Data collected by Transparency International looks at bribery, the diversion of public funds, officials using their office for private gain, conflicts of interest and legal protections for those denouncing corruption. Credit: UN News/Daniel Dickinson

By Gabrielle Gorder and Seth Robbins
MEDELLÍN, Colombia, Feb 17 2022 (IPS)

Latin American countries scored poorly on Transparency International’s latest corruption index, with the worst joining the ranks of war-torn nations and dictatorships.

Of the 19 Latin American countries ranked, three-quarters scored below 50 in the Corruption Perceptions Index (CPI) for 2021. The worst was Venezuela, which scored below North Korea and Afghanistan.

Using assessments from country experts, business analysts, and international organizations, the index rates countries on a scale from zero to 100. Scores below 50 indicate flagrant corruption problems.

The data collected by Transparency International looks at bribery, the diversion of public funds, officials using their office for private gain, conflicts of interest and legal protections for those denouncing corruption.

Caribbean countries fared better in the index. Of the ten ranked, six scored above 50, though none rated above 65.

When Canada and the United States are excluded, the average score for the region is 41, putting it a notch below the global average of 43. Without the Caribbean, it drops to 37.

Below, InSight Crime breaks down the scores in a region that continues to be rife with corruption.

Scores of 0 to 25: Highly Corrupt

Venezuela held the title for the seventh consecutive year as the most corrupt country in the Western Hemisphere with a score of 14, an all-time low for the country.

As InSight Crime has reported, Venezuela has essentially become a mafia state. Officials and security forces at every level are involved in criminal activity. Pilfering of state coffers is rampant, while drug trafficking, illegal mining, and other criminal economies are widespread.

Venezuelan government officials are known to collaborate with gangs. State security forces have colluded with the Colombian guerrilla group the National Liberation Army (Ejército de Liberación Nacional – ELN) to take control of illegal gold mines in the Amazon.

The rot in Venezuela starts at the top, with President Nicolás Maduro, whom the United States Department of Justice has accused of narco-terrorism, corruption, drug trafficking and other offenses.

Just above Venezuela were Haiti and Nicaragua, which each received a score of 20.

Haiti saw a slight uptick as compared with the last two years, as the effects of the July 2021 assassination of the country’s president, Jovenel Moïse, are only just beginning to be felt.

Meanwhile, Nicaragua saw its score hit a new low. This is not surprising, considering that, on his way to winning his fourth consecutive presidential election, President Daniel Ortega used the country’s justice system to silence political opponents, some of whom were jailed or subjected to a range of abuses.

Honduras also hit a new low, scoring a 23 — tying the country with Iraq. The low score stemmed partly from accusations linking Honduras’ former president, Juan Orlando Hernández, to his brother’s drug trafficking ring.

Meanwhile, Guatemala’s score of 25 remained unchanged from the previous year. The country tied with Iran. High-profile graft probes and the dismissals of those investigating corruption explain the country’s low ranking.

Scores of 26 to 50: Corruption Issues

The average global corruption perception score was 43 out of 100. Of the 21 Latin American and Caribbean countries scoring less than 50, 19 fell below the global average.

The countries scoring in this bracket were Paraguay (30), the Dominican Republic (30), Bolivia (30), Mexico (31), El Salvador (34), Panama (36), Ecuador (36), Peru (36), Brazil (38), Argentina (38) and Colombia (39), Guyana (39), Suriname (39), Trinidad and Tobago (41).

Only Jamaica (44) and Cuba (46) scored higher than the global average.

In the case of Paraguay, InSight Crime published an investigation just last year revealing how a Paraguayan congressman conspired with an alleged drug trafficker to protect cocaine shipments in exchange for illicit funds.

El Salvador’s declining score reflects growing corruption within the government of President Nayib Bukele, including the decision to dissolve the International Commission against Impunity in El Salvador (Comisión Internacional Contra la Impunidad de El Salvador – CICIES) after the entity started to investigate several members of the Bukele administration for mismanaging coronavirus emergency funds. Additionally, the US government, in 2021, blacklisted two officials with close ties to Bukele for allegedly making deals with street gangs.

Ecuador’s plummeting score was also to be expected. The country has emerged as a key trafficking route for drugs, arms, explosives, and migrants. Corruption has eaten away at state institutions.

Peru’s falling score comes as President Pedro Castillo faces corruption allegations that have led to impeachment proceedings, while in Argentina, instances of corruption among judicial authorities have created the impression of impunity.

Cuba’s comparatively high CPI ranking may come as a surprise to some, given that it is a one-party state.

While Cuba’s low corruption perception score may reflect steps taken to rein in corruption during the administrations of former president Raúl Castro and President Miguel Díaz Canel, political corruption remains an issue, and the low perception score could be more a reflection of the country’s limits on press freedom.

Scores of 50 to 100: Relatively Clean

Only three Latin American countries scored above 50: Uruguay, Chile and Costa Rica.

Uruguay scored higher than the United States, but lower than Canada. Transparency International credited its “independent judiciary and the protection of basic rights [as] vital in preventing corruption from permeating the [Uruguayan] State.” Chile, meanwhile, tied with the United States.

The Caribbean countries of Barbados, The Bahamas, Saint Vincent and the Grenadines, Saint Lucia, Dominica and Grenada all scored above 50, suggesting minimal corruption concerns. But these countries are all known hubs for money laundering, a known contributor to corruption worldwide.

This story was originally published by InsightCrime

Every day the Tropical Gems can be seen taking charge of clearing and tidying civic spaces in Madang, a town on the north coast of the Papua New Guinean mainland. Credit: Catherine Wilson/IPS

By Catherine Wilson
MADANG, Papua New Guinea, Jul 20 2015 (IPS)

Zibie Wari, a former teacher and founder of the Tropical Gems grassroots youth group in the town of Madang on the north coast of Papua New Guinea, has seen the hopes of many young people for a decent future quashed by the impacts of corruption and unfulfilled promises of development.

"The way to fight back [...] is to go out and educate our fellow country men and women. Let’s not sit down and wait, let’s stand up on our two feet and make a difference.” -- Zibie Wari, a former teacher and founder of the Tropical Gems grassroots youth group
Once known as ‘the prettiest town in the South Pacific’, the most arresting sight today in this coastal urban centre of about 29,339 people is large numbers of youths idling away hours in the town’s centre, congregating under trees and sitting along pavements.

“You must have a dream, I tell them every day. Those who roam around the streets, they have no dreams in life, they have no vision. And those who do not have a vision in life are not going to make it,” Wari declared. “So, as a team, how can we help each other?”

The bottom-up Tropical Gems movement, which is now more than 3,000 members strong, develops young people as agents of change by fostering attitudes of responsibility, resilience, initiative and ultimately self-reliance.

The philosophy of the group is that, no matter how immense the challenges in people’s lives, there is a solution. But the solutions, the ideas and their implementation must start with themselves.

There is a large youth presence here with an estimated 44 percent of Madang’s provincial population of 493,906 aged below 15 years. However, the net education enrolment rate is a low 45 percent, hindered by poor rural access with only a small number subsequently finishing secondary school.

The youth bulge is also a national phenomenon and young people desperate for employment and opportunities are flooding urban centres across the country. But up to 68 percent of urban youth are unemployed and 86 percent of those in work are sustaining themselves in the informal economy, according to the National Youth Commission.

While PNG has an estimated 80,000 school leavers each year, only 10,000 will likely secure formal jobs.

The plight of this generation is in contrast to the Melanesian island state’s booming GDP growth of between six and 10 percent over the past decade driven by an economic focus on resource extraction, including logging, mining and natural gas extraction.

Yet these industries have failed to create mass or long-term employment or significantly reduce the socioeconomic struggle of many Papua New Guineans with 40 percent of the population of seven million living below the poverty line.

Nearly half the residents in Port Moresby, capital of Papua New Guinea, live in informal settlements with little access to clean water or sanitation. Credit: Catherine Wilson/IPS

Export-driven development leaving millions behind

Papua New Guinea is considered one of the fastest-growing economies in the world, but the boons of this progress are largely concentrated in the hands of government officials and private investors with little left for the masses of the country, which is today ranked 157^th out of 187 countries in terms of human development.

As the country surrenders its natural bounty to international investors – PNG has attracted the highest levels of direct foreign investment in the region, averaging more than 100 million U.S. dollars per year since 1970 – its people seem to get poorer and sicker.

According to the National Research Institute, PNG has less than one doctor and 5.3 nurses per 10,000 people. The availability of basic drugs in health clinics has fallen by 10 percent and visits from doctors dropped by 42 percent in the past decade. Despite rapid population growth, the number of patients seeking medical help per day has decreased by 19 percent.

Millions of dollars that could be used to develop crucial health infrastructure is lost to corruption. Papua New Guinea has been given a corruption score of 25/100 – where 100 indicates clean governance – in comparison to the world average of 43/100, by Transparency International.

The generation representing the country’s future has also been hit hard by the impacts of endemic corruption, particularly the deeply rooted patronage system in politics, which has undermined equality. Large-scale misappropriation of public funds, with the loss of half the government’s development budget of 7.6 billion kina (2.8 billion dollars) from 2009-11 due to mismanagement, has impeded services and development.

“The [political] leaders are very busy [engaging] in corruption, while the future leaders of this country are left to fend for themselves. Many of these young people have been pushed out by the system. At the end of the day, there is a reason why homebrew alcohol is being brewed and why violence is going on,” Wari told IPS.

“But the way to fight back corruption is to go out and educate our fellow country men and women. Let’s not sit down and wait, let’s stand up on our two feet and make a difference.”

This is no easy task in a country where 2.8 million people live below the poverty line, where maternal mortality is 711 deaths per 100,000 live births, literacy is just 63 percent and only 19 percent of people have access to sanitation.

But the Tropical Gems are empowering themselves with knowledge about the political and economic forces, such as globalisation and competition for resources, which are impacting their lives. And they are returning to core social and cultural values for a sense of leadership and direction.

