Communities and Inclusion Targeting Natural Resource Corruption

The document examines how corruption undermines Community-Based Natural Resource Management (CBNRM) by exploiting weak tenure, restricting information access, and diverting benefits. It identifies key vulnerability points in land administration and revenue sharing, and proposes strategies to mitigate these risks, including human rights-based approaches, strengthening tenure, increasing transparency through digitalization, and ensuring genuine Free, Prior, and Informed Consent (FPIC).

• Corruption acts as a significant barrier to effective Community-Based Natural Resource Management (CBNRM), often manifesting as collusion between local leaders, politicians, and criminals, or as the diversion of benefits by elites.
• Several risk factors increase the vulnerability of CBNRM to corruption, including weak legal recognition of communal rights, judicial system failures that allow perpetrators to evade justice, and the dominance of customary norms that are not secured by contemporary land laws.
• Corruption in tenure administration often involves public officials and private interests colluding to ignore resource extraction controls, using bribery to secure favors for companies, or undervaluing land. Women are noted as being particularly vulnerable due to patriarchal customary norms.
• Revenue collection and benefit sharing are highly susceptible to corruption, including the diversion of conservation funds, systemic bribery, and rent-seeking. This is exacerbated by opaque deal-making processes where elites secure disproportionate benefits, often excluding Indigenous Peoples, ethnic minorities, and women.
• Sustainable livelihood interventions, such as payments for ecosystem services (PES) and carbon co-benefits, are prone to corruption due to the high sums of money involved and complex disbursement mechanisms.
• Effective anti-corruption strategies for CBNRM include human rights-based approaches to hold governments and companies accountable, strengthening the legal protection of customary tenure, and utilizing digitalization to limit discretionary behavior by officials.
• While Free, Prior, and Informed Consent (FPIC) is a tool to safeguard the rights of Indigenous Peoples against corruption, the process itself can be corrupted through 'false FPIC,' where local elites or proponents manipulate stakeholders or inflate benefits.

APA

WWF International (n.d.). Communities and Inclusion Targeting Natural Resource Corruption. https://www.worldwildlife.org/documents/252/9d28ovrdyn_C_I_Synthesis.pdf

Chicago

WWF International. Communities and Inclusion Targeting Natural Resource Corruption. n.d. https://www.worldwildlife.org/documents/252/9d28ovrdyn_C_I_Synthesis.pdf.

Wikipedia

{{cite report |author=WWF International |title=Communities and Inclusion Targeting Natural Resource Corruption |url=https://www.worldwildlife.org/documents/252/9d28ovrdyn_C_I_Synthesis.pdf |access-date=23 October 2026 |via=Climate Insights Directory}}

BibTeX

@techreport{wwfinternationalndcommunities, author = {{WWF International}}, title = {{Communities and Inclusion Targeting Natural Resource Corruption}}, institution = {WWF International}, url = {https://www.worldwildlife.org/documents/252/9d28ovrdyn_C_I_Synthesis.pdf}, urldate = {2026-10-23}, note = {Indexed by Climate Insights Directory} }