About

The CEO Water Mandate is a special initiative of the UN Secretary-General and the UN Global Compact, providing a multi-stakeholder platform for the development, implementation, and disclosure of corporate water sustainability policies and practices. The UN Global Compact is the world’s largest corporate sustainability initiative with over 7000 corporate participants and other stakeholders from more than 140 countries. The UN Global Compact is based on ten principles in the areas of human rights, labor standards, the environment, and anti-corruption.

This piece of work was commissioned by the International Water Stewardship Programme (IWaSP). IWaSP is an innovative donor funded programme that improves water security for communities and businesses in watersheds around the world by supporting good corporate water stewardship and multi-stakeholder collective action. IWaSP is implemented by the Deutsche Gesellschaft für Internationale Zusammenarbeit (GIZ), on behalf of the German Federal Ministry for Economic Cooperation and Development (BMZ) and the UK Department for International Development (DFID).

With funding support from Deutsche Gesellschaft für Internationale Zusammenarbeit (GIZ), the project co-leads, the UN Global Compact CEO Water Mandate (Mandate) and the Water Integrity Network (WIN) — in collaboration with Partnerships in Practice, Ltd., Pegasys Strategy and Development, Ltd., and Water Witness International — have developed this good practice guide for WSI integrity management. The guide includes a practical framework and quality management processes together with a suite of practical supporting tools geared toward ensuring high levels of integrity and transparency in WSIs. The guide is primarily targeted at WSI practitioners, those individuals responsible for facilitating or implementing the WSI or who are active participants within a WSI. The guide may also be useful for those external audiences interested in understanding how to ensure or promote effective, equitable, and sustainable WSIs in a basin.

The development of these guidelines occurred over four stages and involved extensive research and multi-stakeholder consultations. During this process, the project team undertook desk-based research; held more than 90 multi-stakeholder interviews; convened roundtable discussions in Paris, Lusaka, Lima, London, and Stockholm; and held validation workshops in South Africa, Peru, and India. The project team also regularly consulted with the Integrity in Water Stewardship Initiatives Advisory Board, a group of experts and practitioners representing companies, development agencies, NGOs, journalists, and others with familiarity and expertise in WSIs. The team also consulted with the CEO Water Mandate’s Collective Action Working Group, composed of representatives from a subset of Mandate-endorsing companies.

The first stage of this project involved the development of a desk study that drew upon an extensive literature review and bilateral interviews to help frame the issue of integrity in WSIs and fed into the development of a field assessment methodology. The second stage involved an intensive field assessment and consultation process to understand the actual integrity issues facing WSIs on the ground. These findings were used during the project’s third phase to develop initial guidance and a framework with supporting tools for managing the integrity of WSIs. The framework was subsequently tested via validation workshops and further refined, resulting in these final guidelines.