As the negotiations in Doha, Qatar, unfold during the 18th UN Conference on Climate Change many of the issues that were discussed at the recent 15IACC have came to my mind. It was
a month ago that I had the pleasure to moderate the panel about sustainable development and transparency at the meeting in Brasilia.

At that opportunity, some of the panelists expressed optimism on multilateral efforts among countries to address urgent planetary problems. Others, nonetheless, have pointed that we are running late to save humanity, and corruption is part of the fail.

The participants were the ministry of Environment of Brazil, Izabella Teixeira, the acting president of the World Resources Institute (WRI), Manish Bapna, the director of World Vision International, Beris Gwyne, and the executive director of Greenpeace, Kumi Naido. The secretary of UNEP, Achim Steiner, has sent a video message.

Manish Bapna, Executive Vice President and Managing Director of the World Resources Institute

I ask them to give us an overview on their expectations after the agreement reached at the Rio+20 summit, in June this year. Minister Izabella was the optimist: she mentioned the start of a new moment, a new process to set the Sustainable Development Goals. But Kumi explained why he sees the agreement as the “longest suicidal note” in history. For him, governments are ceding to lobby of powerful sectors of economy, delaying action.

I thought that Manish Bapna brought new insights by mentioning that access to information can revolutionize the transparency movement. The reporter Jessica Weiss, one of the fellows of the young journalists grant, has wrote a nice piece on the ideas presented by the president of the WRI, see here

It was somehow surprising to me at the beginning to listen Steiner saying that it was not more laws, frameworks or conventions that we are lacking, but enforcement. Sounds obvious, but I like his examples on the necessity of giving governments technical capacity to be transparent, by equipping laboratories, environmental institutes and so on.

Beris Gwynne, from World Vision International, came with a broader issue to be discussed: the power itself of influencing decisions. Has the power really shifted hands with all the instruments and means of civil society participation, she asked?

I think the Kyoto Protocol, which the first period finishes this year, is a good example. Right now, while I sit in my office in rainy São Paulo the treaty is being discussed at the dry Arabian Peninsula. What this piece of international law represents on my life is difficult to know at the present. But, if the climate scenarios are confirmed, its failure could one day be felt by all in the future. When this moment arrives, will society look back and see the environmental degradation as a sign of corruption?

Gustavo Faleiros, Knight International Fellow

By Gustavo Faleiros. Gustavo is a Brazilian journalist, Knight International Fellow. He moderated the panel Rio+20: can we live in a corruption free World? at the 15th IACC

EN ESPAÑOL HACER CLICK AQUÍ

Have you ever wondered if it is possible that a country could exist without impunity? With people who are not willing to be corrupted? We know that corruption is like an evil tattoo on the globe’s skin, but perhaps in a “distant nation” that could live without bribes, no crooked acts would be able to “bite”.

To my knowledge, this nation today exists only in our imagination. However, there are thousands of people around the world who struggle to build a culture of accountability and anticorruption in their countries, and many of them were gathered at the 15th Conference of Anti-Corruption in Brasilia this month. From that conference, here are the most important points of the final declaration of the event, with related comments from Eduardo Bohorquez, director of the Mexico chapter of Transparency International Mexico, and some other experts (continued below photo).

Brazilian President Dilma Rousseff during the 15th IACC in Brasilia.

“Citizens, acting in coordination, can more effectively challenge governments, corporations, financial institutions, sports bodies or international organisations that neglect their duty towards them.”

“The secret is not the act of individuals alone, but empowering institutions,” said Barry O’Keefe, chairman of the 15th IACC in the plenary. He also mentioned that in order to happen a significant change in society, it must be through existing agencies, who must be at the service of civil society.

Bohorquez from TI Mexico added the importance of specialized media, that one focused on investigative journalism working with anticorruption issues in a local perspective.

“Secrecy in the world of money has meant trillions lost by developing countries. To restore their trust, transparency and accountability must be rooted in the financial system.”

The world’s financial system today allows easy international money movements. Similarly, individuals and institutions acting corruptly can hide and evade the law by these means.

Manfredo Marroquin, Acción Ciudadana AC president, said that the main problem in Latin America is that corruption is a tradition in the region: “In Latin America there is a historical dissociation between transparency and security. We have never combined both, there is a culture of secrecy “. As an example put the illegal financing of political parties, where there is no clear accountability in his country, Guatemala.

Moreover Bohorquez says the Mexican financial system is hurt by the “everyday corruption”, the one that affects most all families: “While searching the vast corruption control, you have to learn what hurts people, petty corruption, if you have less than a minimum wage, you spend 30% of your earnings in corruption, for drinking water, for roads, bribes so your child enters to the school you want … ”

“Empowerment of civil society to review the distribution of aid and the extraction of minerals is a key element.”