“We have gone astray because of the rapid changes that have happened in our country and because we were not prepared for them. When these influences come in, they divert us from what we are supposed to do. So, now in Tropical Gems, we do the talking,” Wari said.

For the Tropical Gems, leadership begins with rejecting passivity and taking responsibility and initiative for the betterment of themselves, others and the wider community. Credit: Catherine Wilson/IPS

Away from dependency, towards self-reliance

Their first step has been to reject the dependency syndrome and temptation to wait for others, whether in the state or private sector, to deliver the world they desire.

Every day, dozens of ‘leaders’, as the group’s members are known, spend half a day out on the streets of Madang working, without payment, to clear the streets and coastline areas of litter and tidy up public gardens and spaces. Their visibility to the town’s population, including youth who remain in limbo, is that the future they want starts with them.

And there is no shortage of people who want to be a part of this grassroots movement. While the group was formed by Wari in Madang in 2013 with less than 300 members, it has since grown to more than 3,000, ranging from teenagers to people in their forties, from provinces around the country, including the northern Sepik, mountainous highlands and far flung Manus Island.

Many of those who have joined Tropical Gems have endured personal hardships and social exclusion, whether due to poverty, loss of their parents or missing out on the opportunity to finish their education.

“My life was really hard before I joined Tropical Gems, but now it has changed,” 30-year-old Sepi Luke told IPS. He now feels in control of his life and has hope for the future.

Lisa Lagei of the Madang Country Women’s Association supports the group’s endeavours and recognises the positive impact they can have on the wider community.

“What they are doing, taking a lead is good. It is important to take the initiative. We can’t wait for the government, we have to do things for ourselves,” she said.

Lagei has observed many issues facing youth in Madang, ranging from high unemployment and crime to an increase in young girls turning to prostitution for money and a high secondary education dropout rate primarily due to families being unable to afford school fees. While these problems are mainly visible in urban areas, they are increasingly prevalent in rural communities as well, she added.

Wari believes there is a gap between the formal education system and the real world, and many young people in Papua New Guinea are seeking ways to cope with the complex forces that are shaping their lives.

Customary landowners in Papua New Guinea, a rainforest nation in the Southwest Pacific, are suffering the environmental and social impacts of illegal logging. Credit: Catherine Wilson/IPS

Tackling the toughest issues

In March the group was visited by members of the civil society activist organisation, Act Now PNG, which conducted awareness sessions about land issues, such as how land grabbing occurs and corruption associated with the country’s Special Agriculture and Business Leases (SABLs).

Land grabbing has led to the loss of 5.5 million hectares – or 12 percent of the country’s land area – to foreign investors, many of which are engaged in logging, rather than agricultural projects of benefit to local communities.

Papua New Guinea, home to the world’s third largest tropical rainforest, has a forest cover of an estimated 29 million hectares, but the rapid growth of its export-driven economy has made it the second largest exporter of tropical timber after Malaysia.

The California-based Oakland Institute estimates that PNG exports approximately three million cubic metres of logs every year, primarily to China.

The United Nations Food and Agriculture Organisation (FAO) predicts that 83 percent of the country’s commercially viable forests will be lost or degraded by 2021 due to commercial logging, mining and land clearance for oil palm plantations.

“Within ten years nearly all accessible forests will be logged out and at the root of this problem is endemic and systematic corruption,” a spokesperson for Act Now PNG told IPS last December.

This could spell disaster for the roughly 85 percent of Papua New Guinea’s population who live in rural areas, and are reliant on forests for their survival.

Consider the impacts of environmental devastation and logging-related violence in Pomio, one of the least developed districts in East New Britain – an island province off the northeast coast of the Papua New Guinean mainland – where there is a lack of health services, decent roads, water and sanitation.

Life expectancy here is a miserable 45-50 years and the infant mortality rate of 61 per 1,000 live births is significantly higher than the national rate of 47.

How to address these issues are huge questions, but the Tropical Gems do not shy away from asking them.

“We discourage, in our awareness [campaigns], the selling of land. Our objectives are to conserve the environment, to value our traditional way of living,” Wari said.

Knowledge sharing also extends to livelihood skills and the group’s leaders who know how to weave, bake or grow crops hold training sessions for the benefit of others. Some have started their own enterprises.

The Tropical Gems is a grassroots youth initiative that emerged in the coastal town of Madang in Papua New Guinea in 2013. Credit: Catherine Wilson/IPS

Barbara grows and sells tomatoes at the town’s market, for example, and Lynette, from the nearby village of Maiwara, has a small business raising and selling chickens.

One of the next steps for Tropical Gems is to extend the reach of its activities into rural areas to help people see the sustainable development potential in their local setting, rather than migrating to urban centres.

Indeed, rapid urbanisation has resulted in grim living conditions for many city-dwellers, with 45 percent of those who reside in the capital, Port Moresby, living in informal settlements that lack proper water and sanitation facilities.

In Eight Mile Settlement, located on the outskirts of Port Moresby, 15,000 residents drink contaminated water from broken taps. Water-borne diseases are the leading cause of hospital deaths in Papua New Guinea.

But tackling the particular issue or urbanisation may require more resources than the group currently has, even though they have sustained their projects to date without any external funding.

“The fees that individuals pay to join are used to sustain Tropical Gems and we help ourselves,” Wari explained.

In the meantime, word about the unique initiative has spread to the capital. This year, Wari and the Gems have been invited to give a presentation about their work to the Waigani Seminar, a national forum to discuss progress toward the country’s ‘Vision 2050’ aspirations, to be co-hosted by the government and University of Papua New Guinea in Port Moresby from 19-21 August.

Papua New Guinea will face many hurdles in the coming decade, particularly environmental challenges as the country faces up to rising sea levels and the other impacts of climate change. Initiatives like the Tropic Gems are laying the groundwork for a far more resilient society than its political leaders have thus far created.

Edited by Kanya D’Almeida

Motorists navigate a flooded stretch of road in the town of Ragama, just north of Colombo. Credit: Amantha Perera/IPS

By Thalif Deen
UNITED NATIONS, Jul 3 2015 (IPS)

The most devastating impact of climate change – including rising sea levels, floods, cyclones and both droughts and heavy monsoons – will be felt mostly by the world’s poorest nations.

To meet these impending threats – which will destroy countless human lives and ravage agricultural crops – the United Nations is seeking a hefty 100 billion dollars per year by 2020 as part of a Green Climate Fund (GCF) aimed at supporting developing countries strengthen their resilience and help adapt themselves to meet the foreboding challenges.“The challenge is: how do we make sure that the world spends the money earmarked to avoid serious climate change efficiently and effectively?" -- Lisa Elges of Transparency International

Secretary-General Ban Ki-moon told a high-level meeting on climate change last week: “I will pro-actively engage with leaders from both the global north and south to make sure this goal is met and is considered credible by all.”

The Green Climate Fund, headquartered in Incheon, South Korea, must be “up and running”, he said, with funds that can be disbursed before a key meeting on climate change in Paris in December.

Asked if the ambitious 100-billion-dollar target was realistic, Lisa Elges, Head of Climate Policy at Transparency International, told IPS: “The more practical question is: how can he achieve the target?”

Public purses are stretched, yet public finance is still necessary. And if you want to involve the private sector, you need public finance to give subsidies and attract and leverage private investments, she added.

Elges said one ‘untapped’ source of finance could be the crackdown on illicit financial flows.

For example, if countries tackle money laundering, they can make more taxable money available to address the world’s environmental and development needs.

To put the 100 billion dollars in perspective, Elges said, 1,000 billion dollars are lost annually in illicit financial flows losses, including corruption, bribery and tax evasion.

“When the corrupt lose, the people and planet will gain,” she said.

Michael Westphal, a Senior Associate in the Sustainable Finance team at the World Resources Institute (WRI), told IPS a politically feasible path to reach 100 billion dollars (per year) in international climate funding by 2020 is to include a larger set of climate finance sources and scaling up all public finance.

Reaching the 100-billion-dollar target is possible, he said, but warned it will take a concerted action by public actors to use public finance to leverage private sector investment.

In paper on climate funding, WRI discuss a number of recommendations.

Firstly, developed nations should commit to increasing all public funding flows to 2020.

This includes developed country climate finance as reported to the U.N. Framework Convention on Climate Change (mostly finance through bilateral channels), multilateral development bank climate finance, and climate-related official development assistance.

Secondly, developed countries should consider using new and innovative sources of finance toward the 2020 goal, including redirected fossil fuel subsidies, carbon market revenues, financial transaction taxes, export credits, and debt relief – many of which have been little used to mobilise climate finance.

And thirdly, parties should clarify the definition of climate finance and development of methodologies, including those for calculating and attributing leveraged private sector investment, to improve accounting and reporting.

At a summit meeting of the Group of 20 industrial nations in Australia last November, U.S. President Barack Obama announced a contribution of 3.0 billion dollars to help the world’s poorest nations fight climate change.

Even before Obama’s pledge, the New York Times reported that at least 10 countries, including France, Germany, and South Korea, had pledged a total of around 3.0 billion dollars to the fund.

The U.S. contribution was followed by a pledge of 1.5 billion dollars by Japan.

Back in November 2014, Hela Cheikhrouhou, executive director of the Fund, was quoted as saying: “The contribution by the U.S. will have a direct impact on mobilizing contributions from the other large economies.

Ban told delegates last week: “I strongly urge developed countries to provide a politically credible trajectory for mobilizing 100 billion dollars per year by 2020 to support developing countries in curbing emissions and strengthening their resilience.”

It is imperative, he pointed out, that developed countries provide greater clarity on the public finance component of the 100 billion before Paris, as well as on how they will engage private finance

An agreement must also acknowledge the need for long-term, very significant financing beyond 2020.

“I welcome the recent announcement by Germany to double its climate finance support by 2020, and encourage other developed countries to follow this example,” he implored.

