Featured Programmes
Green Corruption
Our Green Corruption programme is a standout example of how we empower, enable and connect practitioners to collectively address corruption as an obstacle to progress on global challenges.
Safeguarding our environment by ensuring a successful energy transition is one of humanity’s greatest challenges – one that is deeply connected to stability, security, peace and economic development.
However, corruption undermines global efforts to combat climate change and environmental degradation. It enables illegal exploitation of natural resources, weakens environmental policies, facilitates organised environmental crimes and diverts critical funds meant for energy transition and climate change adaptation and mitigation.
The Green Corruption programme at the Basel Institute on Governance is a multi-disciplinary initiative that applies anti-corruption and governance tools to environmental and energy transition-related challenges. Our work prioritises efforts to safeguard forests and critical minerals.
How we work
We collaborate with governments, the private sector, and civil society across the world, with team members based and working with partners in Ukraine, Indonesia, Madagascar, Malawi, Uganda, Peru, Bolivia and Ecuador.
Our team includes specialists in financial investigations, asset recovery, corruption risk mitigation, internal controls and environmental crime. We work hands-on with local partners in the public, private and civil society sectors to, among other things:
Secure supply chains for minerals
critical to the energy transition, such as lithium, nickel and germanium.
Build robust internal controls
for our partners entrusted with protecting and sustainably utilising natural resources.
Bring environmental criminals to justice
and recover illicit assets.
Enhance corruption safeguards
in green finance mechanisms.
Convene practitioners
in the green corruption space from around the world to learn from each other and bolster each other’s efforts.
4 February 2025
Peter Maurer on new priorities in addressing corruption, environment and climate challenges
Read more
28 November 2024
How integrity risk assessments can support Indonesian SOEs in reaching their goals
Read more
28 November 2024
Protecting forests through corruption prevention: videos on promising initiatives in Bolivia, Ecuador and Peru
Read more
10 November 2024
Joining forces to protect the Amazon forest and its communities from corruption
Read more
9 November 2024
Unidos para proteger los bosques amazónicos y a sus comunidades frente a la corrupción
Read more
2 September 2024
Managing corruption risks in the timber value chain: new three-country course in Latin America
Read more
24 May 2024
Building follow-the-money skills and networks to target environmental crime syndicates
Read more
16 May 2024
Peruvian region takes an important step towards protecting forests from corruption
Read more
20 February 2024
Combating corruption to protect the environment attracts high-level support
Read more
4 December 2023
Seedlings of hope: New report on promising efforts to address environmental corruption
Read more
27 September 2023
Andrea Gacki: How the U.S. Treasury Department is combatting green corruption
Read more
Our impact
Since 2018, the Green Corruption programme has driven tangible progress in efforts to understand, prevent and combat corruption affecting the environment. Drawing on expertise across the Basel Institute and its International Centre for Asset Recovery, we have applied a multi-pronged approach covering:
Enforcement
Training and assisting partner agencies to apply “follow the money” approaches to environmental crime cases. Some have now achieved their first ever asset recovery successes, including in cases targeting millions of dollars in assets linked to forestry, gold trafficking, illegal wildlife trade and more.
Prevention
Strengthening corruption prevention systems, such as codes of ethics, whistleblowing system, automation, business process optimisation, etc in government agencies and state-owned enterprises to ensure better management of natural resources such as timber and minerals.
Partnerships
Bridging the gap between anti-corruption, conservation and environmental crime experts through initiatives like the Countering Environmental Corruption Practitioners Forum.
Knowledge
Advancing research and awareness on how corruption and governance failures fuel environmental degradation and jeopardise the green transition, shaping global discussions and policy responses.
Our impact
Since 2018, the Green Corruption programme has driven tangible progress in efforts to understand, prevent and combat corruption affecting the environment.
Drawing on expertise across the Basel Institute and its International Centre for Asset Recovery, we have applied a multi-pronged approach covering:
Enforcement
Training and assisting partner agencies to apply “follow the money” approaches to environmental crime cases. Some have now achieved their first ever asset recovery successes, including in cases targeting millions of dollars in assets linked to forestry, gold trafficking, illegal wildlife trade and more.
Prevention
Strengthening corruption prevention systems, such as codes of ethics, whistleblowing system, automation, business process optimisation, etc in government agencies and state-owned enterprises to ensure better management of natural resources such as timber and minerals.
Partnerships
Bridging the gap between anti-corruption, conservation and environmental crime experts through initiatives like the Countering Environmental Corruption Practitioners Forum.
Knowledge
Advancing research and awareness on how corruption and governance failures fuel environmental degradation and jeopardise the green transition, shaping global discussions and policy responses.
By bringing our anti-corruption and governance expertise, we strengthen efforts to protect the environment, address climate change and ensure a just, sustainable future.
The Green Corruption programme has been the grateful recipient of multi-year core funding from the Principality of Liechtenstein and project funding from the United Kingdom, the United States and Switzerland.
Free resources
Countering Environmental Corruption Practitioners Forum
Join conservation and anti-corruption professionals from around the world in the Countering Environmental Corruption Practitioners Forum – an initiative of the Basel Institute, WWF, Transparency International and TRAFFIC launched in 2020.
Latest Publications
Browse research and analysis on Green Corruption
See all publications