2. Medicinal Plants: Threats and Conservation Reactions 8 3

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Contact information

Applied Environmental Research Kunming Institute of Botany Tooro Botanical Gardens, Foundation (AERF), C-10 Natya Chitra (Applied Ethnobotany Research P.O. Box 840, Fort Portal, Uganda Co-op Society (Kalagram), Bhusari Colony, Group), Chinese Academy of Sciences, Pune 411029, India. Heilongtan, Kunming 650204, Yunnan, Uganda Group of the African www.aerfindia.org. People’s Republic of China. Network of Ethnobiology Email: [email protected] www.kib.ac.cn (UGANEB), P.O. Box 16453 Wandegeya, Uganda Ashoka Trust for Research in Ladakh Society for Traditional Ecology and the Environment Medicines (LSTM), P.O Box 97, Leh, World Wide Fund for Nature (ATREE), Eastern Himalayas Programme, Ladakh, Jamu and Kashmir, India, (WWF-Pakistan), Ferozepur Road, E2, Golden Heights, Gandhi Road, Tel +91 1982251 537. Lahore- 54600, P.O. Box 5180, Pakistan. Darjeeling 734 101, West Bengal, India. Email: [email protected] Tel: +92 42 111 993725. www.atree.org www.wwfpak.org National Museums of Kenya, Ethnobotanical Society of Nepal P.O. Box 40658-00100, Nairobi, Kenya Yangzhou University (College of (ESON), 107 Guchcha Marg, New Road, Tel +254 20 3742131. Bioscience and Biotechnology), GPO 5220, Kathmandu, Nepal. Fax + 254 20 3741424 . Yangzhou 225009, Jiang Su Province, Tel +977 16213406. www.museums.or.ke. People’s Republic of China www.eson.org.np Email: [email protected]

Foundation for Revitalisation of NOMAD Recherche et Soutien Further information on the case studies is Local Health Traditions (FRLHT), Internatonal, 11 rue Lantiez, 75017 available on Plantlife’s website: 74/2 Jarakabande Kaval, Post Attur, Paris , France. Via Yelahanka, Bangalore 560064, India. www.nomadrsi.org www.plantlife.org.uk www.frlht Plantlife International, Joint Ethnobotanical Research and 14 Rollestone Street, Salisbury, Advocacy (JERA), P.O Box 27901, Wiltshire SP1 1DX, UK. Kampala, Uganda. Tel +44 (0)1722 342730. Fax: +44 (0)1722 Tel +256-712212006/+256-712747798. 329035. www.plantlife.org.uk. Email: [email protected] Email: [email protected]

Plantlife International - The Wild Plant Conservation Charity 14 Rollestone Street, Salisbury Wiltshire SP1 1DX. Telephone +44 (0)1722 342730 Fax +44 (01722 329 035 [email protected] www.plantlife.org.uk Plantlife International -The Wild Plant Conservation Charity is a charitable company limited by guarantee. Registered charity Number: 1059559. Registered Company Number: 3166339 © 2008

