Themes

Strengthen Capacities for Habitat Protection and Management:

Knowledge Exchange & Technology Transfer

Today forest officials in many of the tiger-range countries lack adequate expertise that is necessary to effectively manage tiger habitats and landscapes and deal with diverse and continually emerging threats to wildlife. Similarly, the existing knowledge institutions mandated to manage wilderness areas require support to transform themselves so that they can adopt innovative approaches and state-of-the-art tools and techniques for protecting, managing and researching forests and wildlife. GTI aims to enhance habitat management practices by building capacity in human resources at all management levels through exposure to global knowledge and best practices in conservation. Knowledge exchange also entails supporting the adoption of the latest technology for wildlife monitoring, research and communications in remote tiger landscapes.

The World Bank is collaborating with the Smithsonian Institution to establish the Conservation and Development Network that will be responsible for targeted training programs for senior policy-makers from tiger-range countries, field conservation practitioners, trainers (involved with training field staff) and professional staff of the World Bank and other development institutions. This Network is envisioned as a long-term community of mutually supportive practitioners within and among tiger-range countries that will provide conservation leaders and policy-makers in tiger-range countries with the advanced knowledge, tools, skill sets, and sustained support necessary for developing and implementing effective conservation strategies.

Tighten Wildlife Law Enforcement:

Crime Prevention & Detection

Lack of adequate law enforcement, crime investigation and convictions are responsible to a large extent for continuing wildlife crime in the tiger-range countries. There is an urgent need for upgradation of the institutional expertise in crime prevention, detection and enforcement in governments so that countries can respond effectively to the challenge of stopping the escalating transnational illegal trade in wildlife. GTI aims to build capacities for wildlife law enforcement in the field, crime investigative abilities and ability to detect wildlife and wildlife parts in international trade. Forest managers, police departments and customs officials will be targeted for these programs.

GTI also aims to trace and understand the economic models of subsistence, poaching and trade in tiger-range countries as well as the trade-links connecting tiger-range and tiger-consuming countries. This is necessary if wildlife protection has to be transformed into a multi-agency, intelligence-led prevention and detection campaign given that trade in wildlife has assumed the gigantic proportions on par with illegal trade in drugs and arms.

Expand Consumer and Public Awareness:

Consumptive Demand Reduction

Tiger parts are still in great demand for preparation of medicines and supplements. Globally rising demand in tiger parts is responsible for the recent escalation in poaching incidents through out Asia and the resulting decline in tiger numbers. One of the primary aims of the GTI is to curtail international demand for tiger parts and other wildlife through consumer campaigns that link up the loss of the tiger to larger issues of ecological devastation and biodiversity loss. A multi-pronged global communications campaign is planned that can mobilize public-opinion against use of products containing tiger parts through the means of internet, TV, radio, public advertising and movies. The GTI website is another means through which GTI will work actively to engage interested laypersons, students and other members of the public in this awareness campaign.

Promote Smart Green Infrastructure:

Safeguarding Tiger Landscapes

Tiger landscapes are increasingly being fragmented and devoured by rapid infrastructural and industrial development as well as land use change. Fragmentation results in the creation of unviable habitats in which tigers cannot survive in the long term. Unplanned development causes degradation of habitats to the extent that they may not be able to support wildlife. One of the aims of GTI is to develop mechanisms at the policy level for safeguarding habitats from development through planning ‘smart, green’ infrastructure and sensitive industrial development. This includes avoidance of critical core tiger habitats when new infrastructure is being planned and mitigation of the negative effects of development. Mitigation is possible through greening measures and providing means for connectivity of populations of animal species within and across landscapes.

GTI interventions in this regard include a review of the policy options that promote natural habitat protection in general, and tiger protection in particular, at the international level, developing a suite of options for mainstreaming natural habitat conservation into transport and other infrastructure planning; and determining the basic elements for optimal design and construction of road and other infrastructure in tiger sensitive areas. The GTI will thus identify the broad elements of approaches that could be incorporated in country conservation policies and environmental regulation, sectoral planning, and engineering design and construction.

Support Community Incentives:

Building Local Constituencies for Conservation

An important reason for tiger decline is the over-exploitation of habitats and the resulting forest degradation in and around tiger landscapes. The tiger shares its habitat with people who are heavily dependent upon forests and often live far below poverty levels. Over-exploitation of forest resources, by local residents degrades forest habitat leading to loss of species. Further, poaching of tigers and other wildlife is often aided by local people who are alienated from the cause of wildlife conservation due to repeated occurrences of tiger-human conflicts. The lack of a strong local constituency poses one of the most important challenges to tiger conservation today.

One of the goals of GTI is to build strong local constituencies for tiger conservation through development of economic incentives and alternative livelihoods for resident communities. GTI aims to support and replicate projects that:

• Channel economic benefits from wildlife to local people through sustainable livelihoods that do not compromise biodiversity
• Create buffer zones around core habitats that mitigate impacts of wildlife on people and vice versa
• Substitute critical biomass needs such as fuelwood through development of alternative sources of energy
• Undertake awareness and education programs to create/renew intrinsic value for wildlife
• Reduce the cost of human-wildlife conflict to increase thresholds of tolerance for losses or damage to human life or property

Increase Conservation Finance:

Supporting Investments for Biodiversity

Tiger conservation, both within protected areas and outside, is severely under-financed leading to inadequate protection and management of wild habitats. In an era of rapid economic development, governments tend to neglect biodiversity issues, overlooking the intangible and tangible benefits from natural ecosystems that are already accruing to society at large. In this scenario, tiger conservation must present an economically viable alternative to competing commercial land uses of tiger landscapes. There is an urgent need to develop sustainable financial solutions for biodiversity protection. GTI is researching ways to attract investment into conservation using successful models such as wildlife tourism, co-benefits from carbon credits and Payment for Environmental Services (PES) schemes that can be replicated on a large scale in tiger-range countries.