We Can’t Protect Nature Without Fighting Mining-Sector Corruption

This week, leaders from across the world have converged in Cali, Colombia, for the 16^th Meeting of the Conference of the Parties to the Convention on Biological Diversity (COP16). Their mission is to set bold targets to halt and reverse the dangerous loss of biodiversity. Colombian authorities, as the hosts, are spotlighting a critical issue: the impacts of mining on nature. They are calling for an international agreement on traceability in in supply chains for high-risk commodities.

Growing demand for raw materials is driving harm to people and planet

Just a few hundred kilometers south of Cali, the urgent consequences of unchecked mining are evident. The Amazon is being ravaged by a surge in informal, often illegal, mining, particularly in the gold sector, much of it linked to organized crime. This mining activity has led to extensive deforestation, bringing the Amazon dangerously close to an ecological collapse. Toxic mercury from these mines has polluted essential water sources, endangering local communities, wildlife, and the miners themselves. Global Witness has identified that Colombia remains the most dangerous country in the world to be a human rights, environment, and land defender, by a significant margin. Where an industry could be linked to the killing of a defender, mining was the most common sector, reflecting global trends.

As is often the case, corruption has played a crucial role in enabling these harms. Across the Amazon, corruption has led to collusion between political elites and illegal miners, induced oversight actors to turn a blind eye, and facilitated huge illicit financial flows. For example, researchers from Global Financial Integrity have outlined how trade misinvoicing has likely led to a value gap of more than USD 5.6 billion in Colombian gold exports to imports by international trading partners between 2010 and 2018, with the U.S. and Switzerland the biggest importers by weight. Foreign companies have often enabled such harm, such as a Miami based refinery that continued to source gold from an export company even after it was sanctioned by Colombian authorities.

Despite overwhelming evidence of corruption’s role in driving environmental destruction, human rights abuses, and socio-economic harms in the mining sector, it remains a major blind-spot for decisionmakers. The EU is one example: its landmark Corporate Sustainability Due Diligence Directive is a major step forward in corporate accountability yet despite calls by anticorruption experts the CSDDD fails to address governance impacts such as corruption. The bloc’s Battery Regulation, which requires companies selling EV and industrial batteries in the EU to conduct supply chain due diligence, also fails to address corruption in its risk categories.

This is why NRGI and our partners are calling for greater recognition among decision-makers, in government and in business, of the often-overlooked impacts of corruption on the environment and society.  At COP16 and beyond, we are advocating for a deeper understanding of how corruption undermines efforts to protect nature, human rights and Indigenous Peoples’ rights. Corruption fuels harm in multiple ways: undue influence on policymaking processes; bribery to secure mining licenses; payoffs to conceal social and environmental damage; extortion of workers and communities; and the avoidance of responsibility for mine-site rehabilitation, to name but a few.

These forms of corruption create incentives for environmental destruction. This includes direct impacts like deforestation or the release of toxins in water systems, as well as indirect ones such as financing for militia or organized crime groups that perpetuate environmental crimes. Corruption also harms people, leading to the exploitation of workers and local communities. This harm may be felt particularly strongly by marginalized groups, such as women, who are exposed to sextortion by corrupt actors, or Indigenous Peoples and other rightsholders, whose lands and resources are disproportionately targeted for extraction, and who often bear the environmental and rights-based brunt of these impacts.

This corruption is driven and enabled by several factors, including weak governance, powerful vested interests (sometimes linked to criminal organizations), constrained civic space, and geopolitical competition. Underpinning all of this is the increasing global demand for resources, largely propelled by rising prices and the consumption levels of wealthier nations.

This is particularly visible in sectors like gold mining, where informal and illegal mining operations are often linked to organized crime, bribery, and smuggling. Gold is a high-value and easily traded commodity, making it especially prone to corruption. There are examples of this across Latin America, such as the dramatic expansion of illegal gold mining in the Peruvian and Bolivian Amazon. In some of the alluvial gold producing areas in Madre de Dios and Loreto, authorities admit they cannot access certain areas controlled by illegal miners. Journalists and NGOs have also documented the roles of “gold mafias”, smugglers, and armed groups in East, Central, and Southern Africa, with Dubai playing a crucial role in laundering this illegally mined or conflict gold.

In addition to gold, other critical metals and minerals essential for renewable energy technologies, such as lithium, cobalt, and rare earths, are also vulnerable to corrupt practices due to immense demand and weak governance in mining regions. With demand continuing to rise, communities are raising the alarm over the potential for an explosion of socio-environmental harm, including intensified corruption. Policymakers must be bolder in addressing this demand if they are serious about reducing harm and tackling the overconsumption that has driven both the biodiversity and climate crises.

Bridging the gap on efforts to tackle corruption, climate change and biodiversity loss

Yet there is reason for cautious optimism. Major recent initiatives, such as the UN Secretary-General’s “Resourcing the Energy Transition” principles, have brought much-needed attention to the human rights, environmental, social, and governance challenges in the mining sector. The call for a “new paradigm rooted in equity and justice” is an essential step toward addressing these issues, even if there is still too much emphasis placed on industry-driven solutions over the needs of rights holders.

At COP16, leaders have the opportunity to build on this momentum. Looking ahead to next year’s climate COP30 in Brazil, the stage is set for Latin America to lead in better integrating the needs of communities and nature into climate solutions. Doing so requires also addressing the elephant in the room: corruption.

In this spirit, we call on policy-makers to:

• Recognize the fundamental role that corruption, and the crimes it enables, has in hampering the achievement of Global Biodiversity Framework targets, and the imperative to reduce incentives for corruption to delivering on this framework whilst achieving a just transition, particularly in the mining sector where acute demand poses growing risks to biodiversity.
• Reinforce the importance of due diligence in mineral supply chains and support efforts to pass and enforce comprehensive legislation mandating corporate human rights, Indigenous Peoples’ rights and environmental due diligence, including extra territorial obligations, inclusive of corruption risks and biodiversity harms, based on inclusive consultation and shared benefit with rightsholders, such as Indigenous Peoples and workers.
• Ensure greater coordination between UNODC, UNEP, and OHCHR on the intersection of corruption, climate, biodiversity, and human rights, including in key processes such as the UN Convention on Biological Diversity, UN Framework Convention on Climate Change, UN Convention Against Corruption, and the UN Convention against Transnational Organized Crime.

The author wishes to thank NRGI partners the Business and Human Rights Resource Centre, SIRGE Coalition, and WWF for their valuable input to this blog.