A framework to assess the impacts of corruption on forests and prioritize responses

•This paper develops a framework to assess the impacts of corruption on forests.•We distinguish corruption types at different stages of forest management.•The impact of corruption on deforestation can be direct, indirect or negligible.•Anti-corruption policies can be better targeted to reduce deforestation.

Corruption has often been blamed for causing deforestation, however, the evidence is mixed. The paper develops a framework to assess the impacts of corruption on forests and prioritize policy responses. Rather than relying just on a theoretical description of corruption, the framework is developed by analyzing how corruption manifests itself on the ground in the forest sector in Indonesia. The framework considers the potential impacts of corruption at different stages of forest management. We argue that to identify the specific impacts of corruption, it is necessary to understand intervening factors. It is shown that the impacts of different types of corruption on forests may be direct, indirect, ambiguous, or even negligible. Therefore, anti-corruption efforts should be more targeted to the specific types of corruption that are most likely to contribute to deforestation and forest degradation.