faulker098

Cayman Islands, Panama, Belize, Turks and Caicos and other Central American small countries may remind some of us of little pieces of paradise, but may also remind others of tax havens and corruption. However, perhaps a question that nobody had (dared to?) asked before was about a possible link between tax havens and environmental degradation. A study recently published in Nature Ecology and Evolution gives us a good sense of how these two things may be much more related than you would have ever guessed so. Tax havens are known for providing politically neutral and reliable arenas for institutional innovation compared with settings dominated by political turbulence and institutional legal vacuum. At the same time, however, some negative effects of these jurisdictions are evident, such as their role in ‘money laundering’ and funding of illegal activities, and the risk of amplified global systemic financial risks created by the lack of financial transparency and oversight . But how abo