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Makula logs in Zambia

Caution and optimism in Zambia as forest scheme scales up

The bark of the mukula tree has medicinal properties, the outer wood is prized for furniture and flooring, and the dense core is valuable to Chinese rifle manufacturers. With hundreds or thousands of dollars packed into each plant, mukula forests represent a gold mine for Zambia. But an entrenched web of corruption ensures only powerful […]

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Anti-corruption: charting a path for the future

What does the future hold for the fight against corruption? Recently, three books have been written seeking to answer this question, helping to plot the course of the anti-corruption movement for the years to come. Laurence Cockcroft: Global Corruption: Money, Power, and Ethics in the Modern World One of the co-founders of Transparency International, Laurence […]

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Lights, camera – was there G20 action?

So now that the G20 dust has settled and the media circus has dispersed, did the representatives of two-thirds of the global population make any meaningful decisions in St Petersburg? The final St Petersburg G20 Leaders Declaration has 11 paragraphs devoted to corruption efforts. This greater visibility is welcome progress from the two sentences included […]

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US$1 million for reforestation missing in Peru

Tracking public money in Peru can feel like chasing smoke and mirrors. The state often keeps a lid on official documents, meaning trails can lead to dead-ends. In this case the information was not missing, but some of it turned out to be false. Until recently, the city of Pajarillo was known for illegal trade […]

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Drawing connections with cartoons: on the campaign trail in Papua New Guinea

Michael was the only person in the village who could speak English. He had learned it in Australia, and talked with a gentle upwards incline. As I spoke Michael interpreted into Suau (the local language), pausing intermittently for responses from the crowd. My audience was intimidatingly large – huddled rows of crossed legs and expectant […]

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REDD+: what you see isn’t always what you get

A colleague recently likened his experience tracking climate and REDD+ money in Mexico to an archaeological dig. Little by little, fragments of your object begin to reveal themselves, but not without a significant amount of time, resources and tenacity. At Transparency International we have been monitoring climate finance flows in six countries – of which […]

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Did you know that you have a right to know? Spreading the word in Papua New Guinea’s forests

“Welcome to the jungle!” George flashes me a wry smile as our jeep begins its stuttering ascent up the mountain, into an endless expanse of thicketed green. George had sent a message over the radio three days earlier, in the hope that news of our visit would travel to Leileiyafa in time. He and his […]

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Malaysian public become eyes and ears of the forest

You live in a very remote area in a forest-rich country. You may not rely on the forests to make a living but they’ve remained as you know them for as long as you remember and – from stories your grandfather told you when you were a child – for a long time before that. […]

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COP 17 climate summit in Durban image

Durban COP17 wrap-up: Corruption now on the climate change radar

Manoj Nadkarni, Programme Manager of Transparency International’s Forest Governance Integrity Programme, reflects on what was and wasn’t achieved at the COP 17 climate governance summit in Durban, South Africa. At the COP 17 venue, the mood of the NGO observers seemed to veer from cynicism that anything at all was achieved, to exuberance that so […]

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A silent protest in Pulau Padang

Transparency International recently launched a report on corruption in the forestry sector. Dede Kunaifi, Research Assistant in the Riau Forestry Unit of TI Indonesia, and Claire Martin, Programme Coordinator of the PAC REDD Project, talk about what happens when competing interests for land collide. Stitching their mouths shut is one of the more drastic of […]

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