campaign promises for water and sanitation. In Nepal, WIN facilitated the creation of a WASH Media Forum. In Mexico, civil society partners co-created the Chiapas Water Agenda, securing written commitments from 14 deputies and 9 electoral candidates on water governance reform. Integrity-informed advocacy has also reshaped how budgets are allocated, how contracts are set up, and how bills are paid: schools increased budgets for school WASH in Bangladesh based on results of integrity assessments. Local municipalities did the same in Guatemala for local WASH services. In Mozambique, integrity-focused advocacy protected the sector from major budget cuts. In Zambia, government responded to integrity advocacy by making sure overdue utility bills of public institutions were paid. Perhaps the least visible but most foundational part of WIN's contribution has been to break the silence. We do this with research and networking, for example around the publications of the Water Integrity Global Outlook and with more specific groundbreaking research on sexual corruption or water services in informal settlements. We make problems likes corruption something we can do something about, rather than just suffer through. --- Why this work cannot stop None of this means the work is done. Far from it. Ensuring universal access to clean water and sanitation requires a three-fold increase in investments. Without integrity at the heart of that investment surge and the systems that manage it, more money will simply mean more waste, more capture by vested interests, and more broken promises to the communities waiting for safe water. With climate change, and as floods and droughts compound existing fragilities, the risk of rushed spending and misallocation, bypassed procurement rules, and emergency funds diverted from those most in need will only grow. WIN's work on water integrity and climate adaptation may be its most consequential yet. --- The crisis we cannot ignore Yet today, the space for integrity work is shrinking in ways we could not have imagined a few years ago. Across the world, civic space is closing: civil society organisations face increasing restrictions, watchdog groups are silenced, and environmental defenders — including those fighting for water justice — are imprisoned or killed. The rise of autocratic and populist movements has brought with it a systematic dismantling of transparency mechanisms, independent media, and accountability institutions. For the poorest and most marginalised communities, who depend on these safeguards to have any voice at all, this is a direct assault on their ability to claim their right to safe water and decent sanitation. And precisely at the moment of greatest need, the funding environment for this work has turned hostile. For the WIN network, which has relied on the support of governments committed to development, this is not an abstract trend. It is an existential pressure. The work that has taken twenty years to build — the country coalitions, the training programmes, the research, the tools — is now at risk of being dismantled not because it has failed, but because the political will to fund it is faltering. --- Twenty years and still needed The case for integrity work is stronger now than it has ever been. When budgets are squeezed and every aid dollar must stretch further, the last thing the sector can afford is to lose a portion of every dollar to corruption and mismanagement. Integrity work is not a luxury for good times — it is precisely what is needed when resources are scarce. Integrity is the mechanism by which every available dollar reaches the people it was meant for. It is how the poor secure a voice, a seat at the table, and a claim to the water that keeps them alive. WIN's twentieth anniversary is not a moment to rest. It is a moment to think creatively about what comes next and how to overcome the constraints we are operating within. Success will require new kinds of funding, courage, and a new level of collaboration. Relationships, not capital alone, will define who can sustain this work. Networks like WIN exist precisely for this moment: to connect the people and organisations who share this mission and help them achieve more together than any could alone. Twenty years ago, a small group of organisations came together because they believed that corruption in water and sanitation was both a cause and a consequence of poverty, and that naming it honestly was the first step to changing it. That belief is as true today as it was in 2006. The work continues: mark this moment and help us carry it forward, with transparency, accountability, participation, and anti-corruption. If this work matters to you — if you believe that every dollar invested in water should reach the people it was meant for and who need it most — then make that visible. Share this piece. Bring up transparency, accountability, participation, and anti-corruption at your next meeting. Connect us with others who share this mission. (You can also donate here)

Join us to achieve SDGs through transparency and collective action. 65+ global partners committed to a just world with decent water access. Become a WIN partner Application form A global network for integrity action WIN is a global, open network of individuals and organisations. We bring people together with integrity as a guiding principle, to improve water management and service delivery. We work with more than 65 partners from all over the world, including civil society organisations, international development organisations, sector funders, water and sanitation service providers, regulators, and associations. Formal WIN partners publicly commit to launching integrity initiatives and are supported by the WIN team. Partnership is a voluntary process to strengthen collaboration and exchange. Funding is not guaranteed. READ WIN PARTNERSHIP POLICY READ CODE OF CONDUCT FOR WIN PARTNERS Please tell us about your organisation and how we can contact you Organisation* First name of contact person Last name of contact person Email* Address of organisation Organisation website Where do you work? (Geographical scope) What do you do? Please tell us more about why you want to join WIN and about your work on integrity Why does your organisation wish to join the Water Integrity Network?* How does your organisation wish to engage with the network? Joint advocacy Joint research Knowledge sharing, discussions, working groups Using or promoting integrity tools Other Which areas of work are you most keen to explore? Climate adaptation Urban water Sanitation and CWIS Rural WASH and community-based water and sanitation Water and sanitation finance Water allocation and resource management Other Does your organisation already promote integrity in the water and sanitation sectors, and if so, how (specific examples are appreciated)?* I have read and agree to the WIN partnership policy I have read and will respect the WIN partner code of conduct I affirm that my organisation does not discriminate or exclude groups or individuals and is not convicted for human rights violations or corruption. Yes, please subscribe me to the WIN mailing list to receive newsletters and event invitations Submit

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Training and open, online courses on water integrity, integrity for water and sanitation in informal settlements, utilities, regulators, government, and more Water Integrity Academy FREE online self-paced courses on integrity for people working in or studying water and sanitation. Bespoke presentations and training on integrity risks and tools. GET IN TOUCH Online courses What we do? ONLINE COURSES HYBRID COURSES TAILORED TRAINING DEVELOPMENT OF ONLINE COURSES FAQ Online courses 1 2 To suggest new training topics, get answers, or share feedback, get in touch! CONTACT WIN FAQ Why follow a course on water integrity? Integrity plays a crucial and overlooked role in improving water and sanitation financing and programme development. WIN training will help water and sanitation professionals better understand the risks that can undermine their work and their institution’s reputation. Participants will also learn to identify the root causes of corruption and poor integrity, develop innovative approaches, and deliver projects that are more transparent, accountable, and participatory. How do I enroll? To register for online courses, click on the descriptions of the course(s) you wish to enroll in and follow the registration links. Most courses are held on the Moodle educational platform for which you will need to register using your email address. What are the requirements to join a course? WIN’s online courses are for anyone who would like to learn more about integrity and corruption in the water and sanitation sectors, and no prior knowledge or experience is required. An internet connection and device to access the courses are the only technical requirements. How can I get a certificate? All of our online courses offer the option to obtain a certificate of completion. Once you have successfully completed all the course requirements and met the passing criteria, you will be eligible to request your certificate. Certificates are issued upon payment of a fee, which can be made after you have completed the course. Does WIN offer any in-person courses? Currently, all free courses are being offered online only, where participants can join at their own pace. WIN does provide (paid) bespoke trainings to organisations on demand. To explore opportunities for collaboration, please contact the WIN programme lead for capacity development at info@win-s.org DOWNLOAD CURRENT COURSE CATALOGUE (English) DESCARGAR EL CATÁLOGO DE CURSOS (en español) "Being a water professional who is into designing of treatment processes and analysis, this course gave me a different perspective on how water integrity can be achieved and how corruption stopped in an organisation. This is very important when tackling SDGs." Water Integrity Basics course participant, UAE More courses - coming soon Stay in the loop Sign up for notifications when new courses and sessions open. Email* Do you have a preferred language for courses? Select options for specific notifications New topics, new courses Integrity basics Service in informal settlements Submit