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References

Plantlife International, the wild plant Acknowledgements The Ashoka Trust for Research in Ecology and 59. NCAPD. The Draft National Policy on Traditional 74. Martin, G. J. Ethnobotany: a Methods Manual 91. Kinhal, G. & Rao, R. J. (eds.) Adaptive Management conservation charity, is a charitable the Environment (ATREE) sincerely Medicine and Medicinal Plants (Ministry of Planning (Earthscan, London, UK, 1994). of Medicinal Plants and Non Timber Forest Products company limited by guarantee (Registered An international advisory group was formed acknowledges the co-operation of the Forest and National Development, Nairobi, Kenya, 2006). 75. Riley, B. W. & Brokensha, D. The Mbeere in Kenya II: (Bishen Singh Mahendra Pal Singh, Dehra Dun, in England, Charity Number 1059559, for the programme and has provided Department of Sikkim and the Forest 60. Simiyu, S. W. (International Development Research Botanical Identities and Uses (University Press of India, 2008). Company Number 3166339). Plantlife’s invaluable help, including specific suggestions Department of West Bengal for granting Centre, Nairobi, Kenya, 2006). America, Lanham, USA, 1988). 92. Tuxill, J. & Nabhan, G. P. People, Plants and Protected goal is to halt the loss of wild plant for proposals submitted to Plantlife for permission for their work. The Botanical Survey 61. Kariuki, P. M. Report on a Meeting on the Integration 76. Shah, A. et al. Delimitation of Taxus fuana Nan Li & Areas (Earthscan, London, UK, 2001). diversity. We identify and conserve sites of funding through Allachy Awards. The names of of India Himalayan Circle (Gangtok), Lloyd of the Network on Medicinal Plants and Traditional R.R. Mill (Taxaceae) based on morphological and 93. Law, W. & Salick, J. Comparing conservation Medicine into the East African Community Secretariat molecular data. Taxon 57, 211-222 (2008). priorities for useful plants among botanists and exceptional botanical importance, rescue members of the advisory group are listed on Botanical Garden Herbarium and the (Lake Basin Commission) (International Development 77. Shrestha, I. in Central Department of Botany Tibetan doctors. Biodiversity and Conservation 16, wild plants from the brink of extinction the title page. Plantlife International is Herbarium at North Bengal University were Research Centre, Nairobi, Kenya, 2007). (Trivhuvan, Kathmandu, Nepal, 2008). 1747-1759 (2007). and ensure that common plants don’t immensely dedicated to all of them for their immensely helpful in undertaking a preliminary 62. Sharma, U. R., Malla, K. J. & Uprety, R. K. 78. Chhetri, D. R. et al. Current status of 94. Cunningham, A. B. Applied Ethnobotany: People, Wild become rare in the wild. We achieve this unstinting support. screening of the habitats of the targeted Conservation and management efforts of ethnomedicinal plants in the Darjeeling Himalaya. Plant Use and Conservation (Earthscan, London, UK, by facilitating conservation work across species. Mr Bijoy Gurung, Director of the State medicinal and aromatic plants in Nepal. Banko Current Science 89, 264-268 (2005). 2001). Jankari 14, 3-11 (2004). 79. Gurung, B. The Medicinal Plants of Sikkim Himalaya 95. Walter, C. J. Adaptive Management of Renewable the globe, influencing policy and legislation Plantlife acknowledges with gratitude the Medicinal Plants Board (Government of Sikkim), 63. Pei Shengji, Li Yanhui & Yin Shuze. in The Challenges (Maples, Chakung, Sikkim, India, 2002). Resources (McMillan, New York, USA, 1986). and collaborating widely to promote wild foresight of Jane Smart in starting the Plant provided various types of help and is sincerely of Ethnobiology in the 21st Century (eds. Pei Shengji, 80. Biswas, K. Common Medicinal Plants of Darjeeling 96. WHO. Guidelines on Good Agricultural and Collection plant conservation. Plantlife International Conservation and Livelihoods Programme. acknowledged. Long, Y. G., Marr, K. & Posey, D. A.) 150-169 and Sikkim Himalaya (Bengal Government Press, Practice (World Health Organisation, Geneva, is the lead organisation for Target 5 of the Jane was the first Chief Executive of Plantlife (Yunnan Science and Technology Press, Kunming, West Bengal, India, 1956). Switzerland, 2003). Global Strategy for Plant Conservation. and is now Head of the Species Programme The Ethnobotanical Society of Nepal (ESON) China, 1996). 81. Das, A. P. & Mandal, S. Some Medicinal Plants of 97. Oryem-Origa, H., Katende, A. B. & Kakudidi, E. K. We also provide the secretariat for Planta of the International Union for Conservation thanks the District Forest Office, Langtang 64. Goraya, G. S. (2006). Darjeeling Hills (WWF-India, West Bengal State Z. Some medicinal plants in Mukono District. The 65. Olsen, C. A. & Helles, F. Medicinal plants, markets and Office, Kolkata, India, 2003). Uganda Journal 49, 56-65 (2003). Europa, the pan-European network of over of Nature (IUCN). Another driving force National Park and Buffer Zone Council of margins in the Nepal Himalaya: trouble in paradise. 82. Rai, S. K. (North Bengal University, Bengal, India, 98. Tsouvalis, J. A Critical Geography of Britain's State 70 organisations working for plant behind the programme was the late Richard Rasuwa. Thanks are also due to Mr Kaisang N. The Geographical Journal 169, 243-254 (1997). 2002). Forests: an Exploration of Processes of Reality conservation. HRH The Prince of Wales is Sandbrook, a former Board member of Tamang (President, Manekor Society Nepal), Mr 66. Olsen, C. S. & Larsen, H. O. Alpine medicinal plant 83. Khan, A. A. & Sher, H. The Identification and Construction (Oxford University Press, Oxford, UK, our Patron. Plantlife and a visionary environmentalist. Binod Poudel (President, Federation of trade and Himalayan mountain livelihood strategies. Conservation of Important Plant Areas for Medicinal 2000). Many thanks to Mark Nesbitt of the Royal Community Forest User Groups Nepal, Rasuwa The Geographical Journal 169, 243-254 (2003). Plants in the Himalayas: Pakistan. (2006). 