Taken in sum, he said, this finance package should build trust and help unlock the additional trillions in financing needed to build low carbon, climate resilient economies.

According to the United Nations, a summit meeting of world leaders last September catalysed “much-needed momentum” on climate finance.

“Public and private sector leaders pledged to mobilise over 200 billion dollars by the end of 2015 to finance low-carbon, climate-resilient growth.”

A meeting in Lima, Peru last December pledged 10 billion dollars for the initialisation of the Green Climate Fund, according to a U.N. statement.

Providing a different perspective, Elges of Transparency International (TI) told IPS: “The challenge is: how do we make sure that the world spends the money earmarked to avoid serious climate change efficiently and effectively? If that money goes astray, it could have disastrous consequences on the ground.”

She said there is also the corruption threat of lobby groups – for example, in the fossil fuel industries – in developed countries like the U.S. or the UK, who are able to influence long-term climate policy for short-term gain.

For example: 550 billion dollars per year go to fossil fuel in the form of subsidies, often resulting from corruption and undue influence.

In developing countries, the greater issue is weak governance: in practice, laws on transparency and accountability are not being respected.

One of our priorities at TI is to strengthen these areas of government and help citizens scrutinise hold their leaders to account.

Corruption is a global phenomenon: it affects all countries, albeit in different ways and it can affect every aspect of life, including our global response to climate change, she declared.

Asked if there is a U.N. role in battling corruption in climate change, Elges said climate change, human rights and transnational crime are all covered by U.N. treaties and compliance bodies.

The U.N. therefore has a huge role to play – politically and practically, to improve coordination against corruption across the board, and around the world, she declared.

Edited by Kitty Stapp

The writer can be contacted at thalifdeen@aol.com

The overwhelming majority of lobby meetings held by European Commissioners and their closest advisors are with representatives of corporate interests, according to an analysis published Jun. 24 by Transparency International (TI).

The finding was revealed by EU Integrity Watch, a new lobby monitoring tool launched by TI, which “works with governments, businesses and citizens to stop the abuse of power, bribery and secret deals.”

Today’s assessment of the situation of lobbying in Brussels follows the publication in April of TI’s report on lobbying in Europe. That report analysed lobbying in 19 European countries and in the three European Union institutions and showed examples of undue influence on politics across the region and in Brussels.

At the time, Elena Panfilova, Vice-Chair of TI, said: “In the past five years, Europe’s leaders have made difficult economic decisions that have had big consequences for citizens. Those citizens need to know that decision-makers were acting in the public interest, not the interest of a few select players.”"There is a strong link between the amount of money you spend and the number of meetings you get [with European Commission officials]. Those organisations with the biggest lobby budgets get a lot of access, particularly on the financial, digital and energy portfolios” – Daniel Freund, Transparency International EU

According to Tl’s new analysis, of the more than 4,300 lobby meetings declared by the top tier of European Commission officials between December 2014 and June 2015, more than 75 percent were with corporate lobbyists. Only 18 percent were with NGOs, four percent with think tanks and two percent with local authorities.

Google, General Electric and Airbus were reported to be among the most active lobbyists at this level, and Google and General Electric were also said to some of the biggest spenders in Brussels, each declaring EU lobby budgets of around 3.5 million euros a year.

Of the 7,908 organisations which have voluntarily registered in the EU Transparency Register – the register of European Union lobbyists – 4,879 seek to influence political decisions of the European Union on behalf of corporate interests.

Exxon Mobil, Shell and Microsoft (all 4.5-5 million euros) are the top three companies in terms of lobby budgets, according to their declarations made to the Register.

“The evidence of the last six months suggests there is a strong link between the amount of money you spend and the number of meetings you get,” said Daniel Freund of Transparency International EU. “Those organisations with the biggest lobby budgets get a lot of access, particularly on the financial, digital and energy portfolios.”

According to Transparency International EU, the portfolios for climate and energy (487 meetings), jobs and growth (398), digital economy (366) and financial markets (295) currently receive most attention from lobbyists.

The Commissioners in charge of the latter three – Finland’s Jyrki Katainen, the United Kingdom’s Jonathan Hill and Germany’s Günther Oettinger – are reported to have particularly low numbers for meetings with civil society – three, three and two respectively, representing between four and eight percent of the total number of their declared meetings.

While large global NGOs, such as World Wide Fund for Nature (WWF) and Greenpeace, are in the Top 10 of organisations with most meetings, TI said it was notable that meetings with civil society are often held as large roundtable events with multiple participants.

European Commission President Jean-Claude Juncker, who issued instructions In November 2014 that “Members of the Commission should seek to ensure an appropriate balance and representativeness in the stakeholders they meet”. Photo credit: CC BY 2.0 via Wikimedia Commons

In November 2014, European Commission President Jean-Claude Juncker issued instructions on the Commission’s working methods: “While contact with stakeholders is a natural and important part of the work of a Member of the Commission, all such contacts should be conducted with transparency and Members of the Commission should seek to ensure an appropriate balance and representativeness in the stakeholders they meet.”

The new data also reveals that 80 percent of the 7,821 organisations currently registered did not have a single meeting reported with a Commissioner or their teams, demonstrating the limitations of the European Commission’s new transparency provisions that only cover the highest ranking top one percent of E.U. officials and only 20 percent of the registered lobby organisations.

Lower-level officials, such as the team negotiating the Transatlantic Trade and Investment Partnership (TTIP) between the European Union and the United States, are not covered.

“The European Commission should be congratulated on providing this insight into lobbying of high-level officials, but this is just part of the picture,” said Carl Dolan, Director of Transparency International EU. “Officials are lobbied at all levels and greater transparency is required to reassure the public about the integrity of EU policy-making.

Transparency International EU also found that many organisations still remain absent from the register. This includes 14 of the 20 biggest law-firms in the world that all have Brussels offices, such as Clifford Chance, White & Case or Sidley Austin. Eleven out of these 14 law firms have registered as lobby organisations in Washington DC, where registration is mandatory.

“Much of the information that lobbyists voluntarily file with the lobby register is inaccurate, incomplete or outright meaningless,” said Freund, adding that over 60 percent of organisations that lobbied the European Commission on the EU-US trade agreement do not properly declare these activities.

Further, on the broad reform package of financial services entitled ‘Capital Markets Union’, many banks – including HSBC, BNP Paribas and Lloyds – that have had meetings on this topic fail to declare in the lobby register that they are active in this area.

The findings of EU Integrity Watch also reveal hundreds of completely meaningless declarations, with some organisations claiming to spend more than 100 million euros on E.U. lobbying or having tens of thousands of lobbyists at their disposal, showing the need for more systematic checks and verification by the Commission and ultimately a mandatory register.

Freund said that “all E.U. institutions should publish a ‘legislative footprint’ – a public record of all lobby meetings and other input that has influenced policies and legislation.”

Recognising that the European Commission has started moving in the right direction, TI says that the measures introduced so far need to be extended to everyone involved in the decision-making process, including the European Parliament and Council.

Edited by Phil Harris    

Lobbying is an integral part of democracy, but multiple scandals throughout Europe demonstrate that a select number of voices with more money and insider contacts can come to dominate political decision-making – usually for their own benefit.

In a report titled ‘Lobbying in Europe: Hidden Influence, Privileged Access’ released Apr. 15, Transparency International said that the lack of clear and enforceable rules and regulations is to blame and called for urgent lobbying reform.

The report from the global civil society coalition against corruption found that of 19 European countries assessed, only seven have some form of dedicated lobbying law or regulation, allowing for nearly unfettered influence of business interests on the daily lives of Europeans.

“In the past five years, Europe’s leaders have made difficult economic decisions that have had big consequences for citizens,” said Elena Panfilova, Vice-Chair of Transparency International. “Those citizens need to know that decision-makers were acting in the public interest, not the interest of a few select players.”

Using international standards and emerging best practice, the report examines lobbying practices as well as whether safeguards are in place to ensure transparent and ethical lobbying in Europe and three core European Union institutions – European Commission, European Parliament and Council of the European Union.

Slovenia comes out at the top with a score of 55 percent, owing to the dedicated lobbying regulation in place, which nevertheless suffers from gaps and loopholes. Cyprus and Hungary rank at the bottom with 14 percent, performing poorly in almost every area assessed, especially when it comes to access to information.

Eurozone crisis countries Italy, Portugal and Spain are among the five worst-performing countries, where lobbying practices and close relations between the public and financial sectors are deemed risky.

Noting that the three E.U. institutions on average achieve a score of 36 percent, Transparency International said that “this is particularly worrying, given that Brussels is a hub of lobbying in Europe and decisions made in the Belgian capital affect the entire region and beyond.”

According to the report, none of the European countries or E.U. institutions assessed “adequately control the revolving door between public and private sectors, and members of parliament are mostly exempt from pre- and post-employment restrictions and ‘cooling-off periods’, despite being primary targets of lobbying activities.”

“Unchecked lobbying has resulted in far-reaching consequences for the economy, the environment, human rights and public safety,” said Anne Koch, Transparency International’s Director for Europe and Central Asia. The research highlights problematic lobbying practices across a wide range of sectors and industries in Europe, including alcohol, tobacco, automobiles, energy, finance and pharmaceuticals.

“Unfair and opaque lobbying practices are one of the key corruption risks currently facing Europe,” said Panfilova. “European countries and E.U. institutions must adopt robust lobbying regulations that cover the broad range of lobbyists who influence – directly or indirectly – any political decisions, policies or legislation. Otherwise, the lack of lobby control threatens to undermine democracy across the region.”

Edited by Phil Harris    

Transparency International (PNG) organises an annual Walk Against Corruption in Papua New Guinea's capital, Port Moresby. Credit: Kanya D’Almeida/IPS

By Catherine Wilson
SYDNEY, Feb 24 2015 (IPS)

Corruption, the single largest obstacle to socioeconomic development worldwide, has had a grave impact on the southwest Pacific Island nation of Papua New Guinea. While mineral resource wealth drove high gross domestic product (GDP) growth of eight percent in 2012, the country is today ranked 157^th out of 187 countries in terms of human development.

