World Wildlife FundTargeting Natural Resource CorruptionTRNC Recourses
This introductory resource guide outlines the impact of illicit financial flows on conservation goals and approaches that can help conservation and natural resource management practitioners to strengthen their programming and related responses.
The forestry sector is immensely important to Tanzania’s economy but corruption robs much of the revenue and the government’s ability to effectively manage timber harvesting. This practice note from TNRC partner TRAFFIC explores how the timber tracking system has improved data management and traceability along Tanzania’s timber products supply chain. Additionally, it shares the experiences, views, gaps, and challenges encountered and suggestions for further improvements of the frontline users of the system.
In 2021, TRAFFIC, together with UNODC, released a case digest presenting “An Initial Analysis of the Financial Flows and Payment Mechanisms Behind Wildlife and Forest Crime.” To assess how information in such analyses is received and acted upon by the financial sector, TRAFFIC experts from the Targeting Natural Resource Corruption project performed a series of semi-structured interviews in 2022. Nine representatives from eight financial institutions were consulted. Those interviews shed important light on good practices for communicating with the finance sector to strengthen results.
How can big data help address corruption in the forestry sector? New research undertaken by data analysts and financial flows experts at TRAFFIC and the Basel Institute on Governance under the Targeting Natural Resource Corruption project is testing new methods for automating data collection and analysis techniques used in other sectors to identify corrupt actors from the point of allocation of forest access rights. This blog post captures expert insights and responses to practitioner questions raised in a TNRC Learning Series Webinar on this topic.
Financial investigations are essential for enabling investigators to trace, seize and eventually confiscate the proceeds and instrumentalities of environmental crimes. Such investigations also help to identify the high-level actors behind wildlife trafficking, illegal unreported and unregulated (IUU) fishing, illegal logging, illegal mining and other activities and who profits from them. During an online discussion among members of the United Nations Convention against Corruption (UNCAC) Coalition’s Environmental Crime and Corruption working group, the use of financial tools emerged as the still-missing element in environmental crime investigations. Under the TNRC project, the Basel Institute on Governance shared high-level learning on good practice from financial investigations and asset recovery research conducted in the June 2022 meeting.
Anti-corruption work in conservation is challenging and comes with all kinds of risks. Understanding the consequences of corruption in conservation, as well as the risks from working in anti-corruption is important for avoiding harm and achieving conservations goals. This blog examines and shares learning and advice about the topic of “risk,” as it relates to conservation and anti-corruption. More broadly, two categories are discussed: the risks corruption poses to conservation projects, and the risks that anti-corruption efforts in conservation may pose to those who implement them.
