The elephant in the room: Raising up corruption on the conservation agenda

Corruption is a grabbing hand that distorts good governance, undermines the sound management of natural resources, facilitates environmental crime and illegal trade, and drives resources away from the public good and into private hands. CITES and other high-level bodies are starting to raise the profile of this issue and how it affects people and biodiversity, but practitioners need a stronger understanding of the forms corruption take, how it contributes to environmental crime, undermines our climate, decimates biodiversity, harms communities, and what can be done about it. This session brings together prominent leaders in anti-corruption, finance, conservation and other sectors from US, Europe, Africa and Latin America to assess the challenges that corruption poses and to set an agenda for the anti-corruption and conservation communities to work together more effectively. It focuses on corruption, illicit logging, wildlife trade and follow the money related to this activity.