Manish Bampna, from the World Resources Institute , spoke on the importance of taking new technologies to combat corruption in the energy sector and in the environment: “In the near future I want to see that access to information extraction natural resources is a reality. ”

Furthermore, Kumi Naidoo, Executive Director of Greenpeace International, said that we are still far from reaching a treaty that will ensure sustainable development parallel to mankind’s current lifestyle. Referring to the outcome document of Rio +20, he was skeptical, “however, this is what we have and we should work with it” he said.

Bohorquez said that there are many complaints from the public services and the distribution of resources but few are those who wonder why it does not work. “Companies get bribes so they give concessions to friends, those who own certain companies”.

“In the realm of sports, fans and sponsors, players and athletes need power over the bodies that run their sport. These bodies should be encouraged to lead by example by upholding basic principles of integrity.”

Sports were discussed several times during the conference, especially because in less than two years Brazil will host the World Cup. To fight corruption in sports in Brazil, the  National Secretary for Football, Luis Antonio Paulino, announced that an Agency for Combating Corruption for Sport will be created.

The objective of this project is not only to stop corruption during the World Cup, but to set an example for the following tournaments. We will see how it goes.

(Andrea Arzaba, November 2012)

Greenpeace Executive Director Kumi Naidoo arrived yesterday to the 15th International Anti-corruption Conference. After discussing what we should commit to Post RIO+20, the South African human rights activist gave us a three minute interview about Greenpeace’s work on anti-corruption, their latest international campaigns, and what he really expects from COP18 in Doha, Qatar.

Produced by Andrea Arzaba

Achim Steiner, executive director of the United Nations Environment Programme, pointed to the notorious 2006 case in which a subcontractor of the European oil company Trafigura dumped toxic waste in the Ivory Coast commercial capital of Abidjan. The affair – in which Trafigura eventually paid £30m to alleged victims of the pollution, while continuing to deny liability – raised a host of questions about the regard multinationals pay to the environment in poor states with little capacity or will to enforce high standards.

“How does a country that doesn’t have the laboratories or the technical expertise or the laws scrutinise the waste in a way that allows it to protect its citizens?” Mr Steiner asked.

Over in the industrialised world, the Rio-driven booming trade in carbon credits – permits to emit a certain quantity of greenhouse gases – has emerged as a growing concern for western law enforcement agencies.  More than 100 companies were reported to Britain’s Financial Services Authority regulator in the year to June over alleged fraud related to carbon credit dealing, which the agency said had been embraced by career criminals who spend their lives moving “from con to con”.

Other links between environmental degradation and ethically questionable or corrupt practices have been exposed increasingly starkly by technological advances. Manish Bapna, acting president of the World Resources Institute, said an initiative his organisation started 15 years ago to monitor deforestation and put images of it on the web had grown much more powerful, thanks to improvements in internet connectivity and access to satellite imagery. Now pictures once not updated for years are refreshed every 16 days, to a detail of 250m by 250m

“We will now be able to detect illegal logging the size of a football field,” he said. “Make that available on social media around the world and it revolutionises the way we look at transparency.”

One important lesson of the two decades between the Rio climate deals is that environmental campaigners need to pay more attention to anti-graft activism and vice versa. Greenpeace’s Mr Naidoo argues the definition of what constitutes corruption needs to be made broader still, to convince the public that problems ranging from climate change to fraud are not discrete and remote – but linked both to each other and to quality of people’s everyday lives.

“If we do that, large numbers of ordinary people will join with us,” Mr Naidoo said. “At the moment they don’t join with us, because they don’t think we are tackling the fundamental injustices in our economy and in our democracy and in our society generally.”

Michael Peel is a Financial Times journalist. He writes here in a personal capacity.

Photos: Virginie Nguyen

Today is the last day of the RIO+20 Summit. The corridors, which a few days ago where full of people in suits running behind heads of state, governments, activists and civil-society; are not quite as busy. Most of the youth involved in the process have left the building. They were here to influence the outcomes, but because the document everybody was expecting is out and closed, meaning it will not be changed at this summit, they are gone.

Observations on the negotiations

On the main outcomes of the summit’s text was that developing countries got a rejection of the green fund with 30,000 million dollars annually, in order to adapt and mitigate climate change problems in the vulnerable nations. Also, because of the current crisis in the European Union and the United States, they refussed to commit to funding actions to promote sustainable development.

