On 4-5 May, the World Bank headquarters in Washington hosted a meeting of senior executives of the Global Tiger Initiative (GTI) responsible for implementing the Global Tiger Recovery Program (GTRP). During the discussion, representatives of Tiger Range Countries decided to set up a High-Level Initiative Council, with former World Bank President Robert Zoellick tapped to head it.

The meeting was convened to discuss the World Bank’s decision to stop financing the GTI Secretariat as of June 2015, which was unilaterally communicated to the GTRP member-countries in November 2015.

“Regrettably, the mechanism that was being collectively created by the World Bank, the Tiger Range Countries and partner organisations in furtherance of the 2010 St Petersburg Declaration, and the GTRP had just begun running smoothly when it was unilaterally shut down by the World Bank without consulting the countries,” said Amirkhan Amirkhanov, acting head of the Federal Service for Supervision of Natural Resources (Rosprirodnadzor). “But it is the Tiger Range Countries that are responsible for meeting the commitments they made in the Declaration and the GTRP, and should take the final decision.”

The participants in the meeting also discussed and generally approved potential members of the Council which can include representatives of all Tiger Range Countries as well as representatives of key partner and donor organisations.

“It is very important that the meeting has adopted a real plan ensuring the continuation of efforts to implement the GTRP and to transfer the Secretariat’s functions from the World Bank to other organisations. For our part, we are ready to help government agencies perform these functions in our country,” director of the Primorye branch of the Amur Tiger Centre Sergei Aramilev said.

To facilitate the Council’s operations, it was proposed that a supporting platform be created on the basis of two key partner organisations – the International Union for the Conservation of Nature (IUCN) and the Global Tiger Forum.

The Global Tiger Initiative works with the Tiger Range Countries and a major coalition of international organisations to fulfil its core mission: to stop the depletion of tigers in the wild and to restore their habitat and population to a stable level.