Preventing corruption for a sustainability transformation | Umweltbundesamt

Preventing corruption as precondition for a successful sustainability transformation, 14th – 16th February 2023, Dessau-Roßlau, Germany

From 14 to 16 February 2023, the International Academy Transformation for Environment and Sustainability at the UBA (abbreviated to "TES Academy") held a three-day workshop on "Corruption Prevention as a Prerequisite for Successful Sustainability Transformation". In a video statement, the participating international experts call for cooperation in the prevention of corruption.

Corrupt practices are a significant threat to the achievement of the UN sustainability goals. Corruption damages the environment, leads to mismanagement and loss of natural resources and misappropriation of funds earmarked for environmental protection, adaptation to climate change and climate protection, and ultimately hinders sustainable development. This close connection is often not sufficiently taken into account by the respective actors in public authorities, non-governmental organisations and the scientific community.

For this reason, a heterogeneous group of national and international experts from various relevant professional fields and sectors was invited to the workshop to shed light on the relationship between corruption, the environment and sustainable development from a personal, institutional and overall societal perspective. After jointly working out the extent of the problem, suggestions were developed on how environmental and sustainability experts can be enabled to avoid corruption risks at all levels – from local to global.

With the TES Academy, the UBA wants to enable people to initiate transformation processes towards sustainable development across national and professional boundaries and to develop the necessary structures. To this end, the TES Academy offers inter- and transdisciplinary learning and cooperation spaces in which participants can experience and (co-)shape concrete change processes in response to current challenges. In this way, the TES Academy is facilitating joint learning and long-term international cooperation, promoting collaborative networks and partnerships, and further developing personal and institutional potential in order to advance social transformation for a sustainable future worldwide. The TES Academy will initially run in a pilot phase until the end of 2024 as part of UBA's own research.

Update: 18th March 2024 virtual reunion „Preventing corruption as precondition for a successful sustainability transformation“

On 18 March 2024 the TES Academy organised a virtual reunion for the group that met in February 2023. The aim of the meeting was

1. Stocktaking: What has happened since the meeting in February 2023?
2. Gathering potential for future work/cooperation

Participants reported on a range of past, ongoing and future activities showing the relevance of the topic. The reunion showed that environmental corruption needs to leave its niche in order to increase its political visibility, and that some ongoing activities of participants might indeed pave the way for this path.