99. CBD. Access and Benefit Sharing as related to Genetic Published 2008 by Plantlife International Botanic Gardens, Kew for undertaking Branch) and Ms Kabita Ghale (Social Mobilizer) 67. Olsen, H. O., Olsen, C. S. & Boon, T. E. The non- 84. Pei Shengji, Huyin, H. & Lixin, Y. The Identification Resources (Secretariat of the Convention on timber forest policy process in Nepal: actors, and Conservation of Important Plant Areas for Biological Resources, Montreal, Canada, 2002). © Plantlife International November 2008 literature searches on Plantlife's behalf. for their very active support and close objectives and power. Forest Policy and Economics 1, Medicinal Plants in the Himalayas: China (Kunming 100. Laird, S. A. (ed.) Biodiversity and Traditional cooperation. 267-281 (2000). Institute of Botany, Kunming, China, 2006). Knowledge: Equitable Partnerships in Practice All rights reserved. Plantlife is indebted to those who have 68. Salick, J. et al. Tibetan medicine plurality. Economic 85. Pragya. The Identification and Conservation of (Earthscan, London, UK, 2002). financially supported the programme, notably In connection with the course held at Botany 60, 227-253 (2006). Important Plant Areas for Medicinal Plants in the 101. Hawkins, B. Plants for Life: Medicinal Plant ISBN: 978-1-904749-15-8 the Allachy Trust, the Rufford Maurice Laing Bangalore, the Foundation for Revitalisation of 69. Kamoga, D. (2007). Himalayas: India (Pragya, Delhi, India, 2006). Conservation and Botanic Gardens (Botanic Gardens 70. Salick, J. et al. Tibetan sacred sites preserve old 86. Plantlife International. Identifying and Protecting the Conservation International, Richmond, UK, 2008). Foundation, the Gurney Charitable Trust, the Local Health Traditions (FRLHT) appreciates grove trees and cover in the eastern Himalayas. World's Most Important Plant Areas (Plantlife 102. Wild, R. G. & Mutebi, J. Bwindi Impenetrable Citation: Hamilton, A.C. (editor) (2008). Tanner Trust and Dr William Hamilton. the assistance extended during field trips by Biodiversity and Conservation 16, 693-706 (2007). International, Salisbury, UK, 2004). Forest, Uganda: conservation through Medicinal plants in conservation and members of the Village Forest Committee at 71. Salick, J., Yang Yongping & Amend, A. Tibetan land 87. Anderson, S. Identifying Important Plant Areas - a Site collaborative management. Nature and Resources development: case studies and lessons learnt. Partner organisations of Plantlife in this Savandurga, BIRD-K (Tiptur), the Covenant use and change near Khawa Karpo, Eastern Selection Manual for Europe, and a Basis for 33, 33-51 (1997). Plantlife International, Salisbury, UK. programme would like to express their Centre for Development (CCD, Madurai), Himalayas. Economic Botany 59, 312-325 (2005). Developing Guidelines for Other Regions of the World 103. Liu Dachang. Tenure and management of non-state acknowledgements as follows: Pichandikulam Forests, Auroville and Arya 72. Anderson, D. M., Salick, J., Moseley, R. K. & Ou (Plantlife International, Salisbury, UK, 2002). forests in China since 1950. Environmental History 6, Xiaokun. Conserving the sacred medicine 88. Medicinal Plants Specialist Group. (International 239-263 (2001). Photos by Alan Hamilton (AH) unless Vaidya Pharmacy (Coimbatore). mountains: a vegetation analysis of Tibetan sacred Union for Conservation of Nature (IUCN), Gland, 104. WHO. Traditional Medicine Strategy 2002-2005 otherwise indicated. The Applied Environmental Research sites in Northwest Yunnan. Biodiversity and Switzerland, 2007). (World Health Organisation, Geneva, Foundation (AERF) wishes to acknowledge the The Ladakh Society for Traditional Medicines Conservation 14, 3065-3091 (2005). 89. WHO, IUCN & WWF. Guidelines on the Switzerland, 2002). Sub-editing and proofreading by Sue Nottingham. support of the G.B. Pant Institute of Himalayan (LSTM) and Nomad RSI thank the Foundation 73. Wild, R. & McLeod, C. (eds.) Sacred Natural Sites: Conservation of Medicinal Plants. (1993). 105. Pei Shengji, Long, Y. G., Marr, K. & Posey, D. A. in Ecology and Development (GBPIHED), the for Revitalisation of Local Health Traditions Guidelines for Protected Area Managers (International 90. Hamilton, A. C., Dürbeck, K. & Lawrence, A. Second International Congress of Ethnobiology 150- Disclaimer: The designations of geographical High Altitude Plant Physiology Research (FRLHT) and especially Dr Gurinder Goraya Union for Conservation of Nature, Gland, Towards a sustainable herbal harvest. Plant Talk 43, 169 (Yunnan Science and Technology Press, 1996). Switzerland, 2008). 32-35 (2006). entities in this publication do not imply the Centre (HAPPRC), HNB Garhwal University, and Mr Raju for training provided on medicinal expression of any opinion whatsoever on the and Ankur (an NGO which promotes the plants cultivation and conservation. They also part of Plantlife International concerning the cultivation of medicinal plants in Uttarakhand). thank the G.B. Pant Institute for Himalayan legal status of any country, territory or area, or The assistance of Dr R.K. Maikhuri, Dr A.R. Environment and Development (Kullu, India) of its authorities, or concerning the Nautiyal and Mr Sudarshan Singh Kathait was and the Field Research Laboratory (Leh, India) delimitation of its frontiers or boundaries. instrumental in achieving the project’s success. and especially Dr Chaurasia.

Ladakh Society for Traditional Medicines

Cover photo: A small part of the medicinal plant market at Dali, Yunnan, China. Photo AH.

MEDICINAL PLANTS IN CONSERVATION AND DEVELOPMENT MEDICINAL PLANTS IN CONSERVATION AND DEVELOPMENT 23104_MedicinalPlants:Layout 1 7/11/08 15:15 Page 1

Editor

Alan Hamilton, Plantlife International (UK)

Authors

Gerald Eilu, Uganda Group of the African Network of Ethnobiology Archana Godbole, Applied Environmental Research Organisation (India) Tsewang Gonbo, Ladakh Society for Traditional Medicines (India) Alan Hamilton, Plantlife International (UK) Huai Huyin, Yangzhou University (China) Syed Kamran Hussain, WWF-Pakistan Fanny Jamet, NOMAD Recherche et Soutien International (France) Dennis Kamoga, Joint Ethnobotanical Research and Advocacy (Uganda) Peris Kariuki, Kenya Resource Centre for Indigenous Knowledge, National Museums of Kenya Ashiq Ahmad Khan, WWF-Pakistan Staline Kibet, Kenya Resource Centre for Indigenous Knowledge, National Museums of Kenya Giridhar Kinhal, Foundation for Revitalisation of Local Health Traditions (India) Rudy Lemmens, Tooro Botanical Gardens (Uganda) Frank Olwari, Joint Ethnobotanical Research and Advocacy (Uganda) Cyprian Osinde, Joint Ethnobotanical Research and Advocacy (Uganda) Ram C. Poudel, Ethnobotanical Society of Nepal Suman Rai, Ashoka Trust for Research in Ecology and Environment (India) Paul Ssegawa, Uganda Group of the African Network of Ethnobiology Pei Shengji, Kunming Institute of Botany, Chinese Academy of Sciences Krishna Shrestha, Ethnobotanical Society of Nepal Yang Lixin, Kunming Institute of Botany, Chinese Academy of Sciences

Members of the international advisory group that has guided the programme

Mr Ashiq Ahmad Khan, former Chief Technical Officer, WWF-Pakistan Dr Wolfgang Kathe, private consultant involved in development of an international sustainability standard (see Case study 14) Dr Sonia Lagos Witte, General Coordinator, Grupo Etnobotánico Latinoamericana (Costa Rica) Dr Danna Leaman, Chairperson, Medicinal Plants Specialist Group, Species Survival Commission, International Union for Conservation of Nature Dr Patrick Maundu, Kenya Resource Centre for Indigenous Knowledge, National Museums of Kenya Professor Pei Shengji, Kunming Institute of Botany, Chinese Academy of Sciences Dr Susanne Schmitt, WWF-UK Mr Darshan Shankar, former Director, Foundation for Revitalisation of Local Health Traditions (India)

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Dedication

In memory of Monik Adraens (1954-2008)

First Director of Tooro Botanical Gardens, Fort Portal, Uganda and Research Support Officer with the Sustainable Agricultural Trainers Network (SATNET) (see Case study 1). Born in Belgium, she graduated as an engineer in Tropical and Subtropical Agriculture and farmed organically in the South of France for more than 20 years. Her particular interests in complementary medicine included Naturotherapy, Ethnopharmacology, Bach Flower Therapy and Aromatherapy.

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Contents

Acknowledgements (inside front cover)

Editor, authors, members of the international advisory group 1

Dedication 2

Executive summary 4

PART 1: Setting the scene 6

1. Plantlife’s Plant Conservation and Livelihoods Programme 6 2. Medicinal plants: threats and conservation reactions 8 3. Medicinal plants seen as conservation opportunities 11 4. Medicinal plants and healthcare 12 5. Medicinal plants and livelihoods 15 6. Medicinal plants and cultural traditions 16

PART 2: The case studies 17

7. Community-based case studies 17 8. Experience-sharing case studies 57 9. Testing a sustainability standard 67

PART 3: Commentary 71

10. Basis of the analysis 71 11. Suggestions for project teams 73 12. Interactions between project teams and communities 75 13. Suggestions for community groups 77 14. Suggestions for the enabling environment 81

References 84

Boxes

1. How can community-based conservation of medicinal plants be successful? 5 2. List of community-based case studies 17 3. Occurrence of some principal species of medicinal plants, Darjeeling and Sikkim Himalayas 51 4. Summary of regulations governing Medicinal Plants Conservation Areas at Ludian 56 5. List of experience-sharing case studies 57 6. Summary of the principles and criteria of the International Standard for Sustainable Wild Collection of Medicinal and Aromatic Plants (ISSC-MAP) 68

Figures

1. Localities of community-based case studies 7 2. Three fundamental elements in medicinal plant conservation 71 3. Stages in adaptive management 78

Ta bl e s

1. Top ten medicinal plants at Rasuwa, Nepal, as prioritised by the communities 45 2. Spatial units recognised as significant for the conservation of medicinal plants in the Himalayas 60

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EXECUTIVE SUMMARY

Traditional medicine, based largely on Because of the value of these resources ● The enabling environment: herbs, still supports the primary for local healthcare or income, we believe embracing all those forces that healthcare of more people worldwide that a focus on medicinal plants in influence affairs at the community level, than ‘conventional’ or western medicine. conservation or development carries the such as laws and regulations, national According to the World Health potential to save many other types of policies towards indigenous groups, Organisation, up to 80% of the population plants and animals too – the inhabitants of local healthcare traditions and the in Africa uses traditional medicine for those habitats which are valued for their management of natural resources, the their primary healthcare, and natural medicinal plants. Thus, the presence and ethical stances of industry and remedies are also popular in many sustainable use of medicinal plants can be consumers, the orientation of research western countries. The majority of plant the key to conserving whole habitats. institutes, and the positions of religious species used in traditional or herbal establishments and political parties on medical treatments are harvested from There are three main elements in our the environment. the wild rather than cultivated. In some recommended approach: parts of the world, large numbers of We have assumed a three-tier structure people are involved in the collection of ● Community groups: members of of society for the purposes of our wild medicinal plants to sell – for example local communities with a special blueprint for the successful conservation people from an estimated 323,000 interest in medicinal plants who are of medicinal plants – the community, the households in Nepal alone. prepared to work within their district level and the state. communities to foster developmental About 15,000 species of medicinal plants activities related to the conservation Our concentration is on species that are globally threatened – the causes and use of these plants. At this level carry value at the community level. Plants include loss of habitat, commercial over- conservation means having ensured vary in their value according to the harvesting, invasive species and pollution. supplies of medicinal plants to provide community – species valued for their The extinction or scarcity of these plants continuing benefits for the community medicinal properties in one community is not only a problem for conservation – in terms of healthcare, income or may not be similarly valued in another. it also results in serious problems for retaining cultural traditions. Therefore, additional approaches are people’s health and livelihoods. needed to fully safeguard plants that have ● Project teams: composed of been recognised as medicinals. Other Plantlife’s Plant Conservation and individuals willing to make an effort to conservation tools such as protected Livelihoods Programme was established to help communities conserve their areas and ex situ conservation have find ways to conserve these plants and medicinal plants or create a favourable important roles to play, and should be ensure their availability for continuing use. enabling environment. Project teams linked with the community-based Under the programme, Plantlife has may consist of individuals from various approaches described in this report to supported local partners in China, India, types of organisation. In our case ensure their relevance to development. Kenya, Nepal, Pakistan and Uganda to studies they are from non-governmental mount community-based projects on the organisations (NGOs) and research conservation of medicinal plants. A further institutes, but task teams in government four projects have been organised for the departments and civil society could also exchange and evaluation of experiences. take this role, for example in forestry This report presents a description of departments, faith-based groups, these projects and an analysis of lessons women’s associations, indigenous learnt. A set of principles, actions and people’s organisations or the organic conditions needed to promote the movement. success of community-based conservation of medicinal plants is provided based on these experiences (Box 1).

