Communities and Inclusion
As local communities, Indigenous peoples, and other actors at national or sub-national levels seek to assert or protect access rights and to sustainably manage and benefit from their forests, fisheries, and wildlife resources, they may encounter significant challenges from corruption.
This page provides information, guidance, and tools to assess and address the threats that corruption can pose to community-based work and inclusive conservation efforts. The contents present evidence on how corruption can impact community-oriented conservation outcomes, provide illustrative case studies, and present tools to help design and implement context-appropriate projects.
Inside this Topic
Read the Guide
- 1. Corruption and community-based conservation work
- 2. The nature and types of corrupt practices impacting community-based conservation and NRM work
- 2.1 Tenure and resource use and access rights
- 2.2 Collection of revenues and benefit sharing
- 3. Tackling corruption in the CBNRM sector: Strategies, initiatives, and interventions
- 3.1 Connecting human rights with anti-corruption
- 3.2 Indigenous Peoples (IPs) and Local Communities (LCs)
- 3.3 Strengthening natural resource tenure and institutions
- 3.4 Openness and transparency
- 3.5 Social accountability, media, and civil society organizations (CSOs)
- 3.6 Free, Prior, and Informed Consent (FPIC)
Resources
Tools for Conservation Programming
- Operational considerations for the integrity principles for benefit-sharing mechanisms in nature-based solutions
- Designing social norms and behavior change interventions: Guidance resources for conservation practitioners
- Who reaps the benefits? Integrity principles for benefit sharing in forest NbS for climate mitigation
- Corruption risks and anti-corruption responses in sustainable livelihood interventions
Research Papers & Issue Analysis
- Pathways for targeting renewable resource corruption: A summary of evidence
- Corruption in community-based conservation: A synthesis of lessons
- Community forestry and reducing corruption: Perspectives from the Peruvian Amazon
- Examining social accountability as an anti-corruption approach in conservation and natural resource management
- Natural resources, human rights, and corruption: What are the connections?
- Understanding corruption risks in the global trade in wild plants
- The conservation-corruption conundrum: Understanding everyday relationships between rangers and communities
- Promoting a gender-sensitive approach to addressing corruption in the forestry sector
- Overcoming the pitfalls of engaging communities in anti-corruption programmes
- Gender-based violence and environment linkages: The violence of inequality
- Reducing corruption’s impact on natural resources – How does a gender lens help?
Place-Specific Resources
- Lessons learned and quantified from the baseline of a fisheries anti-corruption project in Peru
- “Justina del Mar,” a virtual ally to prevent corruption in the artisanal fishing sector
- Digital capture certificates to close opportunities for corruption
- Case study | The Escazú agreement’s anti-corruption potential in Colombia
- Case study | Enabling youth as good governance champions of community forests in Nepal
- The political economy of a green recovery in Ukraine
- Case Study: Applying behavior change and community-based approaches to address the corruption linked to illegal hunting and trade of jaguars in Guatemala
- Case Study: Designing targeted capacity building strategies to improve community forest governance in Nepal
- Building Transparency and Accountability in Natural Resource Management (NRM): The Role of Social Accountability and Civic Participation in Addressing Corruption in the NRM Sector
- Anti-corruption and equitable benefit sharing in Kenya’s wildlife and forest sectors: Gaps and lessons
- The unusual impacts of Covid: Reflections on the links between demand, extraction, conservation, and corruption
- Corruption and criminality behind biodiversity loss in Colombia’s forests: Land grabbing
- Enrolling the Local: Community-Based Anti-Corruption Efforts and Institutional Capture
- The Conservation Mosaic Approach to Reduce Corruption and the Illicit Sea Turtle Take and Trade
Expert Insights
- Building transparency, equity, and fairness into Nature-based Solutions
- Mainstreaming anti-corruption in conservation: Dispelling myths and charting a path forward
- Line of fire: Supporting Indigenous Peoples at the frontline of anti-corruption and environmental defense
- What shapes anti-corruption success and failure in renewable resource sectors?
- Environmental corruption: Building bridges across conservation and anti-corruption practice to stop environmental corruption from the ground up
- Her story: Women targeting natural resource corruption | Shambhavi Poudel
- Connecting Conservation and Development: Using Social Accountability Tools to Improve Locally Led Natural Resource Management
- Whose reality counts? Understanding actor perceptions in project development to better target natural resource corruption
- Corruption and community-based conservation: Lessons and opportunities
- Corruption in the wild plants supply chain: Addressing the social, financial, and environmental costs
- Can Women Rangers Help Decrease Corruption Rates?
- Podcast: Successful conservation is built on trust
- The COVID-19 pandemic, corruption, and the socio-economic impacts on local communities
- International Women’s Day 2020: Connecting gender empowerment, conservation and anti-corruption
Where to Start
Building Anti-Corruption into Conservation Work
Locate your conservation challenge and follow three steps to understand forms of corruption that impact conservation outcomes, analyze your situation, and identify programming approaches that could improve results.
© WWF
This content is made possible by the generous support of the American people through the United States Agency for International Development (USAID). The contents are the responsibility of World Wildlife Fund (WWF) and do not necessarily reflect the views of USAID, the United States Government, or individual TNRC consortium members.