Key anti-corruption fighters in the country say that money laundering must be tackled to increase deterrence and ensure that stolen public funds earmarked for vital hospitals and schools do not pay for luxury assets abroad.

A patronage system of governance and a culture of secrecy have led to the misappropriation of an estimated half of Papua New Guinea's development budget of 7.6 billion kina (about 2.8 billion dollars) between 2009 and 2011 -- Investigation Task-Force Sweep (ITFS)
“Our police officers, school teachers and health workers live and work in very squalid circumstances,” Lawrence Stephens, chairman of Transparency International (PNG), in the capital, Port Moresby, told IPS.

“So when we see the government awarding a contract for pharmaceutical and medical supplies to a company not qualified to tender, a company quoting a price 40 percent higher than the closest qualified tender and costing the equivalent of 160 new homes for nurses each year of the three-year contract, we blame corrupt individuals for destroying development.”

Papua New Guinea has been given a corruption score of 25/100, where 100 indicates clean governance, in comparison to the world average of 43/100, by Transparency International.

The country’s dedicated anti-corruption team, Investigation Task-Force Sweep (ITFS), launched by the government in 2011, has described the country as a ‘mobocracy’, where a patronage system of governance and a culture of secrecy have led to the misappropriation of an estimated half of the development budget of 7.6 billion kina (about 2.8 billion dollars) from 2009 to 2011.

Large-scale theft of public funds, including foreign aid, is alleged to have occurred across government departments responsible for national planning, health, petroleum and energy, finance and justice.

A 2006 Public Accounts Committee Inquiry into the Lands Department alone concluded that it had conducted itself illegally over many years and given priority to the interests of private enterprise and speculators over the interests and lawful rights of the State. The department’s shortfall in revenue was 5.9 million kina (2.2 million dollars) in 2001 and 4.9 million kina (1.8 million dollars) in 2003.

State capture, where powerful private sector interests exert undue influence over state leaders, officials and procurement processes, has had devastating repercussions for national development. Approval of ‘white elephant projects’ has channelled windfalls to criminal syndicates, Sam Koim, the ITFS Chairman, reported in the Griffith Law Journal.

Koim told IPS that, of 302 cases of corruption entailing revenue of up to 5.3 billion kina (1.9 billion dollars) under investigation, 91 had been prosecuted. Twenty-eight senior public servants have been suspended or removed from office, while two Members of Parliament and two senior public servants have been convicted and jailed.

To date, 8.3 million kina (3.1 million dollars) in proceeds of crime have been recovered, but including all outstanding cases this figure could potentially rise to 500 million kina (187 million dollars). Investigation into corporate tax evasion has led to the restitution of 22.6 million kina (8.4 million dollars).

Globally it is estimated that corruption drains the developing world of up to one trillion dollars every year and what is lost is in the magnitude of 10 times the official development assistance budget, claims the United Nations Development Programme (UNDP).

This has impacted increasing inequality in countries such as PNG, where 40 percent of the population of seven million live below the poverty line, maternal mortality is 711 per 100,000 live births, literacy is just 63 percent and only 19 percent of people have access to sanitation.

It is a vicious cycle, as Koim also believes that the state becomes an alternative source of personal prosperity when there are few legitimate avenues available for people to economically improve their lives.

Banks crucial to fighting corruption

The majority of stolen funds have been transferred through banks to offshore investments. Australia receives about 200 million Australia dollars (155 million dollars) of illicit gains from the Melanesian island state every year, claims the Australian Federal Police.

Several PNG politicians have purchased luxury homes with a total estimated value of 11.5 million Australian dollars (8.9 million dollars) in the northern Australian city of Cairns.

“Without banks and financial institutions, it is impossible to commit economic crimes, such as fraud and money laundering,” states the Investigation Task-Force Sweep (ITFS).

In a report last year on the government’s payment of fraudulent legal fees, ITFS identified numerous control gaps, such as lack of written contracts, oversight of procurement and payment clearance processes and the failure of banks to prevent evidently suspicious transactions.

“The duty imposed on banks to avoid engaging in money laundering should not be limited to ticking the boxes or submitting periodic transaction reports, but also taking proactive steps including rejecting transactions and closing bank accounts,” the report recommended. Sixty-five percent of PNG’s financial sector assets are held by commercial banks, including foreign bank subsidiaries.

There are also gaps between national legislation and banking sector regulations. For instance, money laundering is a criminal offence under the Proceeds of Crime Act (2005), but there is no obligation on banks to check inexplicably large or unorthodox patterns of transactions.

Action is also required by recipient nations, experts say. Professor Jason Sharman of the Centre for Governance and Public Policy at Queensland’s Griffith University told IPS that there was a need for improved government “supervisory responsibility to make sure that Australian banks are not accepting suspect funds from PNG Politically Exposed Persons (PEPs).”

“One of the main weaknesses is in the Australian real estate sector with very little scrutiny of foreign money coming in, especially when, as is often the case, this money is routed via lawyers’ or real estate agents’ trust accounts,” he added.

But progress by the anti-corruption team has accelerated broader action. “A number of PNG-based banks have closed accounts of high risk customers and refused suspicious transactions”, while some international corresponding banks “have refused transactions they view to have originated from illicit sources,” ITFS reports.

Reducing and preventing corruption is a long-term battle, which includes addressing the cultural divide between an introduced western government system and centuries of traditional governance based on a leader’s ability to acquire and distribute resources to his own kin. But if corruption is driven largely by the lure of a quick route to untold personal wealth, then a critical measure now is eliminating safe havens for the plunder.

Edited by Kanya D’Almeida

Journalists in Pakistan protest against the killing of their colleagues. Credit: Rahat Dar/IPS

By Ashfaq Yusufzai
PESHAWAR, Pakistan, Feb 20 2015 (IPS)

It is no surprise that most Pakistani journalists work under tremendous stress; caught between crime lords in its biggest cities, militant groups across its tribal belt and rival political parties throughout the country, censorship, intimidation and death seem almost to come with the territory.

But while many have become accustomed to working with a degree of fear and uncertainty, none could have been prepared for the number of tragedies that unfolded in 2014, the worst year ever for the media in Pakistan.

All told, last year saw the deaths of 14 journalists, media assistants and bloggers, while dozens more were injured, kidnapped or intimidated.

Reports by rights groups here point to a culture of impunity that is rendering impossible the notion of a free press, which activists and experts say is crucial to development and peace in a country mired in poverty and conflict.

Deaths, attacks, violence

“Pakistan’s media community is effectively under siege. Journalists, in particular those covering national security issues or human rights, are targeted from all sides in a disturbing pattern of abuses carried out to silence their reporting." -- David Griffiths, Amnesty International’s deputy Asia-Pacific director
A report released last month by the Pakistan-based Freedom Network (FN) documents numerous assassinations and attacks including the Jan. 1 shooting of Shan Dahar, a reporter with Abb Takk Television in Larkana, a city in the southern Sindh Province.

The local media initially reported that stray bullets fired during New Year’s Day celebrations hit Dahar, but subsequent investigations suggest that the killing was planned.

At the time of his death, the reporter had been working on a story about Pakistan’s sprawling black market for unregulated drugs; some believe that those with vested interests in the industry had a hand in his death.

Other documented deaths include the Jan. 17 killing of Waqas Aziz Khan, Ashraf Arain and Muhammad Khalid in a suburb of Karachi when gunmen opened fire on a media van used for live transmissions by Express TV.

While none of those killed were journalists – one was a security guard, one a driver and the other a technician for Express TV – activists here say their deaths represent the deadly climate for anyone involved, however remotely, with the press.

The FN report tracks patterns and challenges ahead for the industry in Pakistan, including trends such as the invocation of laws on blasphemy and treason to intimidate media houses, and the use of crippling fines and blanket bans on coverage that have forced many outlets to practice self-censorship in an effort to stay afloat.

In what the Pakistan Press Foundation (PPF) called a “chilling” example of these laws, last November one of the country’s Anti-Terrorism Courts sentenced four citizens to 26 years each in prison, plus a 12,800-dollar fine apiece, for airing a “contentious” television programme, supposedly in violation of Pakistan’s blasphemy laws.

Climate of impunity

Other incidents that have media workers here on edge include the April 2014 assault on Hamid Mir, a senior reporter for Geo TV, who was fired at by gunmen on motorcycles while on his way from the airport to his office in Karachi.

Though he survived the attack, and his since undergone a successful operation, his assailants are still at large, and the threat to his life is still very much alive.

Mazhar Abbas, a former president of the Pakistan Federal Union of Journalists, tells IPS that the government’s inability to ensure freedom of expression has put reporters in an extremely difficult situation.

“The problem is that nobody knows who is killing the journalists,” he says. A complete dearth of official information on the perpetrators, combined with a lack of proper investigations, means that far too many journalists continue to operate within a climate of uncertainty and impunity, experts say.

In the northern Federally Administered Tribal Areas (FATA), journalists suffer constant threats and attacks from the Taliban and other militant groups that have operated on the border of Afghanistan since fleeing the U.S. invasion of their country in 2001.

Since the War on Terror began, 12 journalists in FATA have lost their lives, while scores of others have fled to Peshawar, capital of the neighbouring Khyber Pakhtunkhwa province.

For others, being out of reach of terrorist groups does not necessarily guarantee security. According to Amnesty International, hundreds of journalists in Pakistan experience threats, harassment and violence, sometimes even at the hands of the intelligence services.

The rights group’s recent report, ‘A Bullet has Been Chosen for You’, presents 34 cases in which journalists have been killed in retaliation for their work since 2008; only one of the perpetrators has been booked for the crime. The report blasts the authorities for failing to stem the bloody wave of violence against media workers, which activists say constitutes a grave violation of human rights.