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Box 1

EXECUTIVE SUMMARY

Box 1: How can community-based conservation of medicinal plants be successful?

Establishing a thriving community group

Ensure that the whole community is served by the group’s activities. Identify local development concerns relating to medicinal plants. Provide greater recognition and roles to primary stakeholders, such as housewives using herbal remedies and commercial collectors of wild medicinal plants. Strengthen the conservation of wild medicinal plants through the following: ● Identify priority species and places for improved management. ● Develop local teams to take care of these sites (this may require an umbrella group if communities are collecting in each others’ areas). ● Seek recognition of community rights over the medicinal resources of the areas (this may require negotiation with landowners, such as forestry departments). ● Establish adaptive systems of management, based on cycles of monitoring, reflection, and decision-making on management (e.g. rotational harvesting, quotas, restoration, distribution of tasks and benefits). Encourage the cultivation of medicinal plants identified as local priorities. Develop home herbal healthcare by identifying best practice within the community and seeking advice from research centres. Seek information on medicinal plant markets and negotiate improved terms with traders (assured high quality materials in exchange for better prices). Seek technical guidance on how to add value to medicinal plants and products (e.g. proper drying, making powders). Record local knowledge of medicinal plants, develop a cultural centre and encourage educational programmes to raise appreciation for local cultural traditions.

Establishing a supportive project team

Include community members with practical knowledge in the project team. Learn about local medicinal plants, livelihoods and stakeholders before starting community work. Identify institutions that support local ecological knowledge. Form a cross-disciplinary advisory group. Provide in-service training to team members. Raise awareness at community and district levels about the usefulness of medicinal plants and the need to conserve them. Make long-term commitment to communities. Identify community groups with a special interest in medicinal plants. If lacking, assist in their formation. Undertake joint research with community groups to identify key local concerns relating to medicinal plants and find practical ways to resolve them.

Providing the right enabling environment – recommendations for policy makers

Support national centres of excellence for medicinal plants orientated towards community development. The types of support useful to communities are indicated under ‘establishing a thriving community group’ above. Support may be channelled through the district resource centres (see next point). Develop district resource centres to serve community needs relating to medicinal plants, including provision of information on the identification, management, use and marketing of medicinal plants, nurseries to supply seedlings and training programmes. Develop protocols for the propagation and cultivation of priority medicinal plants, and ensure the availability of high quality seed. Integrate herbal medicine based on local medical traditions into national healthcare systems. Encourage communities to record and maintain their traditional knowledge.

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PART 1: Setting the scene

PART 1: Setting the scene 1. Plantlife’s Plant Conservation and Livelihoods Programme

In 2005, Plantlife International launched a new programme ‘Plant Conservation and Livelihoods’. In this programme, Plantlife is concerned with finding ways to conserve the diversity of the world’s plants within the context of people’s everyday lives – the normal context in which conservation must be achieved.

‘Plant Conservation and Livelihoods’ is a huge subject and Plantlife soon decided to concentrate on one particular category of plant use – medicinal plants. Accordingly, a Medicinal Plants Conservation Initiative was launched. Two considerations guided this choice. First, the use of plants as medicines represents by far the biggest category of use of plants or animals in terms of number of species (50,000-70,000 plant species1). Secondly, medicinal plants connect to three basic human interests – health, income and cultural identify – representing potentially powerful motivational forces for conservation.

The great majority of species of medicinal plants are harvested in the wild rather than cultivated2-5, a state of affairs that will certainly continue1. The big methodological challenge in the conservation of medicinal plants is to determine how the management of wild medicinal plants can be improved. Conservation of wild medicinal plants requires conservation of their habitats and thus success in conserving medicinal plants (driven by the motivational forces of health, income or culture) has the potential to benefit many other types of plants and animals too.

