This document takes stock of recent progress (July 2023 to February 2024) in strengthening Ukraine’s anti-corruption ecosystem with a view to safeguarding Restoration projects. It covers:
“Fighting climate change and the degradation of our planet is hard enough. We cannot allow poor governance and corruption to undermine our hard-fought progress.”
– Ambassador Georg Sparber, Ambassador of Liechtenstein to the United States
On 11 September 2023, the Basel Institute on Governance in partnership with WWF-Ukraine will host an online event on safeguarding Ukraine’s forests and the challenges of countering environmental corruption during wartime. All are welcome to attend the online meeting, which will have English-Ukrainian simultaneous interpretation.
On the agenda:
This document takes stock of recent progress in strengthening Ukraine's anti-corruption ecosystem with a view to safeguarding reconstruction projects. It covers:
- Institutional capacity
- Judicial and Constitutional Court reform
- Asset recovery
- Public procurement
It is a joint publication of Transparency International Ukraine and the Basel Institute on Governance, published and distributed at the Ukraine Recovery Conference 2023 in London.
Ukraine’s Restoration is primarily about recovering from the immense human suffering and destruction to infrastructure and the natural environment the war has caused. But the Restoration, which has already begun, also offers a chance for Ukraine to advance towards a climate-neutral and nature-positive future in line with EU ambitions and international obligations. For that to happen, we need to expand the tide of governance reforms currently swelling in the Restoration process to also cover environmental governance.
There is fresh hope for the sustainability and governance of Ukraine’s forests, according to participants from Ukraine’s government and civil society in a Basel Institute webinar on 5 April 2023.
Russia’s war is placing unprecedented stress on the forest sector, they agreed. But the creation of the Forests of Ukraine state enterprise, together with Ukraine’s candidate status for EU membership, offers a promising opportunity to address pre-war corruption and governance issues.
We are delighted to have signed a Memorandum of Cooperation with the Ministry of Communities, Territories and Infrastructure Development of Ukraine, the Ministry responsible for Ukraine's restoration. Under the agreement, we will work to minimise corruption risks in the use of state and donor funds allocated for the reconstruction of critical infrastructure.
This will include strengthening anti-corruption compliance in the road sector and assessing integrity risks when determining the cost of road works and services.
**Українська версія нижче**
This report offers a detailed deep dive into how corruption fuelled illegal logging in Ukraine during the period before the full-scale war. It explains how the Russian invasion has raised the risks of illegal logging, by increasing demand for wood and its relative value as a resource, and by reducing inspections and civil society oversight.
News
How corruption threatens the forests of Ukraine: launch of Environmental Corruption Deep Dive report
The Basel Institute has published a comprehensive new analysis of corruption and illegal logging in Ukraine. Juhani Grossmann, who leads the Basel Institute’s Green Corruption programme, explains what it covers and why the report comes at a crucial time for Ukraine and its partners.
This case study describes how Switzerland is putting to test a rarely used but powerful law in order to confiscate assets connected to Ukraine’s 2014 Revolution of Dignity, with the aim of returning these to Ukraine.
Key points: