IWN Report — Tuesday, 8 September 2026

India’s tiger reserves have a new financial backer. Last week, the International Big Cat Alliance signed a Memorandum of Understanding with the Asian Development Bank, opening the door to nature-positive financing for tiger landscapes across Asia.

The signing came on the first day of a two-day international workshop in New Delhi, organised jointly by IBCA, the ADB and the National Tiger Conservation Authority under India’s Ministry of Environment, Forest and Climate Change. Union Minister Bhupender Yadav inaugurated the workshop, themed “Tiger Landscapes: Conservation, Bioeconomy and Ecotourism as Pillars for Livelihood and Income Generation.”

Also on the dais were Tanmay Kumar, Secretary of the Ministry; Sushil Kumar Awasthi, Director General of Forests; S.P. Yadav, Director General of IBCA; and Mia Oka, the ADB’s Country Director for India.

Natural Capital

Yadav told the workshop that protecting tigers cannot be a single-species project. Forests, grasslands, rivers, prey populations and wildlife corridors all have to hold together for tigers to survive, and the people living alongside them matter just as much, he said. “Conservation with harmony and human-nature coexistence should be the foundation of ecological conservation,” he told delegates.

He described tiger landscapes as natural capital, providing water security, carbon sequestration, climate regulation and rural livelihoods well beyond a reserve’s boundary fence. He asked participants to work on codifying traditional and indigenous knowledge and feeding it directly into conservation, bioeconomy and ecotourism policy.

Oka, welcoming the new partnership, noted that 2026 marks 40 years of the ADB’s relationship with India. She said the bank hopes to connect India’s conservation experience with other big cat range countries and help build sustainable financing for landscape-level conservation.

Delegates from Bangladesh, Bhutan, Cambodia, Malaysia, Nepal and Vietnam attended alongside Indian officials, researchers, and representatives of state forest departments and tiger reserves. IBCA, launched under Prime Minister Narendra Modi’s initiative, now runs as a global platform for cooperation on seven big cat species: tiger, lion, leopard, snow leopard, puma, jaguar and cheetah.

Sources: Press Information Bureau, via Odisha Diary · Press Information Bureau – Ministry of Environment release listing · International Big Cat Alliance