The Committee to Protect Journalists (CPJ) estimates that 56 journalists have been killed in Pakistan since 1992. This figure, however, includes only those cases in which there was a clear motive for the death; activists here believe the true number of murders could be much higher.

Even those who aren’t killed exist in a kind of grey space, where they constantly fear reprisals for investigations or exposures that implicate any number of political actors.

“Pakistan’s media community is effectively under siege,” said David Griffiths, Amnesty International’s deputy Asia-Pacific director, when the report was released last year. “Journalists, in particular those covering national security issues or human rights, are targeted from all sides in a disturbing pattern of abuses carried out to silence their reporting.

“The constant threat puts journalists in an impossible position, where virtually any sensitive story leaves them at risk of violence from one side or another,” he added.

In a country that is ranked 126^th on Transparency International’s Corruption Perceptions Index (CPI), just a few places ahead of nations like Myanmar, Afghanistan and North Korea, experts say that a free press is essential to educating the public and exposing fraud, theft and rights violations on a massive scale.

Edited by Kanya D’Almeida

The 2009 murder of prominent editor Lasantha Wickrematunge sent shock waves through Sri Lankan media circles. Credit: Amantha Perera/IPS

By Amantha Perera
COLOMBO, Feb 3 2015 (IPS)

On Jan. 8, 2009, the Sri Lankan media suffered a debilitating attack.

Lasantha Wickrematunge, an editor and unashamed critic of Sri Lanka’s then-President Mahinda Rajapaksa and his government, was killed just five minutes away from his office in Ratmalana, a suburb of the capital Colombo. Motorcycle-riding assailants, none of whom have been identified, waylaid him and assassinated him in broad daylight.

The murder sent shockwaves through the media community, already besieged by an administration that had a zero-tolerance policy towards criticism while it pushed for a military victory to end a long-running separatist war with Tamil rebels in the north of the island.

In 2014, Sri Lanka was ranked 85th on the Corruption Perceptions Index (CPI), with just 38 out of 100 points, indicating a strong need for anti-corruption measures -- Transparency International
The Wickrematunge murder was a catalyst that drove many others to take shelter outside of Sri Lanka, as state repression increased. According to the Committee to Protect Journalists (CPJ) at least 13 journalists have been killed in Sri Lanka, while dozens have fled in fear of deadly reprisals, since Mahinda Rajapaksa assumed office in 2005.

His assassination was also seen as an attack on one of the few news outlets committed to exposing corruption, revealing nepotism and pushing for good governance at a time when the so-called “right” to information was a pipedream.

Exactly six years to the day of the murder, Rajapaksa lost the presidency. Some of Wickrematunge’s close family members and associates have called the defeat divine retribution. And it has been hard to ignore the coincidence.

Since the election, the Sri Lankan media as a whole have been breathing lightly. The new government has eased travel restrictions and granted access to blocked or banned websites. New ministers have been quick to assure the public that national intelligence personnel have been ordered to stop listening in on private phone calls.

“The State Intelligence Service has been asked to strictly limit itself to national security operations, nothing else,” Cabinet Spokesperson and Health Minister Rajitha Senaratne told foreign correspondents on Jan. 28 in the capital.

The government is also pushing ahead with a long-delayed Right to Information (RTI) Act, which is likely to be presented to parliament by Feb. 20, little over a month after the new government took office.

A committee has been set up to draft the bill. It has been meeting with media rights groups and others to prepare a draft to be presented to the cabinet by Feb. 16.

This is not the first time such a bill has been moved in Sri Lanka’s parliament. In September 2010, Karu Jayasuriya, the deputy leader of the opposition United National Party (UNP), presented an RTI bill to parliament but was forced to withdraw it following strong resistance from the regime.

That was the last anyone heard of the transparency initiative for five years.

Under the new governing coalition helmed by President Maithripala Sirisena, however, the issues of transparency and good governance are finally drifting closer to the top of the agenda.

According to Gayantha Karunathilaka, the new minister of media, “There is a lot of house cleaning we have to do and we don’t want to waste any time.”

The bill will mandate by law the right to seek information from public offices and officials, and also protect those who seek such information. The new government has also appealed to those who fled the country to return though none have yet done so.

Ignorance fuels corruption

Economic analysts here feel that an RTI bill could act as a deterrent against rampant corruption, one of the main grievances with the Rajapaksa regime.

Corruption and waste by the former president and his detail was so extreme that the current interim budget, prepared ahead of General Elections in April, has indicated a cut of some 80 billion rupees (over 600,000 dollars) in the funds hitherto allocated to the presidential secretariat.

Experts say it is only the tip of the iceberg of the degree to which state funds were gobbled up by those in the president’s immediate family or closely allied with the regime.

“In countries like India, the RTI Act appears to have reduced corruption as reflected in the improvement in India’s rating in the Corruption Perceptions Index (CPI) produced by Transparency International [from 94^th place in 2012 to 85^th last year],” economist Muttukrishna Sarvananthan told IPS. “Many other developing countries have also experienced improvement in the CPI after Right To Information [Acts].”

He feels that such a step would pave the way for more scrutiny of public spending from the media when there is legal guarantee to seek such information from governments.

In 2014, Sri Lanka was ranked 85^th on the CPI, with just 38 out of 100 points, indicating a strong need for anti-corruption measures, according to the watchdog group.

In one of the most startling examples of corrupt public spending, the last government reportedly spent 846 million rupees, or roughly six million dollars, in a failed bid to host the Commonwealth Games in Sri Lanka.

Last week local newspapers reported that the Ministry of Highways, whose portfolio came under the former president, had spent 50 billion rupees in excess of its budget allocations in 2014, almost all of it on election campaigning for Rajapaksa who eventually lost the race.

Replacing self-censorship with public awareness

Sunil Jayasekera, convener of the Free Media Movement (FMM), the island’s foremost media rights group, said that the RTI Act formed part of a wider agenda.

“It is just one block in a larger wall that we need to build to reinforce civic rights here. Along with the RTI Act, the government should also look at establishing an independent commission for the judiciary and police […],” he stated.

Jayasekera said that the last five years have seen media rights erode like never before. The FMM official said that while scores of journalists have fled the country others have been forced to practice self-censorship.

“It is not only through fear and intimidation – they were the more obvious modes – there was a lot of censorship by way of financial control,” he added.

Several privately-held media houses changed ownership in the last five years, including The Sunday Leader, the leading English-language daily edited by Wickrematunge that at times acted as the lone deterrent against nepotism.

Most of the new investors were suspected of supporting the Rajapaksa administration.

In one such instance, a leading weekly newspaper management told its staff soon after the election that it had lost all advertising revenue, simply because over 90 percent of its ads came from government agencies.

The newspaper also had an unwritten law of not writing anything about the casino-related investments entered into by the Rajapaksa government – estimated at over one billion dollars.

The self-imposed restriction was suspected to be due to the new ownership’s business interests in gaming.

“That is just one example, there are dozens of such in the last decade or so,” Jayasekera explained.

He said that the new government should set the tone without delay to indicate that it supports a vibrant media culture.

“The FMM was one of over 40 civil organisations that supported the Sirisena campaign on a broad reform agenda, and the government is duty-bound to keep those pledges,” he stressed.

Edited by Kanya D’Almeida

Children playing in mining tailings in Morococha, Peru. Credit: Milagros Salazar/IPS

By Carey L. Biron
WASHINGTON, Nov 6 2014 (IPS)

The world’s largest corporations continue to publicise scant information about their global operations, according to new analysis that warns that extractives companies in particular are unprepared for pending disclosure requirements.

The findings come from the global watchdog Transparency International, which looked at 124 of the world’s largest companies. Using publicly available information, the researchers ranked each corporation based on three concerns: anti-corruption measures, transparency around global operations and subsidiaries, and disclosure of country-by-country and project-level finances.“Industry resistance to this kind of regulation has been pretty strong, so it’s not surprising that companies aren’t voluntarily disclosing this information and instead waiting until they’re forced to do so.” -- Alexandra Gillies

While the level of anti-corruption activities is relatively high and growing, the current state of the latter two metrics is far weaker. Indeed, the average score for country-by-country reporting, seen as a transparency lynchpin, is a dismal six percent – and 50 companies have scored zero.

In introducing the study on Wednesday, Transparency International’s chair, Jose Ugaz, noted that the power of multinational companies in today’s global economy rivals even the biggest countries.

“With greater economic power comes greater responsibility,” he said. “Bad corporate behaviour creates the corruption that causes poverty and instability.”

In general, British companies fare best in the new index, Chinese and Asian companies more broadly fare worst, and the U.S. technology sector receives special criticism for its lack of transparency. Transparency International has been reporting on corporate governance since 2008, with the last such study being released in 2012.

The weak results for country-by-country reporting, in particular, will worry anti-poverty advocates and proponents of public sector spending. Such disclosure would, for instance, allow governments to efficiently compare crossborder information with the aim of cutting down on tax evasion as well as outright theft of revenues.

Developing countries may have lost an estimated six trillion dollars in the decade before 2011 due to tax evasion and other shady financial dealings, according to the Washington watchdog group Global Financial Integrity.

“Domestic resource mobilisation is seen as key to unlock economic development,” Koen Roovers, the E.U. advisor for the Financial Transparency Coalition, a global network that funded the new Transparency International report, told IPS.

“Publicly available [country-by-country reporting] information would enable citizens of developing nations to determine whether the taxes paid by the transnational companies that trade in their countries is in line with their activities. The apparent absence of this information gives reason for suspicion.”

Industry resistance

With the aim of ensuring that lucrative natural resources-related revenues are safeguarded in developing countries, the global extractives industry has been a special focus for disclosure requirements.

The United States, European Union and Canada in recent years have all passed project-by-project disclosure requirements, mandating reporting on all payments made by extractives companies to foreign governments.

And while the U.S. legislation is currently held up in court due to a lawsuit brought by the oil industry, the E.U.’s requirements are set to go into effect by the middle of next year. Canada’s new rules could be implemented even sooner.

