Evaluate whether treaty-based alliances like IBCA can tackle transboundary threats to big cats, such as illegal trade and habitat fragmentation.

Poachers, traffickers and wildlife corridors cross borders that national laws cannot reach. The International Big Cat Alliance (IBCA) has been a treaty-based inter-governmental organisation since 23 January 2025 and covers seven big cats [1]. It gives these threats a legal, multilateral platform, but on its own it only partly tackles them.

Strengths: what a treaty alliance adds

• Legal personality: Under the Framework Agreement, IBCA is an international legal entity, not a voluntary pledge [1].
• Cross-continental reach: CITES and CMS cover parts of this work, but no other body links big cat range countries across Asia, Africa and the Americas. India invited 95 range countries to the first IBCA Summit [3].
• Connecting habitat across borders: The Americas alone have 26 cross-border jaguar areas [4]. Only joint action can keep corridors like these connected, and IBCA can build on the jaguar's CMS listing at COP13 in Gandhinagar [4].
• Capacity building: IBCA runs ITEC courses and the PRIME cat-health programme for veterinarians from 20 countries [5].
• Proven model: India is one of only three countries, with Russia and Nepal, to report tiger recovery [6]. That experience can be shared with other range countries.

Limitations: why a treaty alone is not enough

• Few members: IBCA has 29 members, against 95 range countries invited to its summit [5][3].
• Declarations alone do not deliver: Under the 2010 St. Petersburg Declaration, countries aimed to double wild tigers by 2022 (the TX2 goal). Yet tigers are still declining in the wild, and they have gone extinct in Cambodia, Laos and Vietnam [6].
• Organised trade: At least 1,755 tigers were seized between 2000 and 2015 [6]. Policing and prosecution still depend on each country.
• Funding: India gave a one-time ₹150 crore for 2023-28. A permanent fund (corpus) from donors is still to be raised [2].
• Overlap risk: IBCA could duplicate work that CITES and CMS already do [4].

Verdict IBCA can coordinate action, set norms and build skills. Enforcement on the ground still rests with each country.

Treaty-based alliances are necessary but not sufficient against transboundary threats. IBCA can work if it signs agreements with CITES and CMS, brings in the main habitat countries first, and raises a shared corpus before 2027-28. It can then turn India's Project Tiger experience into results across all seven species, advancing SDG 15 (Life on Land).