Climate change and the
threats it poses to sustainable economic development is now dominating and
challenging the international development agenda. Corruption, as often, is the
blind spot of many academic, political and policy debates on climate change,
while corruption has an impact on every policy related to climate change and
the policy frameworks impact corruption in their turn. Thus, it is without any
doubt, illogical and inefficient to consider them separately. If we didn’t, we
would do a better job in addressing climate change and its consequences since
while it is not inevitable that many corruption cases in climate
finance will come to light, some of the ingredients that
will foster such an outcome are in place.
The
growing demands of the climate change agenda and the fight against corruption
Climate change
basically requires two different courses of action; mitigation to reduce
emissions and stop further climate change on the one hand, and adaptation to
the effects of climate change that are already being felt on the other. Yet,
climate change governance goes beyond greenhouse gas emissions and their negative
effect on the environment as it is linked to major issues of development such
as the delivery of basic public services, especially to the poor, public
financial management, sustainable national development strategies and energy
policies, and financing for aid and technical assistance. Tackling the role of
corruption in many of the above areas is crucial to achieving better sustainable
development outcomes, and, as a result, climate change must be an area of key
concern for anti-corruption stakeholders.
In Cameroon, the government
has acknowledged that corruption and poor governance are
hampering the fight against climate change. Transparency International’s Global
Corruption Report: Climate Change highlighted the role of good governance and transparency in
integrating the many policy agendas that affect climate change, and proposed opportunities
for employing anti-corruption tools in preventative climate change mechanisms
(green branding) or market-driven reform (carbon trading schemes and projects
within the Clean Development Mechanism (CDM); and Reducing Emissions from
Deforestation and Forest Degradation and Conserving and Enhancing Forest Carbon
Stocks (REDD+). Ironically, the large sums of money being spent on capacity
building activities – training seminars and other similar programmes –
needed to effectively implement the climate governance interventions and their
associated expenses such as hotel costs and participants’ allowances are now threatening to curtail efforts to support meaningful climate action at the local
level. No wonder in many African countries such as Kenya, climate change is now
a major cash cow for corrupt public officials who are engaging in vicious fights to control the windfall.
Aspects
of the international development agenda relevant to climate change and
corruption issues
At first glance, it might seem unintuitive to
link climate change and corruption issues. Corruption is one of the causes of
climate change and existing interventions to address climate change already
highlight corruption risk. Approaches to mitigating or adapting to climate
change which take the form of public policy reform, such as via increased
carbon taxes, or are market driven, such as carbon trading under the CDM in the
natural resources and energy markets are affected by corruption and in turn
impact climate change.
Corruption is thus a
critical component of responses to climate change at all levels and it should
be integrated in all aspects of climate change planning and decision making. While
it is widely acknowledged that corruption has significant negative effects on
natural resource management and the environment, the evidence of such impacts are
still limited. What’s more, there is greater uncertainty on how policies to
reduce corruption in sectors such as forestry, fisheries, and water management
should be developed and what they may consist of given the risk, for instance,
that they might criminalize the rural
poor.
Corruption aspects of climate change are thus a matter of justice, human
rights, and human security. The use of transparency and accountability measures
when dealing with the effects of climate change – such as in relief and aid in mass
migration, food scarcity, drought, flood, post-disaster settings – imply the
anti-corruption community must adapt or apply existing mechanisms/solutions
wherever appropriate as it increasingly gets involved in the climate change
debate so that they reduce, or at least do not increase the corruption risk.
Need
for cooperation across many sectors (public and private; energy and finance and
agriculture; national and international) if change is to be sustainable,
effective and successful
As we move towards the July
inter-governmental meeting to hammer out a new framework for global finance in
Addis Ababa and the December 21st meeting of the COP in Paris to
sign a new global agreement to control human-induced climate change, the policy
frameworks that will govern climate change in future need to be more responsive
to the demands by citizens
worldwide for increased accountability and transparency. To reduce the risk of
corruption associated with climate finance, solutions will require
international and even greater intra-national cooperation, such as the better
coordination of the environmental and finance agendas. The concern of citizens,
of people, must drive this cooperation and the solutions sought must be equitable
which is the reason why stakeholders from both areas now need to work together
to find solutions.