Yet Transparency International warns that extractives companies are “not ready” to comply with these new rules.

“Even though country-by-country reporting was first introduced in the extractive sector, the 19 oil and gas companies in the study only scored an average of 10 per cent,” the report states. “Six companies in this industry scored zero.”

Not all of these companies did poorly on country-by-country reporting. For instance, the Norwegian oil company Statoil scored highest of all of the 124 companies on this metric, with a score of 66 percent.

Other strong performers included the Indian companies Oil & Natural Gas Corporation and Reliance, as well as the Australian-headquartered BHP Billiton, by certain calculations the world’s largest mining company.

Yet overall the sector still appears to be biding its time until the new requirements in the U.S., E.U. and Canada go into effect. For supporters of stricter disclosure, the findings underscore just how transformative those new legal regimes will be.

“Industry resistance to this kind of regulation has been pretty strong, so it’s not surprising that companies aren’t voluntarily disclosing this information and instead waiting until they’re forced to do so,” Alexandra Gillies, the head of governance at the Natural Resources Governance Institute (NRGI), a think tank, told IPS.

“While there are a few smaller companies that have taken this step, the big players certainly haven’t. Nonetheless, it will be interesting to see how the same data looks in another two years.”

Indeed, the U.S. and E.U. disclosure requirements alone would cover an estimated 65 percent of the global extractives sector in terms of value, according to Publish What You Pay, a global advocacy group. And the new Canadian rules, formally tabled late last month with the aim of implementation by April, would likewise affect the world’s largest national mining industry.

Further, at a summit next week, the Group of 20 (G20) industrialised countries are expected to approve a new country-by-country reporting standard that would cover all multinational companies. The Financial Transparency Coalition’s Roovers says the new findings from Transparency International will “up the ante” for the G20 discussions.

Still, he notes that, as currently envisioned, the G20 reports would likely not be made public due to concerns over commercial “sensitivities”.

On to contracts

For many advocates, non-public disclosure would defeat an important purpose of stricter transparency requirements: empowering citizens and civil society to engage in local-level oversight.

“The real innovation around project-level data is that citizens or journalists or parliamentarians would be able to understand the deals that their government has entered into. Right now all we have are highly aggregated figures,” NRGI’s Gillies says.

“If someone is dealing with, say, a huge mine in their community, that data can help them to understand how much money the government is collecting for that project – and whether the disruption they’re facing is worthwhile.”

Nonetheless, with country-by-country reporting requirements now on the horizon, Gillies and others are already turning their attention to a corollary data set: contract-level disclosure. Indeed, certain countries – including Liberia, Guinea, the Democratic Republic of Congo and others – as well as some companies are already making all information on contracts related to natural resource extraction publicly available.

“If you have good revenue or payment data, it’s still difficult to understand what those figures mean unless you know what agreements have been signed,” Gillies says.

“But contract disclosure is already becoming more widely accepted, with a few countries and companies taking the lead. It hasn’t yet become standard practice and what is being done remains piecemeal, but it’s enough to show that this activity isn’t commercially dangerous.”

Within a few years, advocates hope to see the disclosure of both payments and agreements signed with foreign governments become standard procedure.

Edited by Kitty Stapp

The writer can be reached at cbiron@ips.org

The social role of journalists in Honduras is restricted under the official secrets law because they will not be able to report information that the state regards as “classified,” under the controversial new regulations. Credit: Thelma Mejía/IPS

By Thelma Mejía
TEGUCIGALPA, Jul 9 2014 (IPS)

The new official secrets law in Honduras clamps down on freedom of expression, strengthens corruption and enables public information on defence and security affairs to be kept secret for up to 25 years, according to a confidential report seen by IPS.

The Law on Classification of Public Documents related to Security and National Defence, better known as the official secrets law, was approved on the eve of the conclusion of the last parliamentary term, on Jan. 24.

“It [information about corruption] would be classified for 25 years, by which time the statute of limitations for prosecuting public servants for corruption would have expired, and no one would be held accountable,” says the IAIP
In a marathon two-day session, Congress approved a hundred decrees and laws to smooth the path of the new government of President Juan Orlando Hernández, who took office Jan. 27 and belongs to the right-wing National Party, like his predecessor Porfirio Lobo.

“This law lets the government behave like a cat that covers its own dirt,” shopkeeper Eduardo Tinoco told IPS wryly. He pays 20 dollars a week extortion money to one of the gangs that control El Sitio, a neighbourhood in the northeast of the capital.

“I pay taxes here for everything, even to be allowed to live, and that secrecy law will only be used to cover up the diversion of funds used for security and other government business. There are no two ways about it,” said Tinoco, who owns a small grocery store.

The law was blocked in October 2013 because of opposition from the Honduran Community Media Association (AMCH) and international groups, which regard it as a violation of the right to information and freedom of expression.

But it was reconsidered in January. How this occurred is not really known, because there are no audio records in the parliament archives that indicate when the bill was reintroduced, legislature officials told IPS on condition of anonymity.

A report by a team of experts for the Institute for Access to Public Information (IAIP) says that the official secrets law lacks a clear definition of “national security” and this ambiguity opens the way to discretionality, so that anything considered sensitive may be classified as secret.

The IAIP is the autonomous state body responsible for ensuring transparency in Honduras, according to the Law on Transparency and Access to Public Information. IPS obtained the report, which is due to be made public in a few weeks.

Article 3 of the official secrets law indicates that the following can be classified as confidential, in the interests of “national security”: “matters, actions, contracts, documents, information, data and objects whose knowledge by unauthorised persons may harm or endanger national security and/or defence and the fulfilment of its goals in these areas.”

The law sets four classification levels: private, confidential, secret and ultra secret, with periods of secrecy of five, 10, 15 and 25 years respectively, which may be extended as determined by the National Security and Defence Council which is responsible for classifying and declassifying material.

This Council is made up of the three branches of state, the Attorney General’s Office, the ministers of Defence and Security, the national Information and Intelligence Office and the chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff of the armed forces.

Information classified as “private” is lower level information, documentation or strategic internal material within state bodies that could cause “undesired institutional effects” if they came to light.

“Confidential” is the term attributed to intermediate level information, which could cause “imminent risk” or a direct threat to security, national defence or public order if it were made public, the law says.

Materials classified as “secret” are high level information at the national level, in the strategic internal and external spheres of the state, revelation of which poses an imminent danger to “constitutional order, security, national defence, international relations and the fulfilment of national goals.”

Finally, “ultra secret” is the highest level classification and is described as material which, if in the realm of public knowledge, would provoke “exceptionally serious” internal and external harm, threatening security, defence, sovereignty and territorial integrity, and the achievement of national goals.

Omar Rivera, of the Civil Society Group (GSC), an association of political advocacy and human rights organisations, told IPS that the “broad discretionality provided by the law is very worrying, because it provides a cloak of secrecy that can cover everything.”

His main concern is related to the security tax that has been levied on businesses and individuals for the past two years, as a contribution to the fight against insecurity and violence. This law “will make it impossible to get factual information on how the millions of dollars the state collects are spent,” he said.

The IAIP report highlights the same discretionalities, pointing out that any information about a public official being implicated in corruption can be classified as “ultra secret”.

In this case it would be classified for 25 years, by which time the statute of limitations for prosecuting public servants for corruption would have expired, and no one would be held accountable, the report analysing the law says.

Meanwhile, human rights expert Roberto Velásquez told IPS that the law directly targets journalism and freedom of expression, by putting a stranglehold on investigating or disseminating information.

He was referring to Article 10 of the law, which establishes that “when it can be foreseen that classified material may come to the knowledge of the media, these shall be notified of the nature of the material, and shall respect its classified nature.”

Also, any person having knowledge of classified information is obliged to “keep it secret” and report it to the nearest civil, police or military authority.

The new law directly contradicts the Transparency Law, in force for the past five years, by removing the IAIP’s powers to classify information regarded as secret, and overriding guarantees for freedom of expression and investigative journalism.

Doris Madrid, the head of IAIP, told IPS that it is hoping that the official secrets law will be reformed, on the grounds that it is unconstitutional and violates international treaties, but a proposal to revise or repeal it was turned down in Congress in March.

IPS learned that Transparency International made the signing of an agreement with the government on Open Budgets conditional on a revision of the law.

Honduras is regarded as one of the Latin American countries with the highest perception of corruption and insecurity. In April, the United Nations Office on Drugs and Crime (UNODC) indicated that this country of 8.4 million people has the highest murder rate in the world.

The Observatory on Violence at the National Autonomous University of Honduras reported this rate as 79.7 homicides per 100,000 inhabitants. But now the authorities have refused to give any more figures on violent deaths to the Observatory, its members have complained.

Farmers trying to build a barrier to protect their crops from the Nduyi River in Nyeri County. The river usually bursts its banks after a heavy downpour. Credit: Miriam Gathigah/IPS

By Miriam Gathigah
NAIROBI, Apr 22 2014 (IPS)

Each season Peter Gichangi, a vegetable and arrowroot commercial farmer who owns four hectares of land in Nyeri County, Kenya’s Central Province, cultivates his crops near the Nduyi River.

“Although every now and then the Nduyi River bank bursts, flooding the farm, the loss is small compared to the good harvest and financial gains during good weather patterns,” Gichangi tells IPS.

But he is just one of a significant number of small-scale farmers who have taken to commercial farming in water catchment areas, according to the Ministry of Environment, Water and Natural Resources.“The market forces and extreme hunger for a cash economy has been given dominance at the expense of our environmental and natural resource health.” -- Kevin Kinusu, Hivos

In this East African nation, smallholder farmers account for at least 75 percent of the total agricultural output, according to the Ministry of Agriculture, Livestock and Fisheries.

“Due to the scramble for scarce land and because agriculture here is rain-fed, we now have more and more farmers encroaching on water catchment areas,” Nancy Mumbi, a government agricultural researcher in Central Province, tells IPS.

She says this is especially prevalent in the Rift Valley, which is considered the country’s breadbasket, and Central Kenya.

