As the world ramps up aid to help vulnerable countries tackle climate change, systems are needed to prevent graft, researchers say
LONDON (AlertNet) - Putting in place systems to prevent corruption will be crucial as the world prepares to spend huge sums on curbing climate change and tackling its impacts, experts say.
Anti-graft efforts are particularly important because a hefty share of climate assistance funds and investments are expected to go to emerging market countries like China and Bangladesh that already face a host of problems, from climate-related disasters to weak rule of law.
That was the message at a conference in London this week, hosted by think tank Chatham House, on the risk corruption poses to the global climate change response.
“Unless we address the imperative of good governance solutions… the whole global economic recovery, I would argue, is severely at risk,” said Alyson Warhurst, chief executive of Maplecroft, a global risk analysis firm.
At U.N. climate talks, rich nations have promised to provide $30 billion by 2012 to help poorer, vulnerable countries adapt to climate change and limit their emissions, pledging to raise that amount to $100 billion a year by 2020.
By 2030, the World Bank predicts annual flows of climate aid could reach $139 billion to $175 billion, substantially more than current worldwide spending on foreign aid.
But spending that money effectively will be a huge challenge, according to experts at the conference.
For example, much of the world’s tropical forest - considered key to storing carbon and limiting global warming - is in countries like Democratic Republic of Congo and Indonesia where corruption is a longstanding problem.
A major report from anti-graft watchdog Transparency International, released in April, described climate change as “arguably the greatest governance challenge the world has ever faced”.
But “a dramatic strengthening of governance mechanisms can reduce corruption risk and make climate change policy more effective and more successful”, it said.
CARBON MARKET, FOREST RISKS
Speakers at the conference, which reflected on the findings of the report, noted that corruption risks are particularly high in carbon markets, programmes to preserve forests, and projects under the Kyoto Protocol’s Clean Development Mechanism (CDM). The CDM allows rich nations to offset their greenhouse gas emissions by supporting emissions-reducing projects in poor countries.
Protection work in remote forest areas is difficult to monitor, said Fiona Napier, associate director of Global Witness, an organisation that investigates resource extraction and human rights issues.
And carbon markets, with their multiple layers of trading in intangible assets, are a magnet for corruption, she added.
“You couldn’t design a better instrument for corruption as far as we can work out,” she said.
CDM regulations, meanwhile, are a “labyrinth”, said Peter Newell, a climate and corruption expert at the University of Sussex. In some countries, the people charged with signing off on the projects are the same ones developing and even auditing them, he noted.
One of the challenges in tracking climate change assistance is that it is coming from a still-expanding variety of sources – governments, taxes, carbon markets and private investment - and will be distributed by an equally large range of emerging funds, said Lisa Elges, a programme manager for Transparency International.
At least two dozen separate climate funds are already taking applications, research shows.
Among the measures needed to prevent corruption are more transparency and better enforcement of rules, stronger oversight by civil society and improved use of new technology for things like forest monitoring, the Transparency International report said.
With money starting to flow, pressure is growing to put good rules in place and ensure money goes to the countries and projects most likely to succeed, said David King, Britain’s former chief science adviser and director of the Smith School of Enterprise and the Environment at the University of Oxford.
“The situation is far too important to wait until we have ‘perfect,’” King said. That “would leave us completely in the lurch. We need rapid action.”
(Editing by Megan Rowling)
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