Another important proposal made by the Europeans was the creation of a world environment agency that could replace UNEP, but they encountered opposition from Brazil and the United States to strenghten the current system. In the text it is not written that it should be upgraded as a UN agency, nor increase the power of this body.

On green economy, the document recognizes that there are different approaches and visions available for each country, but depending on their circumstances and priorities, they should aim to achieve sustainable development. Again, there are no stablished goals or deadlines.

Among the delegations, their reaction towards the text has been different as well. While some delegations like the UK and Canada show their support on the text, Mexican delegation agrees that text is a small step forward, but that they were looking for something more ambitious. On the contrary, delegations like Uruguay and Bolivia show their rejection and clear disappointment not only on the document, but also on the whole process.

Disappointment among civil society

Non-Governmental organizations and civil society have complained, arguing they were only consulted at the last minute, when it was almost hard to suggest and put pressure on the changes of the outcome. Considering the document’s weakness, they have expressed their will to start working with “even a greater vigour”.

Kumi Naidoo, current head of Greenpeace International, expressed his concern by saying that the text was a failure of the whole process. He also mentioned the lack of commitment from governments: “The whole process was made by delegates, not heads of state, this shows how little vision and ambition there is”.

Our Only Hope

Apart of the weak commitments showed in the final outcome, there are some other proposals moving, those that were discussed and negotiated through the conference. The first one is the establishment of the Sustainable Development Goals, taking the place of the Millennium Development Goals from 2015. Another good initiative enunciated by UN Secretary General was the establishment of a “zero hunger” aspiration, associated with sustainable growth among countries.

I would like to end this post with a quote I heard some moments ago from Jeffrey Sachs, academic and director of Earth Institute at Columbia University. It could resume what I take from the whole summit: “You are very lucky, more than you think. Now that governments are acting on the same economic model of short-term and election cycles, you cannot expect big solutions.  And this is your opportunity, now it is young people who must achieve this change with innovation, we should all be pioneers. ”

It will not be the result of governments alone but of people who are informed, who care about the development of their nations and who can contribute with their own projects towards a sustainable future. By this means, they will have a more important impact on the decisions governments make on our names.

Brazil is a major global producer and exporter of many agricultural goods including soy beans, sugar cane, coffee beans, orange juice, beef, pork, cotton and iron ore. The country is also the world’s largest exporter of ethanol, has 14% of the world’s fresh water supplies and 11% of all arable land. In 2010, 50% of all new global oil discoveries were made in Brazil. An abundance of natural resources is not enough in itself to guarantee economic growth but when teamed with effective economic policy and flourishing technological and service sectors, they have contributed to Brazil’s development.

It is significant then, that Brazil is hosting the Earth Summit in 2012 (Rio+20), which brings together heads of states from across the world, along with officials from international institutions, civil society organisations and the world’s media to secure political commitment to sustainable development. The UN Under-secretary-general for Economic and Social Affairs Sha Zukang said that it was “very fitting” that Brazil host the conference due to the great strides it has made in recent years towards sustainable development. The reality of Brazil’s environmental credentials is however a mix bag.

Within a few days of each other in May this year, two opposing deforestation developments took place. The first was the creation of an emergency task force to fight Amazonian deforestation after a six fold increase in deforestation within a year long period. The task force is composed of federal and state-level environmental agencies, the Federal Police and the National Public Security Force and utilises an increased field operations and more investment in improving satellite monitoring of the region in an attempt to keep deforestation rates in the Amazon under control.

A few days later, a controversial forestry bill, currently being evaluated by the Senate, was passed by the lower house of Congress. The Forest Code would grant amnesty for illegal logging that occurred before April 2008 and would relax the main law governing the use of the nation’s forests. Ranching and farm lobbies have argued that the Code is an improvement on previous forestry rules as they were so strict as to be unenforceable. As stated here “the new code encourages the practice (of illegal logging) by signalling that future amnesties may be granted” and that if the bill was passed it would immediately allow ranchers to cut down 10% of existing trees.

At the same time, Joao Claudio Ribeiro da Silva, and his wife Maria do Espirito Santo, leading forest conservation activists, were killed in the Amazon state of Para. This is just one example of the violent nature of the forestry debate in Brazil and highlights inadequate protection for those speaking up for the protection of the forests. In 2007 alone, approximately 837 conflicts occurred over rural land, with 19 deaths and over 560,000 people involved. Enforcement of environmental rules has been difficult and patchy and a growing domestic middle class means even more of a strain on Brazil’s natural resources. Another major threat to the sustainable future of Brazil’s resources is the nature of corruption in land management.