Plantlife’s work on medicinal plants is supportive of Target 7 of the Millennium Training women in herbal medicine for Development Goals (‘Ensure environmental sustainability’), agreed at the Earth Summit use against opportunistic infections in Johannesburg in 20026, 7, and the Global Strategy for Plant Conservation (GSPC), associated with HIV/AIDS (Case study 1). agreed in 2002 under the United Nation’s Convention on Biological Diversity (CBD)8. Photo Rudy Lemmens. The Targets of the GSPC of special relevance to Plantlife’s programme are:

● Target 3: Development of models with protocols for plant conservation and sustainable use, based on research and practical experience. ● Target 5: Protection of 50 per cent of the most important areas for plant diversity assured. ● Target 13: The decline of plant resources, and associated indigenous and local knowledge, innovations and practices that support sustainable livelihoods, local food security and health care, halted. ● Target 16: Networks for plant conservation activities established or strengthened at national, regional and international levels.

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PART 1: Setting the scene

The Plant Conservation and Livelihoods Programme takes an ecosystem-based approach to conservation, consistent with the requirements of the CBD9, 10. Features of an ecosystem-based approach include the decentralization of management to the lowest appropriate level, consideration given to the economic context of conservation, the use of adaptive approaches to resource management, and full use made of both indigenous and scientific knowledge.

As an international organisation, Plantlife perceives its role as one of partnership, working with national and international organisations to share experiences and analyse International participants in a training lessons learnt. Thanks to generous grants from the Allachy Trust and the Rufford Maurice course on conservation of medicinal Laing Foundation, Plantlife has been able to offer a number of small grants (typically plants, Savanadurga, India (Case study 12). £10,000) for case studies on the conservation of medicinal plants. Geographically, East Photo AH. Africa and the Himalayas have been selected as areas of focus for these grants, based on the high value accorded to medicinal plants in these regions and pre-existing contacts with concerned individuals and organisations. A total of fourteen Allachy Awards have been made, ten for community-based conservation (four in Africa, six in the Himalayas – see Figure 1 for locations), three on projects to share experiences between countries, and one to test a new international standard for the sustainable harvesting of wild medicinal plants.

The local level is where conservation of medicinal plants must be effected, since this is where the plants grow and where people interact with them directly. Attention is therefore focused in this programme on projects that work directly with communities. Of course, communities are not isolated from the rest of the world and what happens at the community level is much influenced by the wider ‘enabling environment’ – the policies and laws of government, cultural influences (e.g. connected with religion or ethnic identity), the economic context, and so on. We therefore offer some reflections, based on our projects, on the developments in the enabling environment that would be useful for supporting community-based conservation of medicinal plants. Figure 1. Localities of community-based case studies (numbered 1-10).

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2. Medicinal plants: threats and conservation reactions

2.1. What is a medicinal plant?

A medicinal plant is one used by people for medicinal purposes – to build or maintain health, stave off disease, or promote recovery from illness or misfortune. No precise definition is possible, given this wide scope and because the use of plants as medicines grades into their use for other purposes, for example, for food, personal hygiene, beauty- care, psychological support and spiritual practices.

Phyllanthus emblica, a very important Traditions of healthcare must have always been features of human societies and from the medicinal plant used in Ayurveda and evidence available it seems that plants have normally been accorded lead roles in Tibetan medicine. therapy. Even today, traditional medicine (based largely on herbs) supports the primary Photo AH. healthcare of more people globally than ‘conventional’ or western medicine11-13.

2.2. Threats to medicinal plants

Historically, the greatest driver behind efforts to conserve medicinal plants has been the fear of losing species. Related to this has been concern about losing genetic diversity, a serious matter with useful plants. The number of globally threatened species of medicinal plants has been calculated at about 15,000 species1.

Field observations of the conservation status of medicinal plants in East Africa and the Himalayas are very limited, thanks to their huge areas and sometimes inhospitable terrain14. However, there are recent reports from many localities of increasing difficulty in finding some popular species of medicinal plants in China15, India16-18, Kenya 19, 20, Nepal21, Tanzania3, 22 and Uganda23-25.

Globally, the immediate causes of endangerment of medicinal plants are the same as those for plants generally, that is, loss of habitat, over-harvesting for medicinal or other purposes, suppression by invasive species, and pollution (acid rainfall, eutrophication). Greenhouse climate change, which is a mounting threat, is likely to have a particularly major impact in the Himalayas26, placing high altitude endemic species especially at risk. Most medicinal plants are used only locally, with a lesser number entering national or regional trade, and fewer still (about 3000 species) reaching international markets2, 27. In East Africa, the bulk of trade in medicinal plants is to local urban centres28, 29, while in the Himalayas, most commercial demand originates from herbal companies based in lowland parts of the Subcontinent or in lowland China.

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2. Medicinal plants: threats and conservation reactions

Generally, harvesting for local medical use is not a conservation problem – it is commercial collection that does the harm. Commercial pressures are mounting, driven by growing populations, high rates of poverty in many places, and the increasing popularity of herbal treatments. Mounting poverty can fuel commercial harvesting because more people driven by circumstances resort to herbal treatments, and because collecting medicinal plants to sell can be a useful source of income for economically marginalised people in difficult times28, 30, 31.

Unlike local people collecting for their own use, commercial collectors generally harvest medicinal plants with little care for sustainability. This can be partly through ignorance, but mainly because such collection is unorganised and competitive. Certain biological and ecological features increase the vulnerability of the plants. Many medicinal plants in East Africa are trees or other types of woody plants with the roots or bark being collected – features that raise their vulnerability to over-harvesting19, 23, 32-35. With the Himalayas, it is high altitude plants that tend to be most at risk, due to their slow growth rates, strong market demand and the fact that it is usually the underground organs that are the parts collected.