Mumbi says the government is attempting to put a stop to the practice by imposing “fines of up to 600 dollars or imprisonment not exceeding six months or both.”

However, Ken Muchai from the Ministry of Environment, Water and Natural Resources warns “the lack of a national policy on natural resource management is leading to the depletion of our natural wealth.”

“We may not have any lions in the next 20 years, we are losing 100 lions per year to human-animal conflict,” he tells IPS.

He says that the draft Natural Resources Development and Management Policy 2012 will address these issues.

“And many other sectoral policies are already under review to facilitate conservation and management of natural resources.”

But while Kenya may have in place at least 90 pieces of legislation on how to manage its natural resources, experts say the country’s excess of legislation is weak and inadequate to meet the challenge of sustainably managing this.

Kevin Kinusu, the climate and energy advocacy officer at Hivos, the Dutch organisation for development, tells IPS that the weak laws have proved ineffective in the face of the country’s capitalist economy.

“Market forces have overlooked the importance of sustainable management of natural resources. Due to the current craze to develop real estate, wetlands in areas in Nairobi County, parts of Kiambu County and indeed in many other parts of the country have been converted into settlements.”

Kinusu explains that although there are policies like the Wetlands Atlas and the Master Plan for the Conservation and Management of Water Catchment Areas in place “we do not have a comprehensive policy on conservation of wetlands and there are [wetlands] facing severe pressure despite their importance as a water resource for agricultural productivity and in sustaining livelihoods.”

He says the real value of such protected areas has been ignored and “the market forces and extreme hunger for a cash economy has been given dominance at the expense of our environmental and natural resource health.”

Kinusu says that there have been a few success stories in management of natural wealth. This includes the rehabilitation of the Mau Forest ecosystem — the largest of the country’s five water towers. He points out that the country’s forest cover also increased “from a decline of about two percent to nearly six percent.”

Duncan Okowa, programme officer at local NGO Institute for Law and Environmental Governance (ILEG), tells IPS that the Environment Management and Coordination Act 1999 “should have served as the overarching policy.”

The act provides a framework for environmental legislation and for establishing appropriate legal and institutional mechanisms for the management of the environment.

However, he points out that the act itself has been overtaken by other legislation and is now outdated.

“For instance, there are demands in the 2010 Constitution that are not covered by the act. Also, most sectoral laws were enacted after the act had been developed, for instance we have the Water Act 2002, Forest Act 2005 and the Land Act 2012.”

For example, while the 2010 constitution demands that communities be at the heart of natural resource management, many are still left out of the country’s multi-billion dollar mining industry.

“The production-sharing contracts signed between the government and oil companies are often in favour of the companies since they are signed under the archaic Petroleum Act of 1986,” Samuel Kimeu, executive director of Transparency International Kenya, tells IPS.

“Unclear means of awarding mining licences have been used to fleece the public, compromising the terms of the licence against the public interest, thus swindling the public of possible revenue,” he says.

Okowa says that going forward laws must be reviewed to reflect new realities.

“An enabling environment for these laws to be effective must be created where implementing institutions are given both technical and financial support,” Okowa says.

A rally by opposition leaders in Kazakhstan to denounce ballot-stuffing brings barely 100 supporters. Credit: Christopher Pala/IPS

By Jim Lobe
WASHINGTON, Jul 9 2013 (IPS)

Political parties are seen by the publics in most countries as the most corrupt institutions in their societies, according to the latest survey by the anti-corruption watchdog, Transparency International (TI) released Tuesday.

TI’s Global Corruption Barometer, which was based on interviews with more than 114,000 interviews in 107 countries, also found that a majority of respondents (54 percent) believe their governments are either largely or entirely controlled by a few big entities acting in their own self interest.

Slightly more than one in four respondents (27 percent) reported that they had paid a bribe within the previous 12 months in their dealings with public institutions, such as the police or the courts.

But bribery was far more prevalent in some countries than in others. In Australia, Denmark, Finland, and Japan, for example, one percent of respondents reported having paid a bribe to public officials for services in the past year.

Bribery was far more common in poor countries, particularly in Africa. More than six in 10 respondents reported having paid a bribe in Cameroon, Kenya, Liberia, Libya, Mozambique, Sierra Leone, Uganda, and Zimbabwe. Nearly three of four respondents in Yemen also said they paid a bribe to officials at least once during the year.

Most respondents said they believed corruption in their countries had gotten worse over since 2011 when the last edition of the Barometer was produced. The new Barometer, which involved more people in more countries than ever before, is the eighth published since 2003.

On the more positive side, two-thirds of respondents said they believed ordinary people can make a difference in fighting corruption in their countries, although those two-thirds are more likely not have paid a bribe.

Majorities range from 51 percent to 72 percent said they would be willing to take one of more of several specific actions from joining an anti-corruption organisation, to taking part in peaceful protests and signing a petition.

“There is a widespread willingness to get involved through these various means which the anti-corruption movement should make the most of to take the fight against corruption to a larger scale,” according to TI, an non-governmental organisations (NGO) which currently has 90 chapters worldwide.

The new survey comes on a wave of international public attention – and mobilisation – against corruption. Most recently, huge public demonstrations in major Brazilian cities have focused popular anger on the persistence of corruption in that country, while India’s anti-corruption movement in 2011 continues to reverberate there.

From China to Nigeria, farming communities and poor urban dwellers have found themselves being dispossessed of their land by wealthy and politically well-connected interests that have used those connections to the judiciary and the civil service in land grabs.

Meanwhile, the Occupy Wall Street movement in the United States and the popular protests that have broken out in Greece, Spain, and other southern European countries in response to the Eurocrisis have focused attention on the disproportionate power exerted by private corporate and financial interests on governments.

The Barometer has been one of a number of indices, such as the Rule of Law Index published by the World Justice Project (WJP) that address issues of transparency and corruption and that are used by global institutions, including the World Bank, bilateral aid agencies, and private-sector organisations, to assess the risks of investment and doing business in countries.

TI also publishes an annual Corruption Perceptions Index, which last year rated 176 countries based on the assessments of risk analysts, businessmen, and other local and international experts.

The Barometer, by contrast, interviews a random sample of people who live in the nations covered by the survey. This year’s edition covers both more respondents and more countries than ever before.

All respondents were asked to rate on a one-to-five scale (one being “no problem at all”) how serious corruption is a problem for their countries. The average score across all countries was 4.1, although there were wide variations between countries, particularly between wealthy northern countries and the world’s poorest nations.

Of those who said they had paid bribes during the past year, 31 percent said they had been paid to the police, while 24 percent said the judiciary was the beneficiary. Bribery rates to the police of 75 percent or higher were found in the Democratic Republic of the Congo (DRC), Ghana, Indonesia, Kenya, Liberia, Nigeria, and Sierra Leone.

The services with the next-highest bribery rates dealt primarily with registration services, mostly in regard to land ownership and transfers. TI noted that the highest rates were found in post-conflict societies and countries in transition, such as Afghanistan, Cambodia, Iraq, Liberia, Pakistan, and Sierra Leone – countries which also suffer high levels of hunger and malnutrition.

The next most-common services where bribery was paid included medical treatment (17 percent), and education (16 percent), according to the Barometer.

Beyond the payment of bribes, 64 percent of respondents said they believed that personal contacts played an improper role in getting things done in the public sector. More than 80 percent of respondents Israel, Italy, Lebanon, Malawi, Morocco, Nepal, Paraguay, Russia, Ukraine and Vanuatu cited the importance of personal contacts.

In addition, the perception that government is controlled by a few big self-dealing entities, rather than by the public, appears to have become particularly widespread, even among the world’s wealthiest countries, according to the Barometer.

While only five percent of Norwegians hold that belief, 83 percent of Greeks, 70 percent of Italians, 66 percent of Spaniards, and 64 percent of U.S. respondents said they believe that their country’s government is run to a “large extent” or “entirely” “…by a few big interests looking out for themselves.”

As for major institutions, political parties were seen as the most corrupt, scoring a global average of 3.8 on a one-to-five scale. The police scored second at 3.7, followed by civil servants, parliament, and the judiciary at 3.6 each. The private sector and medical services each scored 3.3, followed by the education system (3.2), and media (3.1). Those institutions regarded as least corrupt included the military (2.9), NGOs (2.7), and religious institutions (2.6).

Political parties were seen as most corrupt by respondents in 51 countries, including Argentina, Brazil, Britain, Canada, Chile, Colombia, Finland, France, Germany, Greece, India, Iraq, Israel, Italy, Japan, South Korea, Mexico, Nigeria, Norway, Palestine, Portugal, Spain, Thailand, Turkey, the U.S. and Uruguay.

Police were seen as most corrupt in 36 countries, including Bangladesh, Bolivia, Egypt, Ethiopia, Ghana, Indonesia, Kenya, Malaysia, Mexico, Mozambique, Nigeria, Pakistan, Philippines, Rwanda, Senegal, South Africa, Sri Lanka, Tanzania, Uganda, Venezuela, and Vietnam, among others.

Some countries were listed more than once because respondents rated more than one institution as the most corrupt.

*Jim Lobe’s blog on U.S. foreign policy can be read at http://www.lobelog.com.

Georgian Prime Minister Bidzina Ivanishvili rose to power in 2012 on a pledge to depoliticise the powerful police force created by President Mikheil Saakashvili following the 2003 Rose Revolution.

Yet while observers credit the government for putting an end to some alleged police abuses, concerns persist about the overall conduct of Georgia’s Interior Ministry.

For the governing Georgian Dream coalition, the stakes tied to those concerns are high, given that a presidential election is fast approaching. Rights advocates contend that measures taken so far by the Georgian Dream haven’t succeeded in boosting public confidence in the police force.

Some observers also contend that Interior Minister Irakli Gharibashvili’s job performance leaves a lot to be desired.

