Climate Governance: bringing anti-corruption to the forefront of the climate change debate.

[Joseph Mansilla]

The 17th Conference of the Parties (COP17) to the United Nations Framework Convention on Climate Change (UNFCCC) started yesterday (28 November) in Durban, South Africa. I find it quite providential that a few days ago, I was just speaking about climate governance, of which I am no expert, but as an anti-corruption advocate, I felt that I had the responsibility and obligation to share the urgency of bringing transparency, accountability, and integrity to the forefront of the climate change debate. Practitioners call this Climate Governance, a term I first heard at the 14th International Anti-Corruption Conference (IACC) in Bangkok last year, where I was one of the few GYAC representatives (and consequently, of the youth in general as we were practically the only young people at the conference). I've heard of the activism for anti-corruption and climate change, but before Bangkok, I've never thought of the two coming together. The subject was everywhere: from plenaries to break-out panels to dining tables, and it turns out (as I found out later) that one of the goals of last year's IACC was really to emphasize climate governance. Given the audience size and the collective enthusiasm of the conference participants, I would say that the IACC was generally successful in blowing up the concept of climate governance. But one question remained: where are the young people in this very specific and urgent dialogue?

Thankfully, I was given a platform to speak on the subject at the Youth Forum of the 10th Asia Pacific NGOs Environmental Conference (APNEC) in Taipei, Taiwan last week. To make things even better, Transparency International recently published its Global Corruption Report on Climate Change (which you can download here), "the first comprehensive publication of its kind to explore the corruption risks related to tackling climate change." I based my presentation off the report, and took the opportunity to promote GYAC and do one of my "Transparency Talks," the WBI CAP we won not very long ago.

 

Please feel free to view my presentation HERE, but if for some reason you are unable to do so, here are some quick facts about corruption in climate change (again, based on research by Transparency International):

If you're interested to join next year's 15IACC in Brasilia, check it out here. A possible GYAC x IACC collaboration is in the works! Stay tuned.