Corruption undermines essential conservation outcomes. In order to address the detrimental effects of corruption, a wealth of data from governments, companies, and citizens is being made available that can be leveraged to monitor environmental and other relevant data and detect illicit and corrupt behavior.

Open data analysis provides an efficient and cost-effective method for identifying potential corruption risks and actors.

To make the best use of open data opportunities, members of this Working Group are sharing the best available sources of data, tools for gathering, processing, analyzing and visualizing data; and stories of successful use of open data approaches for countering environmental corruption.

About the Open Data Working Group

Meetings of this Working Group are chaired by TRAFFIC and are open to all professionals in the Countering Environmental Crime Practitioners Forum who are interested in learning about new data mining tools and open data sources to identify red flags of corruption within the conservation space.

Sessions are announced one month in advance to all the group members and are held virtually through Zoom. Updates and recordings, including member-recommended case studies and resources, are shared in the dedicated space on Basel LEARN open to Working Group members only.

To join this Working Group, join the Practitioners Forum and select the Working Group when submitting the form. Existing members can update their profile.

How can open data be leveraged to counter environmental corruption?

In today's digital age, the widespread adoption of information and communication technologies has reshaped the landscape of corruption worldwide, magnifying its impact.

Yet, amidst these challenges, experts recognize technology as a powerful tool in the fight against corruption. The ability to swiftly analyze enormous amounts of data has become a game-changer, uncovering potential corruption in critical datasets such as government licensing, public procurement, asset disclosures, tax records, and financial allocations.

Apart from detecting corruption, open data can improve governance by providing greater transparency, more citizen involvement, and better and more efficient service delivery. This also empowers citizens, leading to more information that therefore improves the decision-making capacity and choice.

How can open data help safeguard environment and climate investments?

Environmental protection relies on effective regulation, and significant investments are flowing into projects to address climate change, biodiversity loss, and land degradation.

Regulatory and financial decisions and their compliance will need to be carefully monitored to ensure that intentions match the results in practice. Increased funding and new regulation will likely attract illicit actors fighting to misuse the subsidies or avoid the regulation’s intentions.

Open data will prove crucial in the oversight and prevention of such abuse.

What are avenues for action?

Members of this Working Group have discussed the following opportunities for future cooperation:

• Exchange case studies and open data tools that help tackle environmental corruption
• Share learning about open data in environmental and conservation efforts
• Identify new sources of data which could help monitor conservation efforts and detect lack of compliance, or outright corruption
• Find experienced colleagues to mentor and advise on one's data work - or even collaborate directly on projects.

Recommended resources

• What is Open Data? The article presents one explanation and its potential advantages.
• Read this overview of why we need more open data to counter environmental corruption.
• There are several software tools for civil society to collect, analyze, and enrich data to detect the risk of corruption. Some of these include ParseHub (a visual web scraper), Videris (a web investigation platform) and i2 Analysts Notebook (a data visualisation tool).
• The Global Forest Watch centralizes data on deforestation worldwide, run by the World Resources Institute. This tool was presented in the first meeting of the Working Group.
• Case studies, such as TRAFFIC’s use of open data for analyzing potential forest sector corruption, are shedding important light on evolving approaches.