This is a guest blog that shares insights on the 16th United Nations Conference on Biological Diversity (CBD COP 16) at the end of 2024 and the role of corruption in biodiversity loss and wildlife trafficking.

This meeting introduced the use of trade discrepancies data to tackle illegal timber flows. TRAFFIC presented a new tool, TimberStats, to contribute to the analysis. Recordings of the presentations from Camilo Pardo-Herrera, Senior Analyst, Terrorism, Transnational Crime and Corruption Center (TraCCC), and Fred Ellis, Wildlife Trade Analyst and Financial Specialist are shared here.

Madagascar's critically endangered radiated tortoises face extinction by 2050, driven by illegal trade networks fuelled by systemic corruption. A seizure in Thailand in 2024 revealed the scale of this crisis, with more than 1,200 tortoises and 48 lemurs smuggled out of Madagascar. Corruption permeates every stage of the supply chain - from poaching enabled by poverty and bribery, to transport facilitated by political interference, to lenient legal processes influenced by favouritism.

On the Follow-the-Money Working Group, Scott Johnston, Director of Public Sector Outreach - EMEA, at Chainanalysis, talked about cryptocurrency and the nexus to environmental crimes. Key takeaways and recordings are available.

Land is both a source and a destination for illicit financial flows (IFFs), with several associated risks. The panel included Robert Mwanyumba, Independent Consultant; Marcello De Maria (Phd), Project Manager, WWF-UK; and Patrick Bwalya, Citizens Engagement Officer, Transparency International Zambia.

This summary includes the takeaways from the 6th Plenary Session on 9 October, with the public launch of the working paper "Good governance and the just transition: implications for renewable energy companies". A dynamic panel discussion with various experts in the field reflected on the challenges and insights of this work.

During the Follow-the-Money working group session, Linda Chou, Anti-Money Laundering Project Manager at TRAFFIC China talked about China’s Anti-Money Laundering Laws on Combating the Illegal Trade in Wild Species.

This summary includes key takeaways from the 12 September Open data working group meeting when we discuss with John Dell'Osso, Director of Investigations at the Platform to Protect Whistleblowers in Africa, and Daniela Castro, South America Editor at the Organized Crime and Corruption Reporting Project (OCCRP) about data leaks.

This summary includes takeaways from the Climate finance working group meeting on 11 September, when a panel of experts discussed the current state of play, insights from recent research and concrete cases from the Climate & Corruption Case Atlas.

This summary includes takeaways from the 18 June workshop coordinated by the World Bank and moderated by Transparency International (TI), who co-lead our Climate Finance working group.