Ironically, police reform ranks as one of the Saakashvili-led United National Movement’s most significant achievements during its tenure as the majority party in the Georgian parliament. In the years since the Rose Revolution, the police force steadily shed its reputation as a den of corrupt bunglers and gained a measure of respect for efficient crime-fighting.

But even as the police improved its performance on the street level, critics charged that the Saakashvili administration misused the Ministry of Internal Affairs (MIA) to protect its political power.

Georgian crime specialist Aleko Kupatadze, a post-doctoral fellow at Oxford University’s University College, documented numerous abuses against government critics and opposition politicians – including the use of intimidation, improper surveillance and arrests – in a 2012 report for Tbilisi’s Center for Social Sciences. In addition the use of torture against individuals in police custody has remained a persistent issue.

In an attempt to break with the past, Prime Minister Ivanishvili tapped as interior minister 30-year-old Irakli Gharibashvili, an individual closely linked with Ivanishvili family interests – he formerly ran Ivanishvili’s charity foundation Cartu, sat on his Cartu Bank’s supervisory board, and managed the record label for Ivanishvili’s singer-son, Bera.

Like his Saakashvili-era predecessors, Gharibashvili had no prior experience in police work, but unlike them, he also had no prior experience in government. He came into office with a pledge to end reported abuses ranging from violence against detainees to covert video surveillance of government critics.

Two of the most powerful police agencies, the dreaded Special Operations Department and Constitutional Security Department, were closed, and their portfolios turned over to the Anti-Corruption Agency, the State Security Agency, and the Criminal Police, a special investigations unit.

But some civil-rights observers note that not all the changes have been for the good.

On three separate occasions – a Feb. 8 scuffle between Ivanishvili and Saakashvili supporters outside the National Library, a May 1 workers’ rights protest, and a May 17 attack against anti-homophobia activists – police in Tbilisi floundered in efforts to maintain public order.

While police now are “much less brutal” toward demonstrators, their overall response to the May 17 fracas was “disorganised” and “completely disorderly,” commented Gia Gvilava, manager of Transparency International Georgia’s Judicial Monitoring and Legal Advice Programme. Other civil-rights activists have concurred.

“They disbanded the SWAT teams, the special units that deal with demonstrations, which is not as good as they think because you still need specially trained people in units to maintain order during big demonstrations,” Gvilava said.

Part of the problem, he noted, could have been a lack of qualified personnel.

As part of an alleged internal reform process, Gharibashvili suspended training requirements for high-level hires from January until the end of March. Three hundred and forty-one individuals were hired during this period, Gvilava claimed, citing Interior Ministry information.

The ministry did not respond to Transparency International Georgia requests for information about the exact positions filled, he said. It also has not responded to allegations that the new hires were intended for spots left vacant after a reported post-election purge.

Whatever the rationale for the suspension of hiring requirements, the ministry ran a “huge risk” by opening recruitment to potentially unqualified candidates, Gvilava asserted.

Interior Minister Gharibashvili also has been shadowed by allegations he arranged various government jobs for relatives, and used his position to secure the arrest of former Interior Ministry employees as retribution for the earlier detention of his father-in-law, Tamaz Tamazashvili, a former regional police chief, in 2011 on illegal weapons charges.

Gharibashvili has denied the charges. But Kupatadze, the researcher on law-enforcement issues, maintains that there is at least an appearance of impropriety surrounding Gharibashvili’s conduct.

The Tamazashvili-related arrests impinge on any ministry claim to be “an impartial institution”, Kupatadze said, adding that jobs allegedly secured for relatives of Gharibashvili or his wife, Nunuka Tamazashvili, contribute to “a worrying trend of ‘legitimising’ nepotism”.

At the same time, he continued, the ministry still relies “on technical and administrative measures to address the issue of crime”.

Interior Ministry officials did not follow up on interview requests from EurasiaNet.org, despite repeated attempts. The ministry did, however, provide a list of recent reforms, which included national tests for “all operational staff”, standardised hiring requirements and a new code of ethics to promote human rights.

How these reforms will counteract many Georgians’ perceptions of diminished safety remains unclear. In March, the MIA released data that showed the number of crimes reported in November 2012, one month after the Georgian Dream’s election victory, increased by nearly 40 percent from the previous year to 4,598 cases.

The mass amnesty of 8,357 prisoners this January has also fanned public jitters. With an eye, conceivably, on his party’s chances in this October’s presidential vote, President Saakashvili recently chided the Interior Ministry for rehiring police officers the UNM-led government had jailed.

For human rights activist Nazi Janezashvili, the question now is how Georgia’s latest round of police reforms will be implemented. “Without competent staff, without implementation of regulations, nothing can be reformed,” Janezashvili said.

Kupatadze, meanwhile, predicted that the Interior Ministry’s performance “is likely to remain an issue over [the] short and medium-term”.

*Editor’s note: Molly Corso is a freelance journalist who also works as editor of Investor.ge, a monthly publication by the American Chamber of Commerce in Georgia.

This story originally appeared on EurasiaNet.org.

Mexico is particularly vulnerable to increasingly frequent extreme weather events, which make climate change mitigation and adaptation measures essential to preserving its spectacular natural landscapes, like Pico de Orizaba, Mexico. Credit: Mauricio Ramos/IPS

By Emilio Godoy
MEXICO CITY, Jun 8 2013 (IPS)

The Climate Change Fund set up in November in Mexico faces enormous challenges such as the enforcement of anti-corruption standards, which make it unlikely that concrete actions will begin this year, according to civil society organisations.

The fund, which will allocate resources to mitigate and adapt to climate change, was created under the General Climate Change Law of June 2012, with an initial budget of only 78,000 dollars, assigned mainly for administrative expenses.

The initiative was adopted in accordance with the global strategy that emerged at the 16th Conference of the Parties to the United Nations Framework Convention on Climate Change (COP 16) held in December 2010 in the southeastern Mexican city of Cancún.

“We know that recipient countries face significant corruption challenges,” and that is a concern because “the Mexican fund may be a model” for other countries that need assistance, Lisa Elges, the head of the Climate Governance Integrity Programme for Transparency International (TI), told IPS.

“A corruption risk assessment is needed, as well as people’s participation and involvement in monitoring the process,” she said.

TI, the global anti-corruption watchdog, is planning to publish in July or August a report on climate finance mapping and assessments which will analyse funds received by nine countries, including Mexico, the Dominican Republic and Panama.

The TI experts found failures of accountability, of dispute settlement mechanisms and of coordination with national funds. In addition there were conflicts of interest between actors involved, such as companies, and a lack of monitoring for projects from initial design to completion.

Mexico’s Climate Change Fund is meant to attract and channel public, private, national and international resources for actions against the effects of climate change, with a priority on adaptation.

Mexico is particularly vulnerable to increasingly frequent and extreme weather events, such as severe drought, intense rains and frosts, for which measures of mitigation and adaptation are essential.

Since 2006, this country of 118 million people has received more than seven billion dollars in loans or donations from the private sector, multilateral bodies and other countries for environmental policies, in response to the government’s call for resources to overcome the challenges, according to the Mexican Centre for Environmental Law (CEMDA).

Among the ongoing projects is the restoration of wetlands in the Gulf of Mexico, financed by the World Bank, and the design of a model for monitoring, verifying and reporting in the forestry sector, an initiative that is due to be launched in 2015, with aid from Norway.

Carlos Tornel, a public policy analyst at CEMDA, told IPS that the climate fund “must have clear rules, accountability and transparency, and should not be the only financing mechanism.”

A report on the flow of resources to Mexico’s climate fund from the public coffers, international institutions and the private sector will be published this month by CEMDA.

In the view of the government of conservative President Enrique Peña Nieto, it is preferable to have a well-defined structure and guidelines in place first, before beginning to finance projects.

“We want to design something that really works well. We have to make it transparent, make it functional, and reduce costs,” Luis Muñozcano, the assistant director general for climate change projects in the environment ministry, told IPS.

Draft guidelines for the climate change fund stipulate the definition of the responsibilities of those involved, procedures for receiving and disbursing funds, a mechanism for accessing information, and transparency in accounting for the resources, among other aspects.

By 2020 a system of financial incentives and subsidies should be in place for adaptation and mitigation measures.

The Mexican fund can also channel cash to energy efficiency, renewable energy, biomass use and clean transportation projects.

Every year Mexico emits some 748 million tonnes of carbon dioxide (CO2), one of the main greenhouse gases responsible for global warming, according to the most recent measurements collected in 2010 and officially released last December.

The General Climate Change Law establishes a plan to reduce emissions by 30 percent by 2020 and by 50 percent by 2050, with reference to 2000 levels.

Mexico’s Fifth National Communication delivered in 2012 to the United Nations Framework Convention on Climate Change predicts that achieving the planned emissions reduction by 2020 will require 138 billion dollars of investment.

“We want a standardised approach. The issue is to see if money was efficiently used. Moreover, in practical terms, the complaints schemes are not operational at the national level,” said Elges, referring to the global Green Climate Fund created at COP 16 and originally promised starter capital of 30 billion dollars.

At the Cancún meeting it was agreed that industrialised nations should contribute 100 billion dollars a year to that fund from 2020 onwards. The Green Climate Fund is devoted to assisting poor countries to adapt to climate change impacts and to develop low-carbon economies. The World Bank is to administer the resources for the first three years according to the standards of the Convention.

The Green Fund is governed by a council of 24 delegates, with equal numbers from developed and developing nations, who are responsible for use and oversight of the resources.

After South Korea was elected as the headquarters of the Green Climate Fund last year, TI received a complaint from one of the other candidate countries accusing South Korea of buying votes with irregular payments. But the Asian country denied the allegations and the case did not proceed further.

However, Elges saw this as a warning sign of the dark shadows that can haunt these kinds of funds.

The other candidates to host the central office of the Green Climate Fund were Germany, Mexico, Namibia, Poland and Switzerland.

“It remains to be seen who is going to allocate the budget. So far, the finance ministry is the only body responsible,” said Tornel.