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  • From: "WebmasterFWC" <webmaster@fedworkerscomp.net>
  • To: livingontheland@lists.ibiblio.org
  • Subject: [Livingontheland] Herbal medicine boom threatens plants
  • Date: Thu, 05 Feb 2004 14:44:45 -0000


Herbal medicine boom threatens plants
Source: NewScientist.com, 9 January 2004
For full story, please see:
http://www.newscientist.com/news/news.jsp?id=ns99994538


The multimillion-pound boom in herbal medicine is threatening to wipe
out up to a fifth of the plant species on which it depends, wrecking
their natural habitats and jeopardising the health of millions of
people in developing countries. And yet the herbal medicines industry
has been accused of doing nothing about it.

Most people around the globe use herbal medicine for
everyday healthcare, with as many as 80 percent relying on it in some
countries. But two-thirds of the 50 000 medicinal plants in use are
still harvested from the wild, and research to be published later in
2004 suggests that between 4 000 and 10 000 of them may now be
endangered.

A study by Alan Hamilton, a plant specialist from the
global environment network WWF, will point out that the market for
herbal remedies in North America and Europe has been expanding by
about 10 percent a year for the last decade and the world market is
now thought to be worth at least £11 billion. Many of the plants are
harvested by poor communities in India and China whose livelihoods
will suffer if the plants die out.

Hamilton is a member of the World Conservation Union's
Medicinal Plants Specialist Group, and has drawn his estimates of the
number of species at risk from expert analyses of the IUCN's Red List
of threatened plants. His study is due to be published in Biodiversity
and Conservation.

Hamilton has also helped compile a report, Herbal Harvests
with a Future, which is due to be unveiled next week by the
conservation group Plantlife International. "With demand and
commercialisation growing fast, the future of the wild plants which
have helped most of humanity for centuries is now more uncertain than
it has ever been," says the group's Martin Harper.

One species highlighted by Plantlife as being under threat
is tetu lakha (Nothatodytes foetida), a small tree found in
rainforests in south India and Sri Lanka and used for anti-cancer
drugs in Europe. Others include a saw-wort known as costus or kusta
(Saussurea lappa) from India whose root is used for chronic skin
disorders, and the tendrilled fritillary (Fritillaria cirrhosa) from
Sichuan, China, used to treat respiratory infections.

Although the crisis has been looming for years, Plantlife
accuses the herbal medicine industry of failing to ensure the
sustainability of its supplies. It has established that 11 of 16
herbal companies in the UK, for instance, harvest all the plants they
sell from the wild, and the remaining five grow only a small
proportion.

Plantlife says awareness of the environmental problems
among companies in general is limited and sometimes vague. "Given the
scale of the threat, this is alarming," Harper warns. "It is time for
the industry to join forces with environmental organisations to ensure
that herbal harvests have a sustainable future."

Another leading international expert on medicinal plants,
Gerard Bodeker from Green College, Oxford, thinks that the assessments
of the crisis by Hamilton and Plantlife are conservative. Most of the
processes involved in supplying the growing market for herbal remedies
are "the result of unsustainable and often destructive practices
driven by poverty", he says. The industry is characterised by changing
health fads which keep favouring different plants, so there is little
incentive to sustainably produce particular species, he argues. "They
are eating their own nest. They are not replacing what they take."

The market for African cherry (Prunus africana), the bark
of which is popular in Europe as a treatment for prostate enlargement,
has collapsed because too many trees have been destroyed. In the past
the trees, which grow in Africa's mountain regions, survived because
traditionally less than half of their bark was harvested. But
according to a recent study by Kristine Stewart, from consultants
Keith and Schnars in Florida, growing commercial pressures have led to
whole forests being stripped or felled. Exports of dried bark halved
between 1997 and 2000 and the main exporter, Plantecam, had to close
its extraction factory in Cameroon (Journal of Ethnopharmacology, vol
89, p 3).

In its report, Plantlife urges the industry to invest in
cultivation. It also proposes the introduction of a kite mark to
identify products that have been sustainably harvested.

"There is a complete lack of awareness and lack of education amongst
consumers," Bodeker says. Although those that use herbal medicines
might be expected to be more environmentally aware than most that does
not seem to be the case. "They don't make the links," he adds.

The UK's largest association of herbal practitioners, the
National Institute of Medical Herbalists, is very concerned. "We all
need to work together to address this issue and to put pressure on
suppliers," the institute's Trudy Norris says







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