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Corruption Watch (CW) has been a keen participant in Transparency International’s (TI) Climate Governance Integrity (CGI) Programme, which has been running for more than 10 years. On a global basis, the CGI project was a people-centred initiative which aimed to ensure the transparent and accountable management of climate finance so it reaches the most vulnerable communities and helps them adapt meaningfully to the climate crisis. Numerous countries rely on this support and are in dire need of it, and any misuse of these allocated funds is not acceptable.
Climate change mitigation and adaptation strategies are not well known or understood by many in South Africa’s most vulnerable areas, yet it is communities in these areas that have lived experiences of how natural disasters have furthered their exclusion from discussions about solutions for the impact of climate change.
For CW, CGI was therefore one of the most exciting projects of 2025, as it was a valuable chance for us to focus on the country’s climate framework and the vulnerabilities that may or may not allow corruption to creep in and deprive communities of much-needed assistance. We based our interventions on explaining climate governance and the associated corruption issues, using community outreach initiatives, educational brochures, and other platforms and tools. We wanted to help community members understand the threat posed by climate change to their lives and livelihoods and empower them to take practical and effective steps to mitigate the effects of climate change while ensuring they were part of the bigger just transition strategy.
Travelling through four provinces – the Western Cape, Mpumalanga, Limpopo and KwaZulu-Natal – we engaged with different communities to whom we imparted knowledge on issues of climate change and the just transition. The focus was on five typical forms of corruption in climate matters – bribery and extortion, procurement irregularities, misappropriation of resources, climate-washing, and political capture [download our booklets to find out more]. This field research stage was incredibly rewarding, though heart-breaking, and we gained an impressive depth of knowledge from those communities on the ground.
Additionally, the project yielded a podcast series of five episodes that compellingly captures communities’ experiences with climate change and failures in disaster relief by government. This series launched on 15 April 2026. Each episode paints a comprehensive view of the complexities, the contradictions, and the distressing details of people’s lived realities regarding the effects of climate change, featuring personal accounts and expert contributions.
This page brings together our body of work related to climate governance integrity and climate change corruption.
Podcasts
In the Still of Night – a series unpacking corruption in climate change governance
Publications
Download our 2025 educational booklet in:
English | isiZulu | isiXhosa | Sesotho | Afrikaans
