EIA heads to global anti-corruption summit with a focus on forest and wildlife crimes
EIA campaigners will be at 22nd International Anti-Corruption Conference to call for stronger action against environmental crime and the corruption enabling it.
The summit is due to take place in Punta Cana, the Dominican Republic, from 1-4 December 2026,
For more than four decades, EIA investigations across climate, forests, oceans and wildlife have shown that corruption undermines environmental governance, weakening the laws, institutions and oversight mechanisms designed to protect the natural world.
It enables the unsustainable exploitation of natural resources, fuels ecosystems breakdown and weakens efforts to address the interconnected crises of climate change, biodiversity loss and pollution.
Deforestation and land-grabs from Indigenous communities are often facilitated by corruption (c) EIA
EIA Executive Director Mary Rice will be attending #IACC2026 and said: “Across every issue we investigate, we see the same pattern – corruption enables environmental crime and abuse, which in turn accelerates the degradation of our planet. Tackling the crisis facing our natural world means confronting the corruption that facilitates those responsible to operate with impunity.”
Momentum is growing internationally to address these linked challenges. In October, EIA was in the room when governments agreed to establish an ad hoc committee to negotiate a new protocol on crimes that affect the environment at the 13th Conference of the Parties to the UN Convention against Transnational Organized Crime (UNTOC).
This represents a major step forward in strengthening the global response to environmental crime. The historic moment saw 83 parties voting in favour of the resolution to form the ad hoc committee, with 12 against and 27 abstaining. The significant number of state Parties voting in favour reflects the tireless work of governments, civil society and Indigenous Peoples and local communities who fought for the resolution to pass.
The development builds on the findings of EIA’s recent report Crimes that Affect the Environment – STILL a critical threat to our future, which highlights how environmental crimes are increasingly driven by organised criminal networks which exploit corruption, weak governance and gaps in international cooperation.
Effective responses require a coordinated approach across borders, sectors and institutions.
EIA Forests Programme Lead Faith Doherty will present during the workshop, Corruption in the Shadows; Environmental Crime in Plain Sight *, which will focus on how corruption enables the exploitation of natural resources at the expense of communities, livelihoods and ecosystems.
She will speak on EIA’s experience of investigating and exposing the links between corruption and forest crimes across South-East Asia to the international timber and commodity markets, highlighting real examples of how these harms are far from victimless.
For EIA’s Forests Programme, the message is simple – corruption oils the wheels of forest crime. Illegal logging and associated forest crimes do not occur in isolation. Criminal actors routinely rely on bribery, political influence, document fraud and abuse of authority to gain access to forests, conceal the origin of illegally harvested timber and move illicit products through international supply chains. These crimes often have devastating consequences for forest-dependent communities and Indigenous Peoples, while depriving countries of revenue, weakening institutions and accelerating forest loss.
As discussions begin on a new international framework for crimes affecting the environment, EIA is calling for corruption to be recognised as a core enabling factor behind environmental crime.
Addressing that corruption will be essential to reducing the impact of the triple planetary crisis, strengthening the rule of law and safeguarding the communities that depend on healthy ecosystems.
* Coordinated by The Sentry and featuring The Sentry, UN Office on Drugs and Crime, Environmental Investigation Agency (EIA) and Latin America Bureau Mongabay, under the thematic track Integrity for People and Planet Regeneration: Fighting the Theft of Our Future, on Wednesday 2 December at 4pm, in room Bar Higuey, at the Barceló Bávaro Convention Centre.
