Conservation and Development of Medicinal Plants in South Asia: Growing Potentials for Knowledge Sharing with African Countries.

Conservation and Development of Medicinal Plants in South Asia: Growing
Potentials for Knowledge Sharing with African Countries.

By:
Madhav Karki
Regional Program Coordinator
IDRC/MAPPA, New Delhi
E-mail:< mkarki@idrc.org.in > (madhav karki)


Context

More than 80% of Asian population relies upon traditional medicines for
primary health care. Asia is the cultural and geographical home of all
the worlds’ formal traditional medical systems, from the Chinese system
in China and Southeast Asia; to Jamu in Indonesia; Ayurveda, Unani and
Siddha in India; the Tibetan system in Asian countries, and Kampo in
Japan. In the South and east Asian countries such as China and India,
systems of medicines, more than 5,000 years old, continue to be a source
of health and well-being for more than 80% of people, especially those
living in the rural communities. They also provide a source of income
and employment that rivals and often exceeds that of allopathic
medicine.

Central to the performance of these traditional systems, and with their
importance in allopathy and homeopathy also, are medicinal plants.
Ranging from well-known traditional remedies such as ginseng to recent
modern discoveries such as taxol, medicinal plants have an important
role to play in health care worldwide, and in the economies and
populations of Asia especially. In South Asia alone, more than 7,000
species have known uses, and the largest part of the continent’s
floristic wealth has yet to be explored for the benefit of people’s
livelihoods and health care.

However, the Medicinal Plants sector in South Asia is facing several
challenges. Topping the list is the unsustainable utilization of the
resources and imminent threat to biodiversity and sources of precious
raw materials. Due to increasing pressure to meet the new demand for
medicinal plants, the natural supply from forests--where more than 95%
of the plants continue to be harvested--has dwindled. Deforestation,
increasing populations, and increasing demand for natural products both
in domestic and international markets, have all contributed to a decline
in both quantity and quality of supply and a number of distortions in
the market forces and systems. The result is a medicinal plants sector
on the verge of crisis: with the largest volume of the trade illegal and
undocumented; adulteration and spurious materials entering the market;
indigenous knowledge being lost along with the plants; unfair trade
practices penalizing the poorest of the poor; and unsustainable
harvesting decreasing supplies even further.

MAPPA’s approach & initiative in Asia:

Medicinal and Aromatic Plants Programme in Asia (MAPPA) supports
research on medicinal plants reflecting Centre’s corporate strategy
Empowerment through Knowledge by building scientific and technological
capacity, responding to local needs, promoting gender-equity, and
building communication and information networks within and between
regions. IDRC currently supports
research projects, networks, and other activities on medicinal plants
in Asia, Africa, and Central America. A multi disciplinary approach
integrates key issues in health, conservation, indigenous knowledge, and
local economic development.

IDRC’s support for research and development on medicinal plants in Asia
has been ongoing since 1994, and is currently managed through the
Medicinal and Aromatic Plants Program in Asia (MAPPA) sponsored by the
Sustainable Use of Biodiversity Program Initiative (SUB PI) of the
Centre. MAPPA is a program of strategic research, networking and
collaboration to comprehensively address critical research issues
related to the sustainable and equitable use of medicinal and aromatic
plants in the South and South East Asia regions. Initially, MAPPA is
focusing its research and development efforts in South Asia region only.
Through collaboration and partnerships with GOs, NGOs, CBOs, national
research institutes (NRIs), universities and private sector agencies,
the program aims to coordinate a production to consumption/marketing
based holistic research activities that cannot only address major
research issues but also follows a regional approach to these issues.
MAPPA is thus well positioned to formulate a program which will
complement and build on other related research and development
activities in South Asia.

Objectives:

The general objective of the MAPPA is to enhance the sustainable and
equitable use of medicinal and aromatic plant resources in South Asia
through the promotion of strategic research, networking and
collaboration among key relevant organizations in the region. Some of
the specific objectives are: a) to support strategic research on
community-based initiatives for genetic conservation and sustainable
management of medicinal and aromatic plants; b) to promote innovative
resource utilization and management strategies involving local people,
especially rural poor and tribals, to derive more equitable benefits
from medicinal and aromatic plants and derived products; c) to support
strategic research on improving access to, and use of, medicinal and
aromatic plants as a means of safe and effective primary health care; d)
to support better access to, better quality of, broader distribution
of, and greater utility of information about, medicinal and aromatic
plant resources through networking and communication; and e) to promote
partnerships, capacity building and institutional commitment to
sustainable use and production of medicinal and aromatic plants through
enhanced regional cooperation, training and research in the South Asian
region.

Research Strategy:

Through strategic research, collaboration, and networking, MAPPA plans
to develop strategies, methods and options for sustainable conservation
and use of MAP resources. The research work expects to build on previous
research and networking activities in the region funded by both IDRC and
other organizations. Identified research areas include locally-based
conservation methods, sustainable and equitable commercialization
strategies and technologies, and improved options for safe and effective
health care systems. Research activities will strive to complement and
build on ongoing research work to more comprehensively address research
problems, generate more effective research results, and accomplish
greater impact. Developing complementary and synergistic research
partnership with other donor agencies, national programs and research
partners will be given special priority under the partnership building
activity of the project.