Market surveys are useful for identifying medicinal plants at risk from commercial trade. Such surveys have recently been conducted in several major cities and towns in East Africa, with several genera and species common to several lists (for example, Osyris, Prunus africana, Warburgia and Zanthoxylum). Medicinal species sold in Tanga considered to be at risk include Artemisia afra, Morella (Myrica) salicifolia, Ocotea usambarensis, Warburgia stuhlmannii and Zanthoxylum chalybeum3. A list of 53 species of Himalayan medicinal plants threatened by commercial harvesting has been published under one of our case studies based on a consensus of experts from five countries (see Case study 11)36. This list includes such well known Himalayan medicinals as Dioscorea deltoidea, Nardostachys grandiflora, Picrorhiza kurrooa, Rauvolfia serpentina and Taxus wallichiana, all confirmed as vulnerable in a recent review14.

2.3. Conservation reactions to the threats

Several types of conservation measures have been applied to medicinal plants, among them protected areas and other forms of legal control, cultivation (intended to reduce the collection pressure on wild medicinal plants) and ex situ conservation.

Protected areas are useful for conserving medicinal plants – as they are for biodiversity generally. Theoretically, well-designed networks of protected areas would be of great value for conserving the genetic diversity of medicinal species, though in actuality it is doubtful whether the geography of medicinal plants has ever been a serious consideration in designing such networks.

Due to limited resources, the managers of protected areas in East Africa and the Himalayas tend to take little interest in medicinal plants, apart from sometimes encouraging their cultivation in buffer zones. The reality is that, in practice, there are usually few practical restrictions to the illegal harvesting of medicinal plants in protected areas, as is often reported. Forest reserves generally afford even weaker protection, their managers tending to be more interested in timber than in ‘minor forest products’. Even in Nepal, where the need to engage local people in the management of forest reserves is well recognised, medicinal plants have been almost entirely ignored in management plans (see Case study 8). An example of illegal

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2. Medicinal plants: threats and conservation reactions

harvesting is reported by one of our projects in India (Case Study 7): “Collection and selling of Cordyceps (a highly priced caterpillar-fungus) has emerged as a new source of income in the rural areas of inner mountain ranges of Uttarakhand. During the months of April and May thousands of people from far and nearby villages come to a particular alpine meadow, stay there and search the entire meadow vigorously for two months. Cordyceps gatherers extract natural resources without considering sustainability and use destructive methods. The Forest Department of Uttarakhand has imposed a ban on the collection of Cordyceps but proper monitoring of the ban is not possible due to the harsh climatic conditions, steep terrain and shortage of manpower.”

There are various other types of legal control that can be applied to medicinal plants, apart from those associated with protected areas and forest reserves. They seem to have been given more attention in some Asian countries than in East Africa. In the Himalayas, the medicinal plant sector tends to be highly regulated, with a series of Expert in traditional medicine Muhamed permits required for the collection, transport and export of medicinal plants14. There can Omar Kasomo in his medicinal plant also be total bans on the harvesting of some species, such as the orchid Dactylorhiza garden, Tanga, Tanzania. Mr Kasomo works hatagirea in Nepal and all species of wild yews Taxus in China. However, as with closely with the Tanga Aids Working Group, protected areas, these legal controls have proved difficult to enforce14. According to our a progressive organisation using both project partner ATREE (see Case study 9), a complete ban on the collection of medicinal antiretroviral drugs and herbal preparations plants was imposed in Sikkim in 1992, but in reality the extraction of medicinal plants to treat patients with HIV/AIDS. for domestic use continues, as does some commercial collection (for example, of Photo AH. Aconitum palmatum, Panax pseudoginseng, Rhododendron anthopogon and Swertia chirayita).

Cultivation is commonly recommended as a conservation measure for medicinal plants, to provide alternative supplies for medicinal species in market demand37. This can be a good idea and has been pursued by many of our projects, but it is not a universal panacea. Depending on policies towards land ownership, which varied greatly at the localities of our case studies, a problem can be that cultivation is adopted by relatively prosperous farmers, who are unlikely to be collectors of wild medicinal plants. Meanwhile, more impoverished inhabitants, perhaps lacking land, may have little economic option but to continue to collect wild medicinal plants for sale. It is noteworthy that only about 200 medicinal plant species are commercially cultivated in China38, despite a long history of government encouragement. Problems with cultivation in East Africa and the Himalayas can include a small size of land holdings, limited supplies of seed (especially of good quality), uncertainties about cultivation protocols, long gestation periods for many species and poor access to markets. Water supply poses an additional problem in dry regions. Experience in Kenya (see Case study 4C) suggests that projects in arid lands should concentrate on improving the management of wild medicinal plants and the cultivation of medicinal plants for domestic use, rather than trying to grow plants for the market.

Ex situ conservation is a desirable objective with medicinal plants. The opening of the Southwest China Wild Plants Germplasm Bank in Kunming (2004) is thus to be warmly welcomed. We have observed during the course of our work that the term ‘ex situ conservation’ is often interpreted differently by field conservationists and development workers, in comparison to international plant conservationists, who consider it to be the systematic storage of germplasm in botanic gardens, field genebanks and seed collections. Many field workers in East Africa and the Himalayas consider any form of cultivation to constitute ex situ conservation, regardless of who is involved or for what purpose, and regardless of any connection with conservation science.

