Politicians make the policy. But it’s often left to business to implement it. For this reason RioPlus Business is featuring submissions from the private sector across the globe in the lead up to Rio+20.
The aim is to demonstrate how Sustainable Development is becoming a reality in every continent, country and city.
With billions of dollars in climate finance being mobilised to enable sustainable development projects around the world, the private sector will play a crucial role in ensuring that it is effective. Alice Harrison from anti-corruption NGO Transparency International explains why the future we want is one without bribes.
Low carbon development is not only an existential necessity; given the ambitious transformations in infrastructure and technology required it also offers a huge market with substantial returns.
Public coffers are not enough to bear the costs of mitigating and adapting to climate change, so governments will also be looking to stimulate investment in the form of grants, feed-in-tariffs, tax breaks and soft loans. Despite this, many businesses are hesitant to invest. Why?
Corruption risks
In part because of corruption, which blights clean business in many of the countries for which climate finance is destined. Corruption distorts competition, notwithstanding the reputational and legal risks entailed when bribery is exposed, data found to be inflated or falsified, or money siphoned off.
Current enforcement trends mean that companies are also increasingly being held accountable for their supply chains, subsidiaries and equity holdings. Since 2008, 58 companies settling foreign bribery cases with US authorities have paid $64.5 million per case, [...]
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