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The Benefits of Studying Medicinal Plants and Ethnobotany (page 4)
by Kimberly Johnson, MD

The World Health Organization (WHO) estimates that 3.5 billion people in developing countries rely on plant-based medicine for their primary health care.

Identification and Conservation of Medicinal Plants is Crucial to the Health of Peoples in Developing Nations

As a global community, we are now in the midst of a crisis in loss of biological and cultural diversity. The current ongoing loss of biodiversity is the greatest contraction of life since the end of the Mesozoic Era sixty-five million years ago -- a wave of extinctions that extinguished the dinosaurs (Wilson 1992). Although prehistoric extinction spasms tended to claim mostly animals, plants too are now threatened with extinction on a large scale. One-fourth of all tropical plants may be wiped out in the next 30 years. Outside the tropics, the greatest concentration of threatened plants is found in southern Africa, where 13% of endemic plants are threatened. In southwestern Australia, two-thirds of plant species are endangered by a fungal disease carried by humans walking or driving through the bush. In the US nearly 1 in 8 native species is in danger. According to the 1997 IUCN Red List of Threatened Plants compiled by the World Conservation Union, worldwide 13.8% of vascular plants are imperiled. In addition, much of earth's biodiversity is clustered in tropical regions. Many of these "hotspots" of diversity are populated by indigenous peoples. Today most of the world's indigenous peoples are as imperiled as their homelands, threatened by loss of habitat and westernization.

The World Health Organization (WHO) estimates that 3.5 billion people in developing countries rely on plant-based medicine for their primary health care. In Africa, which is home to 28.1 million of the world's 40 million people living with HIV-AIDS, traditional healers are a crucial component of the health care system, and may be the only source of care and treatment for the poor and disenfrachised (Green 2002) . Herbal therapies are growing rapidly in popularity in industrial countries as well. The FAO estimates that between 4000 and 6000 species of medicinal plants are traded internationally, with China accounting for about 30% of exports.

In 1992, the U.S. retail market for herbal remedies reached $1.5 billion, and the European market is considerably larger. But the success of plant-based medicines is not without its cost. Some plant species are rapidly disappearing from the wild due to overcollection.

Until about 1960, only a single plant species was known to have been rendered extinct by the actions of humans. The first exterminated species was known as silphion, and flourished in the sixth century B.C. in a Greek colony in present-day Libya. It was a medicinal plant used for a variety of conditions ranging from hemorrhoids to facilitating uterine contractions. It grew wild and was never cultivated, and a concentrated extract of its stem was worth its weight in silver. As a result, it became scarce, then extinct, due entirely to human overcollection for medicinal use (Tyler, in Balick, et. al. 1996).

Wise use and management of our natural resources is crucial to the wellfare of the people who depend on these natural sources of medical treatment.

Fewer than 1-2% of the world's 250,000 flowering plants have been analyzed for medicinal value, yet in some tropical regions species are disappearing faster than they can be identified, let alone studied for medical efficacy. The current rate of species extinction is now thought to be 100 to 1,000 times higher than "background" levels (Stork 1997). Wild medicinal plant collection can contribute to habitat destruction and can cause an immediate problem for local or indigenous peoples who may rely on a plant for their health needs, as the case of the African cherry tree illustrates.

The bark of Prunus africana, the African cherry tree, is highly esteemed by traditional healers in central and west Africa, but it is also popular among European doctors for treating prostate disorders. In recent years Cameroon has been the leading supplier to Europe, resulting in clearance of the tree's montane forest habitat and destruction of cherry stands, whilst also making it scarce for local healers to harvest (Tuxill 1999). Clearly a balance between harvesting and replanting this resource is badly needed.

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References on this page:

Balick, M.J., E. Elisabetsky, and S. Laird, eds. 1996. Medicinal Resources of the Tropical Forest: Biodiversity and its Importance to Human Health. New York: Columbia University Press.
Articles by authors in the above text:

Wilson, E.O. 1992. The Diversity of Life. Cambridge, Mass.: The Belknap Press of Harvard University Press.