VANISHING ICONS: Connecting Conservation and Development

VANISHING ICONS:
Connecting Conservation and Development
Photo Exhibit and Partnership Event
Wednesday, April 21, 2010
2:30 – 3:30 p.m.
World Bank, Main Complex Atrium, Washington, DC
(National Geographic photo exhibit ongoing April 19-30)

Video coverage of the event

On the eve of Earth Day and the IMF/World Bank Spring Meetings, Robert B. Zoellick, President of the World Bank Group, will host a special event with Chris Johns, Editor in Chief of the National Geographic magazine and G. Wayne Clough, Secretary of the Smithsonian Institution and visiting government delegates to celebrate partnerships for connecting conservation and development.
The event is being organized by the Global Tiger Initiative in collaboration with the National Geographic Big Cats Initiative, and will feature ‘Vanishing Icons,” an exclusive National Geographic exhibit of the work of world renowned photographers on the plight of endangered tigers and other big cats, the symbols and custodians of biodiversity and wilderness. Partners will also present the outcomes of the Global Tiger Initiative’s Executive Leadership Forum held on April 15-21 in Washington DC – the latest milestone in the partnership of the World Bank and the Smithsonian Institution with the tiger range countries in establishing a training and professional support system to improve field conservation and management. Finally, the 2010 issue of the World Bank’s annual flagship magazine Environment Matters, with the featured theme this year of biodiversity, will be released.

2010 is the Year of the Tiger and the International Year of Biodiversity, which provides a special focus on the ever increasing need to devote public attention and resources to biodiversity as a global public good and to integrate it more directly into the development agenda. The Global Tiger Initiative, which is preparing the heads of governments’ Tiger Summit in Vladivostok in September 2010, is playing a critical role in generating political will at the national and international levels to affect the necessary change on the ground to reverse imminent extinction of iconic species, safeguard high-value ecosystems and save the remaining wilderness in the world.