Campbell Erickson worked under U.S. District Judge Mark Wolf and with the NGO Integrity Initiatives International as an advocate for the International Anti-Corruption Court.
There is no denying it: for much of the world, corruption is a crisis. Corruption has run rampant in governments for as long as governments have existed. And as global inequality swells and the pangs of globalization make their way around the world, more and more people are looking towards corruption, and more specifically grand corruption – the abuse of high level public office for private gain – as the root cause of poverty, economic stagnation, human rights abuses, and more. However, while revolutions and regime change might expel a corrupt president or prime minister, corruption has again and again proven to be an international, systemic issue. The global consensus is clear: the world needs stronger international anti-corruption laws and more robust mechanisms for accountability. However, nations lack the energy to effectively mobilize and they harbor concerns about anti-corruption enforcement being reminiscent of the Eurocentric failures of the International Criminal Court.
The tentativeness to take meaningful action on the climate crisis is also a systemic issue, plagued by many of the same political hurdles as the anti-corruption movement. This similarity is no coincidence. The operations and enforcement of the Paris Climate Agreement, and subsequent climate agreements, will require unprecedented international accountability, but these agreements still lack mechanisms for their enforcement. Billions of dollars will be distributed for decarbonization, and decarbonization requirements will be applied broadly, raising the questions: Who will keep track of all that money? What will the international community do if a multinational corporation refuses to adhere to carbon regulations? How will we protect some of the world’s most vulnerable carbon sinks, like the Amazon rainforest, which are critical to the success of decarbonization plans? All of these questions, and more, are central to the corruption-climate link.
Sizing Up Corruption
Understanding the scale of corruption can be challenging. The U.N. estimates that the cost of corruption sits at about 5% of global annual GDP, or at least $2.6 trillion. In other words, if corruption were its own, individualized economy, it would rank behind France as the world’s eighth largest financial engine. The essence of this tragedy, however, lies beyond the numbers and in the cascading effects of corruption. In Venezuela, Nicholas Maduro’s embezzlement of government funds has led to a nearly decade-long humanitarian crisis. In Russia, Vladimir Putin leads as potentially one of the world’s richest people, while nearly 21 million of his citizens live in poverty and squalor. And now, in the United States, serious concerns are being raised about the Donald Trump administration and the strategic embezzlement of government funds during the catastrophic coronavirus pandemic.
Corruption, and particularly grand corruption, goes far beyond the many high-profile dictatorial regimes that take pleasure in embezzling billions from their citizens. The corruption crisis has seeped into many aspects of international business, as well. Another common example of grotesque grand corruption commonly cited in the international anti-corruption arena is that of the former Angolan President José dos Santos and his daughter, “Africa’s richest woman,” Isabela dos Santos. In short, Ms. dos Santos fleeced the Angolan people through a sophisticated money laundering operation as the head of the state-run Angolan oil company. And while the potential prosecution of President dos Santos and Ms. dos Santos offers a challenging and possibly productive case study in anti-corruption law, it would be a mistake to not look beyond the dos Santos family and towards the multinational corporations that enabled their financial crimes. Just to point towards them: Boston Consulting Group, McKinsey & Company, PwC, Deloitte, KPMG, and Ernst and Young were all involved, in one way or another, with Ms. dos Santos during her heyday.
And the Climate Crisis?
Grand corruption, in short, poses a serious threat to the international community’s ability to fight the climate crisis. Time and time again, corruption has proven to be a critical component in large-scale environmental degradation. Bribery allows for the clearing of forests, for oil exploration on indigenous land, or for mining or fishing contracts that clearly do not meet environmental standards. In the future, if these trends continue, weak legal systems will undermine climate agreements and allow for major pollution by way of corrupt public officials and multinational corporations. Similarly, if these trends continue, these public officials and multinational corporations will walk scot-free, fully guilty of their crimes but hiding behind veils of impunity.
Mechanisms do exist that attempt to deter these crimes, some of which can serve as a template for what is possible in the future. For example, 140 nations are signatories to the United Nations Convention Against Corruption, but while legally binding in its requirement for signatory cooperation in anti-corruption investigation, it has proven to be a largely toothless agreement. Other conventions have been ratified through regional bodies, like the Organization of American States’ “Follow-Up Mechanism for the Implementation of the Inter-American Convention against Corruption” which aims to normalize domestic anti-corruption law across Latin American states. The African Union, through its Convention on Preventing and Combating Corruption, attempts to do something similar. And finally, the ICC has announced that it will prosecute and adjudicate environmental crime, much of which is enabled by corruption, but it no doubt lacks the resources needed to conduct effective investigation and remains burdened by its over politicized past. Yet, given the steadiness of corruption, the ineffectiveness of these conventions cannot be denied, and we need novel tools for combating corruption, especially as it relates to the climate crisis.
One of the most promising solutions for the climate crisis is the International Anti-Corruption Court. Proposed first by Senior U.S. District Judge Mark Wolf in 2012, the court would operate as an ad-hoc tribunal for prosecuting grand corruption and has already received endorsements from the likes of Colombia and Peru. This specialization would mean that the IACC could be adequately resourced for investigating financial crime and could play an important role in prosecuting corruption as it relates to international climate change agreements.
While I will dig deeper into the dynamics of the climate crisis in later additions to this series, let us be clear: the climate crisis is, like corruption, a catastrophe. And if COP25 in Madrid, Spain was any indication, many stakeholders in the international community are woefully unwilling to stick their necks out or agree to important transparency measures under any climate agreement. Moving forward, two points of potential collaboration between the climate crisis community and the anti-corruption community present themselves.
First, anti-corruption advocates should begin to cite the climate crisis as a valid and quickly impending reason for the need for broader, binding international law against corrupt practices. As these agreements, like the Paris Climate Agreement, begin to curtail carbon emissions and require pollution reporting, there is no doubt that governments and multinational corporations will begin to work together to embezzle money from climate-aid packages or defraud their carbon reporting requirements. We need strong international mechanisms capable of holding these actors accountable.
Secondly, the climate crisis community should begin to look towards the anti-corruption community for advice on the current boundaries of international law in realistically mandating large-scale, state-level behavior change. Too often, the climate community cheers at the successful ratification of meaningless agreements that will be quickly pushed to the wayside in the face of business opportunities. If climate activists want to take on the climate crisis, they must be especially attentive to the pragmatics of implementation. By taking this turn, I believe that the climate community will necessarily become a close companion of the anti-corruption community.
There is no doubt in my mind that until the IACC, or a mechanism like it, exists, the climate crisis will rage on due to the enticing impunity of corruption. The IACC offers a developed and feasible plan for making the battle against climate change realizable. Focusing on a mechanism like this would be innovative and disruptive, and it’s just what needs to be done to protect vulnerable people and overcome the climate crisis.
Image Credit: “_MG_4303” by Iga Gozdowska is licensed under CC BY2.0