The Impact of Corruption on Climate Change Mitigation

Abstract

This is a review of the rapidly growing literature on how corruption affects climate change mitigation, focusing both on greenhouse gas emissions and carbon sinks. Analyzing 200 studies, we document that corruption hampers mitigation, i.e. increases emissions, and worsens sinks’ storage capacity through deforestation or overfishing. Reducing corruption is vital to successfully combatting global warming, because corruption makes climate policies less ambitious when formulated and less effective when implemented, due to low rule compliance. The findings are established through various types of data, research designs and methods. Trends are mapped and points of disagreement are highlighted. We suggest that research move beyond using country-level indicators and propose several avenues for future research.