TNRC Original Research

This practice note summarizes the value added and key insights of using two analytical approaches, political economy analysis and corruption risk assessment, to help natural resource management and conservation practitioners understand corruption risks in specific contexts and design and implement mitigation measures. These techniques take prevailing political and power dynamics into account and help identify windows of opportunity for addressing corruption risks and highlight strategically important stakeholders that may support or oppose the intervention.

In this TNRC Learning Series webinar, hosted by the Basel Institute on Governance, the authors of the TNRC Practice Note How political economy analysis can support corruption risk assessments to strengthen law enforcement against wildlife crimes share insights on the utility and implementation of political economy analysis (PEA) to inform corruption risk assessments that strengthen law enforcement against wildlife crime. Their experience is a resource for practitioners who seek to incorporate corruption risk assessment into their programming to combat wildlife crime.

This note has a dual focus. First, it summarizes experiences and lessons from conducting CRAs with authorities responsible for investigations and prosecutions of IWT cases in three countries in Africa and Latin America. It seeks to demonstrate the value of adopting a collaborative approach to CRAs, illustrates potential avenues for pursuing such an approach when the right factors are in place, and demonstrates how mapping the criminal justice process provides a solid starting point to identify critical vulnerabilities. Second, this note highlights some common risks that emerged from the CRAs in the three countries and that may negatively affect the progress of IWT cases in other countries.

In this TNRC Learning Series webinar, hosted by the Basel Institute on Governance, the authors of the TNRC Practice Note Where are the weakest links in the illegal wildlife trade enforcement chain? Lessons from corruption risk assessments with agencies in three countries join leading experts to discuss how corruption risk assessments can improve law enforcement outcomes and strengthen conservation and natural resource management by helping to inform the design of interventions that prevent corruption from undermining investigations and prosecutions.

This brief highlights the importance and potential of robust internal controls in helping achieve the objectives of agencies tasked with protecting wildlife and the environment by identifying performance gaps and opportunities for improvement, enabling oversight, and fostering accountability. However, in some countries, internal controls are not always applied to wildlife-related corruption or even natural resource management. Conservation or anti-corruption partners can help government institutions strengthen their systems of internal controls, building on procedures already in place. Well-designed systems of internal controls can discourage corrupt behavior and mitigate other risks to wildlife and natural resources. While no system can completely eliminate the potential for corrupt behavior, enhancing internal controls can help close the implementation gap between agency objectives and what happens in practice.

In this TNRC Learning Series webinar, hosted by the Basel Institute on Governance, the authors of the TNRC Topic Brief Internal controls and illegal wildlife trade: A systemic approach to corruption prevention and law enforcement integrity join leading experts to discuss how the use of internal controls may help prevent the corruption that often accompanies illegal wildlife trade and natural resource crimes. The speakers describe the results of a three-country pilot study and addressed learning questions related to: a) how assessments of internal control systems can help practitioners achieve objectives; b) the current state of natural resource management (NRM) internal controls as observed in the study; and c) implications for future NRM programming and recommendations for the future.