As noted by the 14th International Anti-Corruption Conference workshop “Finding Common Ground” , land administration is one of the most corrupted public institutions across the world and 37% of land in the Amazon is not properly owned or protected. Alongside this, it is not unknown for local politicians to be behind major deforestation and just 0.3% of all the 250,000 fines imposed by Ibama, the country’s environmental protection agency have been paid. Investment in renewable energy, which makes up 47% of Brazil’s energy is high but there needs to be better governance of the land, as suggested in the workshop. This can be achieved through community based clarification and adjudication processes; agreements between institutions responsible for land governance; involvement of a variety of stakeholders in the development of adequate Land Governance Systems and the creation of an effective institutional setting for land governance.

With the upcoming Rio+20 meeting and the 15th International Anti-Corruption Conference, there will be plenty of opportunities for Brazil to find ways to strengthen the protection of its natural resources and to use them in a sustainable way. With a significant technological advantage over most resource rich countries and with a prolonged international spotlight on the country, Brazil has the opportunity to harness its unique position and be a global pioneer of sustainable growth and development.

An update from the International Anti-Corruption Conference.

At the start of the international climate conference in Cancun, the international anti-corruption movement is weighing into the debate on how to shape a new global treaty and deliver effective climate financing to developing countries.

Issues of transparency and accountability have long been a source of contention, and a barrier to progress, in the UN-led climate negotiations. Disagreement between developed and developing countries over how to make actions and policies taken by countries robust and comparable has undermined the trust essential for effective global cooperation to halt rising temperatures. More recently, the issue of climate financing has become a bone of contention, with developing countries questioning whether the money pledged by industrialized countries is new, or simply diverted development aid.

Last month in Bangkok, Transparency International organized the 14th International Anti-Corruption Conference (IACC), which focused in part on the the transparency and corruption challenges associated with climate policy, climate finance for mitigation and adaptation, and carbon markets. WRI prepared the IACC background document on climate change and corruption and has been advising Transparency International on the 2010 Global Corruption Report, which also take climate change and corruption as its theme.

In a plenary presentation, WRI’s executive vice-president, Manish Bapna, focused on transparency in adaptation. He highlighted the “significant corruption and governance risks at each stage of funding for climate adaptation – how it is generated, how it is managed, and how it is spent.” Bapna highlighted the following specific questions and issues for policymakers to grapple with:

Transparency and accountability in the generation of adaptation finance.

• With $30 billion pledged for climate finance for 2010-2012 and about $100 billion annually by 2020 (a figure comparable to total Official Development Assistance (ODA) today), making sure that these flows are corruption-free will be a massive challenge. Greater transparency on whether these funds are “new and additional” and a “balanced” amount is being allocated to adaptation will be crucial to creating trust between rich and poor countries.

Corruption and governance risks related to who should manage adaptation finance

• Should adaptation financing be entrusted to multilateral and bilateral aid agencies such as the World Bank (what rich countries want) or should national institutions in developing countries have direct access to these funds? Rich countries argue that many of the new institutions created in developing countries lack the fiduciary controls and safeguards that, however flawed, have been tried and tested in the multilateral banks. Poor countries argue that adaptation finance is fundamentally different from development aid and should not be channeled in the same way.

New corruption risks related to how adaptation funding is spent

• Sectors that will receive significant adaptation money include water, infrastructure and disaster relief. Yet all these have typically been characterized by high levels of corruption.
• Corruption pressures are likely to pull funding to projects that are large and concrete-heavy (such as new infrastructure). This is the opposite of the small, local and flexible solutions often needed to deal with climate impacts.

Bapna concluded by calling for collaboration between the anti-corruption and environmental communities to help make emerging adaptation funds in developing countries more robust and corruption-proof. Efforts should include working with adaptation institutions in developing countries to make their governance and operations more transparent and inclusive as well as with civil society organizations to build their capacity to hold these institutions to account.

In a related IACC conference workshop, WRI’s electricity governance (EGI) team focused on how to address pervasive corruption in the capital-intensive electricity sector. Kickbacks to government officials to secure contracts for building new power plants or providing fuel or equipment are common, and clean energy technology markets are also not immune to fraud or corruption. These conflicts of interests can affect power development plans that shape a country’s energy choices. The workshop showcased innovative strategies to fight corruption in a sector that has historically received little attention from civil society, yet is at the center of sustainable development and climate change efforts. Speakers from EGI civil society partner organizations shared experiences from four different countries: Thailand, India, Indonesia, and South Africa.

EGI will soon compile a compendium of these examples and other emerging strategies and challenges that will be available on its website: http://electricitygovernance.wri.org