Traditional Medicine - The Threat of Biodiversity Loss

New Scientist magazine has recently reported on the threat to traditional medicines and global health posed by loss of biodiversity and extinction of species of medicinal plants.

Traditional medicinal plants are threatened by the global alternative medicines boom, and are being over-harvested resulting in loss of diversity. Traditional medicine is the main source of medicine for many regions of the world, with the World Health Organization (WHO) recording that in some Asian and African countries, as much as 80% of the population relies on traditional medicine in their primary health care.

Plantlife's Medicinal Plants Conservation Initiative (MPCI) published a report this month suggesting that almost a third of medicinal plants could become extinct if the use is not regulated. The report recommends, among other things, cooperation with local communities having knowledge and interest in medicinal plants in order to link development to conservation and use. The report describes the relationship between the supply of medicinal plants to community benefits in health care, income and cultural traditions.

Sara Oldfield, the Secretary General of the Botanic Gardens Conservation International (BGCI), which published a report in 2007 on the conservation of medicinal plants and the role of botanical gardens, describes the problem as a "quiet disaster."

Cusco Law on Indigenous Knowledge and Biopiracy

The regional government of Cusco, the former capital of the Inca Empire, has enacted laws (O.R. Nº048-2008-CR/GRC) to regulate against biopiracy and protect indigenous knowledge at the regional level.

Alejandro Argumedo, Director of Cusco-based indigenous organisation, Asociacion ANDES, describes the law as "a good example of how local governments can create the appropriate legal and institutional framework, as well as the mechanisms to implement it, to ensure that biopiracy does not prey on the creativity of indigenous peoples and local communities." He explains further, "Worldwide, national governments and international bodies such as the World Trade Organization and the World Intellectual Property Organization have failed to protect indigenous people's traditional knowledge and associated genetic resources from biopirates."

The laws include provisions for prior informed consent from indigenous and local communities, benefit-sharing with communities, and limiations upon the creation of patent rights over genetic resources. The laws are based on the understanding that such communities have sustained and protected the species for centuries through their traditions and practices, and acknowledge this guardianship in the duties to those communities, as recognised in the law, as well as providing for communities to rely on customary laws to develop and implement registers for genetic resources and protocols and procedures for the access to those resources.

The International Institute for Environment and Development (IIED), long-time partner of Asociacion ANDES, praises the passage of the law. Dr Michel Pimbert of IIED (pictured at left) notes the relationship between protecting biodiversity and conserving cultural knowledge: "Biopiracy of traditional knowledge and associated native crops, medicinal plants and microorganisms has been common, depriving poor indigenous people and farming communities of their ancestral rights to natural resources."

Although the law provides for a local infrastructure to challenge national procedures on bioprospecting, the law may conflict with national laws on the recording of indigenous knowledge. The provision for locally produced and controlled registers for traditional knowledge may conflict with the National Register of Indigenous Knowledge, created by the National Institute for the Protection of the Consumer and Intellectual Property. This capacity of local and indigenous communities not only to create but also to control their knowledge registers according to customary rules is of critical importance. To reconcile the two systems, Maria Scurrah, a Peruvian scientist specialising in farmers' rights, suggests to SciDev.net that a cooperation between local communities and the national register is necessary: "I believe that ancient knowledge should be kept by the community and be brought to a national registry to ensure payment to each community for each variety and species registered. That is the only way to pay for each community to be the guardian of biodiversity."

Coffee IS good for us - Traditional Farming and Biodiversity

An article in last month's Current Biology establishes the significance of traditional coffee farming practices for biodiversity.

Traditional small-scale farmers in southeast Mexico utilise tree canopies to protect their crop and protect against soil erosion. Miconia sp. have been grown in these farms since they were clear-cut and burned in the 1930s. Shade-grown coffee has been known to facilitate colonies of animals through this farming method, but the article in Current Biology details research findings concerning the genetic diversity of the trees themselves. Compared to the same trees in neighbouring forests, the trees forming the canopies for shade-grown coffee demonstrate greater genetic diversity, suggesting the importance of the traditional farming practices in protecting biodiversity.

The research was conducted by Shalene Jha and Christopher Dick of the University of Michigan, United States. Samples were collected from Miconia affinis trees growing in various coffee farms and in forests. The research suggests that seed dispersal may be the reason for greater diversity. While in forests seed dispersal may be limited to forest-dwelling birds, in farms there is potential for dispersal by wider-ranging birds in that a greater diversity of animals may be found there.

The research is important during a time when there is greater pressure to expand farms and eradicate the shade-grown coffee practice in favour of mechanised, sun-intensive farming, where canopies are cut down to facilitate access for machinery. While shade-grown coffee farms actually connect otherwise isolated forest fragments, sun-intensive farming would cut off such potential gene flow and lead to potential loss of diversity through in-breeding within those isolated fragments.

Jha explains, "If seeds are not dispersed, they will remain clumped together under the mother tree, and this will make them easy targets for predators." As a result, seed dispersal is compromised and "gene flow will be limited, and this can result in future plant inbreeding."

Resources in the Rainforest

Prince Charles has recently described a new proposal for paying for the value in rainforests, in an effort to provide for financial incentives and resources to combat deforestation.

Prince Charles was in Indonesia this week as part of a 10 day tour of Asia. Delivering the Presidential Lecture at the Indonesian Presidential Palace, the Prince explained to the Indonesian President, Dr Susilo Bambang Yudhoyono, and his cabinet that rainforests are the "world's greatest public utility" and as such those benefiting should support those benefits through funding to rainforest countries.

The Prince's Rainforest Project proposes a type of annual "utility bill" owed by richer countries for the important environmental benefits provided by rainforests maintained in biodiversity-rich regions. In other words, the project attempts to "value" the benefits fo rainforests: "Our work has been concentrating on the difficult issues of how to value forests. We need to be able to calculate what it will cost to divert large scale agriculture or plantation activities away from the remaining intact but threatened rainforests."

Prince Charles explained in his speech the rationale of the project, "Indonesia and the other rainforest nations are stewards of the world's greatest public utility. The rest of us have to start paying for it, just as we do for water, gas and electricity. So the challenge is to find an equitable means of paying for this planetary life support system on which we all depend ... Payments should have the characteristics of a commercial transaction, in the same way we pay for our water, gas and electricity. In other words, they should not be aid. In return, the rainforest nations would provide eco-services such as carbon storage, freshwater and the protection of biodiversity." The Prince explained that deforestation was largely a consequence of the greater demand from developed countries for soya, logs and other products. The project therefore advocates payment for the protection of rainforests, proposed through a bonds to be administered by an international body.