Opportunities for collaborations between South Asia and Africa:

MAPPA actively seeks national, regional and global partnerships and
promotes different kinds of mutually beneficial collaborative linkages.
It is my feeling that between South Asian and African communities, there
is wide scope for sharing knowledge, especially in traditional medicinal
knowledge systems, basic as well as applied research experiences,
networking based on information sharing and partnership development and
collaboration on mutually beneficial programs. Through IDRC’s regional
programs such as Southern African Medicinal Plants Network in the
Southern African countries as well as the global programs such as
Medicinal Plants Global Information Network (Medplanet), MAPPA is
already linking Asia and African partners.

However, increasing interests shown by global communities in the
medicinal plants and traditional health care systems of Asian highlands
and rainforests have raised important policy, technical and ethical
issues. The increasing potential and demand on resources have also
pointed to vital gaps that exist in terms of knowledge about medicinal
plants, their uses, and the status of the natural resources from which
they are derived. These issues include:

Health - the need for standardization, quality control, and monitoring
of herbal medicines to ensure treatments are safe and effective.
Biodiversity conservation and management - loss of medicinally useful
species and genetic diversity from deforestation and other types of
habitat destruction such as non-sustainable levels of harvest from wild
populations and inadequate attention to medicinally useful species in
biodiversity conservation policy and action.
Social and cultural - erosion and loss of traditional knowledge of
medicinal plants developed over many generations; the threat to such
traditional knowledge of diminishing access to particular natural
environments; the relationship between increasing poverty, decreasing
local controls, and the diminishing ability of local communities to
manage natural resources sustainably.
Economic - the reliance of local economies and a large component of
national health care on medicinal plant resources that are increasingly
threatened by extinction, and the equitable sharing of benefits from
increased trade and commercial development of medicinal plants with
local communities and developing countries.

Clearly, the diversity of stakeholders involved and the multi-sectoral
nature of these issues and opportunities will require collaboration and
cooperative research.

Research Focus:

MAPPA supports research activities in medicinal plants that are
community-based but that can influence national and international policy
objectives, principally in the following areas:

Biodiversity conservation - by documenting the uses of medicinal
plants, their taxonomy, and relative abundance, identifying those which
may be endangered, and establishing community-based conservation
practices. Where in-situ conservation requires support of ex-situ
conservation measures, collaboration with local institutions such as
national botanic gardens and herbaria is encouraged.

Improved access to health care - by promoting collaboration between
health care institutions and traditional medicine practitioners to
undertake research leading to safe, effective, affordable, and
culturally appropriate treatments and practices. Research efforts aimed
at standardization, quality control, and toxicological testing of
medicinal plants are of particular importance to meeting health care
needs.

Use of indigenous knowledge - by supporting collaborative research
between local communities and scientific institutions using
participatory research methodologies. Documentation and development of
medicinal plants based on traditional knowledge must ensure that local
communities have control of, access to, and benefits from research
through intellectual property rights (IPR) legislation, protocols, and
other mechanisms. MAPPA has recently published two documents on tribal
and folk medicine and on partnership between rural communities and
medicinal plants industrys: Tribal and Folk Medicinal Plant Resoruces of
South Asia and The Role of Medicinal Palnts Industry In Fostering
Biodiversity Conservation and Rural Development (Editors: Madhav Karki &
Radhika Johari 1999).

Marketing and employment opportunities - by identifying potentially
marketable medicinal plants as a source of income and employment for
local communities. The development of standardized production, quality
control, and sustainable harvest methods are emphasized. Research on
the potential impact of cultivation and trade in medicinal plants on
local economies is a priority.

Networking - by facilitating linkages and exchanges within and between
regions that enhance local access to information and benefits from
research and development opportunities. Improved access to information
and communication technologies can amend inequalities in access to
information on medicinal plants, and help to foster national, regional,
and international collaboration.

Conclusion:

Medicinal plants are an important natural and cultural resources of the
poor and indigenous people living in Asian and African countries alike.
These plants are the rich repositories of both biological and cultural
diversity that exist in these regions. Increased pressures, especially
from commercial concerns, have created serious threats not only to the
integrity of the ecosystem resources but also to the preservation of
cultural heritage. South Asian countries with their age-old and diverse
resource as well as knowledge management skills and African countries
with their rich and still unexplored traditional systems of medicine
have tremendous opportunities for mutual learning and sharing. We hope
that through new and bold initiatives such as Asia-Africa Partnership in
Medicinal Plants Research and Community Health Development which I
propose this forum endorses, the knowledge sharing and cooperative
research work will soon start and flourish to conserve not only the
vital medicinal plants biodiversity but also the rich repositories of
traditional medicinal knowledge and practices in the two continents.