Land is consistently ranked among the sectors where people most often report having to pay bribes to access services, according to Transparency International’s Global Corruption Barometer. The Land Portal has summarised the latest available (dated 2013) global data here, which shows that the incidence of bribes paid for land services can be over 50% in countries such as Cambodia, India and Pakistan.

This report documents the violent clashes between members of farmer communities and members of herder communities in parts of Nigeria, particularly in the northern parts of the country, over access to resources: water, land and pasture. It also documents the failure of the Nigerian government in fulfilling its constitutional responsibility of protection of lives and property by refusing to investigate, arrest and prosecute perpetrators of attacks.

Joint report from Forest Watch Indonesia, World Resources Institute and Global Forest Watch. It provides a detailed analysis of the scale and pace of change affecting Indonesia’s forests. The report concludes that the doubling of deforestation rates in Indonesia is largely the result of a corrupt political and economic system that regards natural resources as a source of revenue to be exploited for political ends and personal gain.

This paper is an attempt to deepen knowledge on the relationships between natural resources and corruption. Specifically, the paper attempts to understand whether there is a causal relationship from natural resource abundance to corruption. The paper analyses the case of São Tomé and Príncipe. The paper looks at the effects of the announcements of a significant oil discovery in the period 1997-1999 and whether that translates into increased corruption efforts.The study conducted household surveys on perceived corruption in the public services/sector.

Sector approaches to combating corruption have gained momentum in recent years, yet the strategic prioritization of sector anti-corruption initiatives is still the exception. The National Water Directorate in Mozambique is one of the few public sector departments in the world known to have allocated its own resources to developing a sector-specific anti-corruption strategy. Its experience offers valuable lessons for others considering integrating anti-corruption in sectors.

This report examines the benefits that a resource-rich country can derive from endorsing the Extractive Industries Transparency Initiative (EITI) and implementing its Principles. It also searches for courses of action that the EITI Board can pursue to persuade more countries to endorse EITI. Both issues are investigated in the context of Angola, Indonesia, and Trinidad and Tobago. The authors argue that EITI is particularly beneficial for countries that suffer from the so-called “resource curse”.

This report argues that for many developing countries, oil reserves are more likely to prove a curse than a blessing. Poor countries dependent on oil revenues have a higher incidence of four great and interconnected ills.

Conflicting interests in land and resource use emerged in postwar Mozambique, giving rise to multiple layers of dispute. This article explores the disputes occurring between 1992 and 1995 in two districts which are notable for the severity of competition over land by virtue of their proximity to Maputo, namely, Matutuíne and Namaacha. Although private sector claims were beginning to be staked with the potential for displacing people occupying the same land, other conflicts still predominated.

This U4 Issue discusses the corruption risks faced by mining companies in Guatemala, with a particular focus on the risks faced by small, “junior” mining companies primarily engaged in exploration.

This paper analyses the reasons why Mali’s gold economy has failed to benefit the population despite its rapid growth and the boom in the gold market. It also explores the conflicts of interests between the State and the private mining companies in the country which arose from rules designed to attract foreign investment.

Divided into three parts, this collaborative work looks at the varied challenges brought about as a result of corruption in the water sector. It also looks at recent research conducted and provides an overview of the water sector corruption challenges in country profiles across the globe. Corruption in the water sector puts the lives and livelihoods of billions of people at risk. The onset of climate change and the increasing stress on water supply around the world make the fight against corruption in water more urgent than ever.

Natural resources are a noted cause of intra-state conflict and deserve recognition as such by ECOWAS. Oil, in particular, is linked to frequent civil strife and conflicts induced by slow rates of economic growth, weak and undemocratic governments, rampant corruption and heavy militarization. Many African countries have already suffered the negative consequences of an oil-dependency, including Angola, which endured a brutal civil war that lasted for more than a quarter-century.