How to Combat Environmental Harms with Anti-Corruption Measures

By Yogi Bratajaya, Legal Fellow

Photo credit: Paul Hilton, CC BY-ND 4.0

Corruption acts as one of the most important enabling factors behind wildlife crime, facilitating the movement of illicit wildlife shipments along all stages of the supply chain from source to market, and obstructing criminal justice responses to allow criminal networks to operate with impunity. It also enables other forms of environmental harm that are not linked to environmental crimes, such as pollution and biodiversity loss caused by mining activities, deforestation and the burning of fossil fuels, for example through the bribing of government officials to obtain approval for environmentally damaging extractive projects, or funding multibillion-dollar large-scale projects that funnel public funds into the bank accounts of corrupt individuals while producing little to no environmental or social benefits. It is therefore crucial to step up anti-corruption efforts to tackle environmental harms and hold corrupt actors to account.

ILP’s approach to combatting environmental crime and corruption focuses on empowering civil society and Indigenous communities to utilise legal and policy tools to prevent land and resource conflicts, as well as to reduce corruption and public health risks. By facilitating the use of legal frameworks, such as anti-money laundering laws, to challenge the illegal wildlife trade, we support our civil society and Indigenous partners to engage in advocacy and seek rigorous enforcement standards for environmental protection, with advice and input from our network of pro bono lawyers with deep expertise in this area.

The “Clean and Green Manifesto”

Building on this approach, ILP and 29 other leading UK-based civil society organisations working to counter corruption, recently endorsed Spotlight on Corruption’s “Clean and Green Manifesto” which identifies five areas where UK anti-corruption efforts could help tackle environmental harm. While acts of environmental corruption and instances of environmental harm occur outside the UK, the UK serves as both a target and facilitator of global money-laundering schemes. Thus, the UK plays an important role in combatting corruption-linked environmental harm, particularly given the government’s commitment to position the UK as a global leader in combatting illicit finance and corruption, and the harms they produce.

The Manifesto’s recommendations are as follows:

1. Strengthening enforcement: ensuring that existing laws and regulations are used more effectively to crack down on corruption and money laundering that enable environmental harms. One aspect of this is to apply the UK’s human rights and corruption sanctions regime to address instances of environmental harm, as well as establishing a much broader ‘environmental harms’ sanctions regime that could be used against all manner of targets, from the criminal networks involved in the illegal trade of wildlife, fish and timber, to companies which defraud carbon offsetting schemes. This is important since, as at the date of publication, no UK anti-corruption sanctions designation has targeted illegal logging or wildlife trafficking, despite the corruption enabling these industries being plainly within scope of the UK Global Anti-Corruption Sanctions regime;

2. Bringing the truth to light: introducing robust standalone laws to establish universal protections against Strategic Lawsuits Against Public Participation (SLAPPs), lawsuits that are designed to curtail critical speech of the party filing the suit, and comprehensive protections and safeguards for whistleblowers. Advancing protections against SLAPP suits is particularly important as the UK has been identified as the leading source of SLAPPs, almost as frequent a source as all European Union countries and the United States combined;

3. Increasing transparency and fairness in climate spending: supporting national platforms for tracking climate finance alongside incorporating higher reporting standards and transparency. An example of this is Ukraine's Digital Restoration Ecosystem for Accountable Management (DREAM), which allows donors to follow how their money is spent and allows communities to propose projects most valuable to them and to help them get support to deliver them;

4. Enhancing corporate transparency: exerting pressure over UK Overseas Territories and Crown Dependencies to provide meaningful access to beneficial ownership data in line with international standards and best practices;

5. Overhauling the lobbying system: addressing vulnerabilities and loopholes in the UK lobbying regime to prevent the energy transition being delayed or derailed by vested interests involved in environmental harm. Major flaws in the UK’s lobbying regime have left public policy vulnerable to capture by lobby groups seeking to undermine action against environmental harm. For example, Fossil Free Parliament has found that fossil fuel lobby groups have privileged access to policymakers in government, compared to leading environmental, social justice and fuel poverty groups.

   
   

Pro Bono Legal Support to Catalyse Anti-Corruption Efforts and Environmental Protection: The Work of ILP

Over the past few years, ILP and its network of pro bono lawyers have supported civil society organisations working to combat corrupt acts that enable environmental harm.

ILP collaborated with TRAFFIC, a world-leading NGO tackling illegal trade in wild species, to develop the Wildlife Trade Integrity Index, the first global tool to measure and promote anti-corruption practices in wildlife trade systems across the world. Pro bono lawyers researched and identified  more than 200 potential corruption indicators which were fed into the Index, in order to map the tools that policymakers and civil society can use to prevent corruption in illegal wildlife trade. ILP also worked to alert Money Laundering Reporting Officers of UK law firms, banks and the stock exchange, to halt the Ghanaian ruling party’s efforts to bypass parliamentary approval to sell 49% of the country’s entire gold reserves to an offshore, opaque shell company. ILP has also assisted efforts to advance the use of the UK’s sanctions regime to target acts of environmental corruption. For example, ILP is working with partners in Brazil and Peru to identify potential sanctions targets, specifically, companies and individuals involved in illicit gold flows into the UK market.

To support efforts of bringing the truth to light about environmental corruption, ILP is currently mobilising pro bono lawyers to protect the work of an environmental human rights defender to overturn a criminal conviction against him for his work exposing illegal rosewood logging in the Democratic Republic of the Congo (DRC). There are strong suspicions of corruption in the handling of the case, with questions whether the environmental defender was convicted on trumped up criminal charges and a process that violated his right to fair trial. The outcome of this case will have a significant impact on strengthening environmental rule of law in the DRC, protecting the work of civil society to combat environmental corruption, and contribute towards dismantling the network of illegal logging of rare wood in the DRC. ILP also co-organised a training with the UNCAC Coalition for civil society actors to equip them with knowledge about the legal tools available to defend against SLAPP suits, such as the recently enacted EU Directive 2024/1069 on protecting persons from SLAPPs and the UK’s anti-SLAPP Bill.

The Clean and Green Manifesto comes at a pivotal point, as the UK government has recently published the UK Anti-Corruption Strategy, outlining the country’s commitment to strengthen enforcement against corruption, work with Global South countries to build long-term capacity to tackle corruption, and support and protect civil society and investigative journalists. ILP is committed and ready to work with anti-corruption and environmental organisations to help achieve these goals, through strengthening legal frameworks, supporting civil society and journalists to expose corruption, and facilitating effective sanctions and enforcement.

For more information on ILP’s work on the intersection of corruption environmental harm and how we can help your organisation advance anti-corruption measures and pursue legal accountability, please contact us at contact@internationallawyersproject.org.