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India is celebrating the golden jubilee of Project Tiger. Prime Minister Narendra Modi on April 9 released the fifth cycle of a census that shows India’s tiger population in the wild increased last year to 3,167, a 6.7 percent increase from 2018.
Project Tiger was launched in the Jim Corbett National Park in 1973 and it has made remarkable progress since then. Starting from less than 1,800 tigers in the 1970s, the number grew steadily to 2,967 in the 2018 census. The number of tiger reserves in the country has increased from 9 to 53 over the last 5 decades, covering 2.5% of India’s land area.
The tiger being at the apex of the food chain can affect the whole ecosystem; it is also called an umbrella species. Tiger habitat conservation leads to the protection of other critically endangered species. A study by the Centre for Ecological Services Management (CESM) and the Indian Institute of Forest Management (IIFM) found that tiger reserves protect genetic material which is a source of medicines and drugs. A reserve’s natural landscape provide opportunities for climate change adaptation through carbon sequestration. The monetary value of these benefits range between Rs. 8.3 to 17.6 billion annually.
Project Tiger is hailed as a success, proven by an increasing population and expanding protected area. Many challenges remain as we celebrate. The number of reserves has increased in the last 10 years, but the funds provided under the Centrally Sponsored Scheme (CSS) by the National Tiger Conservation Authority (NTCA) have declined: from Rs 34,874 lakh in 2016-17 to Rs 21,949 lakh in 2021-22. Some studies argue that the current method of fund appropriation is complex and causes delays in the flow of funds. It allegedly interferes with planned activities and compels the management to focus on short-term activities over long-term development.
The Public Accounts Committee of the 15th Lok Sabha in its 2010 report noted that there is no clarity on the relocation of families residing in tiger habitats. The cost is estimated at Rs 8,000 crore and relocation is happening at a "snail’s pace" and would take a decade. Management Effectiveness Evaluation of Tiger Reserves 2018 shows that at least half of India’s tiger reserves are facing threats from linear infrastructure like highways and railway lines. Other challenges highlighted in the evaluation were the pressure on tiger habitat from villagers living inside tiger reserves, lack of forest staff, pollution and climate change.
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The falling central assistance for an ever-growing number of tiger reserves, coupled with challenges like the high cost of village relocation and emerging climate change threats, makes it apparent that project tiger needs more financial support to accomplish its goals.
Robert Schiller, the Noble Prize-winning economist, has remarked that finance is the science of goal architecture i.e. structuring economic arrangements necessary to achieve a goal. The predicament facing India’s Project Tiger, requires the policymakers to reorient their approach to wildlife conservation, and integrating Schillers’ view on goal-setting can be a good starting point. This can be materialized through the inclusion ‘Impact Investing’ in conservation finance initiatives.
Impact Investing is the investments made to generate positive measurable environmental impacts along with financial returns. The rising environmental awareness among the investing community has given rise to a range of financial products, they strike a balance between the green aspirations of investors and the efficiency of a financial market mechanism. One such instrument is a green bond, which is a fixed-income debt instrument whose proceeds must be used for green projects. The green bond market in India is growing, reaching a total of US$ 18.9 billion in 2021. The Government of India also issued its first ever sovereign green bonds worth Rs. 16,000 crores in February 2023.
Green financing can be used to alleviate the financial deficiencies of India’s tiger reserves. The Government of India’s ‘Framework for Sovereign Green Bonds’, outlines the projects which can be considered as ‘Green Projects’. These projects can raise funds through the issuance of green bonds and also request a share from central governments’ green bond inflows. Project Tiger can tap into these additional fund flows, because it qualifies as a ‘project related to conservation of endangered species, habitats, and ecosystems.’
In order to secure funding for a green project the Ministry of Environment, Forest & Climate Change (MOEFCC), has to approach the Green Finance Working Committee (GFWC) with an initial evaluation report. The committee conducts project evaluation which is, followed by the issuance of bonds, whose allocation and management is supervised by the Public Debt Management Cell (PDMC) of the Ministry of Finance.
Studies exploring funding solutions for tiger reserves have proposed accessing bond markets for financial support. Through the use of debt instruments like ‘Tiger Bonds’, sustainable finance can be directed to Project Tiger. This creates harmony between the investors who want to act now and the conservationists who are impaired in their efforts for want of funds. The opportunities created by the development of fintech, along with the rise of the green investor, give environmentally conscious investing a chance to influence conservation practices and aid the bureaucracy in its endeavors.
Our efforts need innovative finance solutions like Tiger Bonds, which can incentivize private capital flows into sustainable practices such as habitat conservation. This creates a model of wildlife management that gives common citizens a chance to shoulder our long due ecological responsibility, the trusteeship of our natural heritage for the generations to come.
(Praveen Garg, IAS (retd.), is a former special secretary and financial advisor at the Ministry of Environment, Forest and Climate Change. Pawan Rathore is a research associate at Mobius Foundation.)
Disclaimer: These are the personal opinions of the writers. They do not reflect the views of www.business-standard.com or the 'Business Standard' newspaper.
Disclaimer: These are personal views of the writer. They do not necessarily reflect the opinion of www.business-standard.com or the Business Standard newspaper
