World Bank aims to earn stripes
through tiger summit
By Marwaan Macan-Markar
BANGKOK - An international campaign to save the tiger, one of Asia's iconic
wild animals, has been chosen as the place for the World Bank to earn its
stripes as an institution keen on joining the ranks of conservationists.
Senior officials from the international financial institution's Washington DC
headquarters will be in Thailand to attend the Asia Ministerial Conference on
Tiger Conservation, which runs from January 27-29 in Hua Hin, a beach resort
town south of Bangkok.
The ministerial meeting in Thailand is the penultimate conference on the road
to a heads of state meeting in Vladivostok in
September. World Bank president Robert Zoellick is billed to co-chair the tiger
summit with Russian Prime Minister Vladimir Putin.
"We are witnessing the power of the World Bank to bring governments together
through its involvement," Mike Baltzer, leader of the tiger initiative of the
World Wide Fund for Nature (WWF - formerly the World Wildlife Fund), told
journalists last week. "The bank has funded US$1.5 million to train officers in
some tiger-range countries."
The bank's move into tiger territory was unveiled in June 2008 with the launch
of the Global Tiger Initiative (GTI), which pledges to place the concerns of
tiger conservation on the international political agenda and to take a lead
role in conservation efforts.
"The bank hopes to invest in high-priority conservation actions, ensure that
its own infrastructure investments do not damage tiger populations, and support
investigations and economic analyses of key issues such as poaching and habitat
conversion," states the WWF, the world's largest conservation organization, in
a background note ahead of the Hua Hin meeting. "This is believed to be the
first time in the bank's history that it has undertaken such a major and
focused initiative targeting a single species."
Last January, Thai police seized four decapitated tiger carcasses found in a
truck passing through Hua Hin in Prachuap Kiri Khan province. Police said the
dead tigers were believed to have come from Malaysia and were being transported
to China.
The following month, Thai authorities discovered the butchered carcasses of two
tigers and a panther when they stopped a truck further south in Pattani
province.
Last May, the Thai navy seized two tiger carcasses and 45 pangolins and
arrested eight traffickers who had planned to smuggle the animals across the
Mekong River into Laos, TRAFFIC, the wildlife trade monitoring network,
reported at the time.
Laos, one of the 13 Asian countries home to wild tigers, offers visible signs
of the bank's new interest in the wild tiger. It is backing an awareness
campaign featuring billboards with an image of the endangered animal at the
international airport in Vientiane. A message to stop illegal wildlife trade
appears on each sign.
The billboards and stickers with a similar message that appear on the
ubiquitous three-wheeled taxis in the Lao capital were unveiled by the bank in
November last year.
The World Bank office in Laos provides support to Laos through the Global Tiger
Initiative, Victoria Minoian, a bank spokeswoman at the Vientiane office, said.
The bank has also been co-sponsoring the Lao Campaign for Wildlife
Conservation, which involves the government, non-governmental organizations and
the private sector, she added. The GTI has allocated US$15,000 to support this
wildlife campaign.
Yet the bank's aim to expand its portfolio by taking on the cause of the
conservationists is drawing criticism from some environmentalists, given the
financial institution's history in funding large projects in developing
countries - such as mega-dams - that have seen wanton destruction of the
environment and affected livelihoods of local residents.
"The World Bank's past record has left a trail of ecosystem destruction behind
virtually every large project it has financed," charged Bittu Sahgal, editor of
Sanctuary Asia, one of India's leading wildlife news magazines. "Today tigers
[in India] survive largely in the precise areas where World Bank money has been
kept at arm's length."
The bank's involvement to save the wild tiger is "worse than greenwashing", he
told Inter Press Service in an e-mail interview. "They are looking to pull off
a public opinion coup. While they say they want to help tigers, they are
simultaneously cajoling the Indian government to accept loans in excess of $1
billion for highways and mines that will destroy tiger and wildlife habitats."
Conservationists supporting the tiger summit hope to draw mileage out of
participants other than the bank.
The timing of this year's meetings has added symbolism for Asia, because
February 14 marks the start of the Year of the Tiger in the Chinese lunar
calendar. The current wild tiger population is estimated at 3,200, which is
half the number, between 5,000 to 7,000 wild tigers, that conservationists
estimated were around when the Year of the Tiger was last celebrated 12 years
ago.
"It is now or never," said James Compton, Asia programs director of TRAFFIC. "I
don't think there has ever before been similar international attention and
signs of political will towards tiger conservation."
Among the expected goals to come out of this World Bank-led effort is for
countries to implement strong enforcement programs that will "knock off the big
illegal wildlife trader", Compton said in an IPS interview. "There has to be
good law enforcement to detect and prosecute those involved in driving the
trafficking trade."
Almost every part of the tiger feeds the global illegal wildlife trade, which
is reported to be the third-largest illegal trade after arms and drugs.
Interpol estimates the annual value of the trade to be between $10 billion and
$20 billion.
"Illegal trade is not going away. It has remained persistent," said Compton.
"If you look at the pattern of seizures [of wild tiger parts], all tiger-range
countries are implicated. It has a long trade chain."
China and increasingly Vietnam are often fingered for driving the demand for
tiger parts. Besides tiger skin often given as gifts, tiger bones are used for
wines and powdered Chinese medicines, and tiger penis is sought as an
aphrodisiac.
It explains the rapid drop in the wild tiger population in Southeast Asia, from
Myanmar on one end to Cambodia, Laos, Malaysia, Thailand, Vietnam, Malaysia and
Indonesia at the other. The other tiger ranges are in Bangladesh, Bhutan,
China, India, Nepal and Russia.
A commitment to protect and expand these forest ranges that tigers inhabit is
also a benchmark the tiger summit is expected to strike. "According to tiger
experts, the wild tigers may disappear by the next Year of the Tiger in 2022 if
no action is taken to stop the poaching and illegal hunting, and to enhance
habitat protection," states the WWF.
Head
Office: Unit B, 16/F, Li Dong Building, No. 9 Li Yuen Street East,
Central, Hong Kong Thailand Bureau:
11/13 Petchkasem Road,
Hua Hin, Prachuab Kirikhan, Thailand 77110
