A Buck for a Forest: Does Corruption and Development Lead to Environmental Degradation?

With growing awareness of sustainability in both the private and public sectors of the world, new funds - for sustainable development - have been created for developing countries through inter-governmental organizations including the United Nations. With an increase in funding, comes the challenge of ensuring that the funds are used for their correct purposes. This paper analyzes the connection between corruption, human development index (HDI), and environmental degradation. This paper first looks at understanding the connection between corruption and environmental degradation. Secondly, the paper explores research demonstrating the possible impact development has on environment degradation. Finally, the paper looks at studies demonstrating connections between corruption and environmental degradation, and what possible policies could be enforced – at state and international levels – to address environmental corruption. In the end, it was found that there was a negative relationship between corruption and environmental degradation (using carbon footprint as a proxy), while HDI and environmental degradation had a positive relationship