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3. Medicinal plants seen as conservation opportunities

Medicinal plants can be viewed not only as problems from the conservation perspective but also, more positively, as ‘conservation opportunities’. This is because the actual or anticipated values of these plants for healthcare, income or cultural identity carries the potential for them to act as motivating forces for conservation – for the species themselves and their habitats. Since other (non-medicinal) species will be living in the habitats, community initiatives focusing on medicinal plants can have the potential to save many other species too.

From the community perspective, conservation of medicinal plants should be seen as a matter of development. Projects concerned with the conservation of medicinal plants cannot concentrate solely on ‘pure conservation’ – they must engage to some extent in the concerns that make these plants of interest to the local people. As NOMAD has observed (see Case study 6): “Sustainable access to medicinal and aromatic plants (MAPs) is vital for local healthcare and for the survival of Sowa Rigpa (Tibetan medicine) as a medical system. The Ladakh Society for Traditional Medicines found that explicitly linking MAPs conservation to healthcare needs was a powerful way to raise awareness and mobilise communities to work towards better resource management. By adopting this approach, the project simultaneously raised conservation issues and drew attention to the financial problems being faced by amchi (traditional doctors following the Tibetan medical tradition), thus contributing to MAPs protection and the revitalization of Sowa Rigpa in rural areas.”

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4. Medicinal plants and healthcare

4.1. The history and tradition of herbal medicine

In East Africa and the Himalayas, the use of plants as medicines is an ancient and still common practice, although there are some exceptional social groups that are reported to no longer commonly resort to traditional medicine (for example, the Agikuyu – see Case study 4B). Studies in rural parts of East Africa have found that more than 80 per cent of the people resort first to herbal medicine to meet their primary healthcare needs24, 25, 39. Careful studies of individual localities commonly record over 150 species in use23, 25, 35. Even in the towns, the use of traditional medicine persists, associated with the excessive expense of western medicine40 and high levels of stress associated with modern urban living41. For the Himalayas, many studies have shown a high level of dependency on herbal medicine21, 42-46.

There are several reasons for the popularity of herbal medicine. One is belief in its efficacy, a belief associated with its psychological appropriateness for the cultures concerned. It is commonly held in our case study regions (as elsewhere) that western medicine can be good for the quick relief of symptoms but herbal medicine is better for treating chronic complaints. Herbal medicine tends to be cheaper40, though not invariably so3, and is generally much more readily available, especially in rural areas. A measure of the relative availability of traditional compared to western medicine is the ratio of doctors to the general populace. In East Africa, these ratios are 1:350 and 1:25,000 for traditional and western doctors respectively22, 23, 33, 47. Most western-trained doctors in East Africa are concentrated in cities and the ratio in the countryside is much less than the regional average. In the Himalayas, poorer people in particular tend to have little access to western medicine. At our project site of Miandam (Pakistan) (Case study 5), there is only one primary healthcare centre serving 20,000 people and no doctor in attendance.

Herbal medicine in East Africa is folk medicine, passed down from generation to generation through lineages of expert healers. While studies of traditional medicine in East Africa often concentrate on traditional healers, in fact it is women who are the frontline workers in primary healthcare. As Geissler48 has pointed out for Luo women in western Kenya: “Women’s washing, massaging, steaming, feeding of small children, the observation of small signs, and the debates about illness and treatment, in which all women in a homestead participate, are Luo medicine. Medical knowledge is women’s collective and communal knowledge for the creation and maintenance of children’s life and well-being. Hence, it is ordinary women, not exotic ‘traditional healers’, to whom we ought to turn in order to learn about Luo plant medicine.” Some of the most commonly used medicinal plants at household level in East Africa are herbaceous or shrubby, or else common trees. These plants tend to be common and well known to many people, being widely planted in home gardens or found in abundance in the wild. They are rarely sold in markets, so market surveys can easily miss this major aspect of indigenous medicine. In the Tanga area, these species include Azadirachta indica (neem), Ocimum spp. (basil), Plectranthus longipes, Psidium guajava (guava), Solanum incanum and Vernonia lasiopus 3.

Traditional healers are well respected members of Africa societies, their social roles varying according to ethnicity. With the Maasai, traditional physicians (laibon) are priests, medicine men and oracles, but they are considered to have no specialist herbalist role – and knowledge of medicinal plants is widely distributed throughout their society3, 49. With Bantu tribes, there can be many types of specialist healers, including some that concentrate on

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4. Medicinal plants and healthcare

particular somatic problems or conditions, such as liver failure, broken bones or midwifery23, 50, 51. Some herbal treatments are administered in an apparently straightforward remedial way, but medicinal plants can also be used more opaquely, such as to attract a spouse or protect a home3. Divination is extensively used to diagnose the fundamental causes of ailments. Traditional healers commonly view their powers as being granted by God or the ancestors, their duty being to use this gift to serve the people. They may favourably contrast their own attitudes and approaches to those of commercial street vendors, whom they can view as charlatans, only interested in financial enrichment and selling plants without really knowing how to use them effectively51.

Knowledge of medicinal plants is distributed unevenly in the Himalayas. Commonly, about 45-60 local plant species are used medicinally at particular localities52, 53, but a spectacular 450 species are known as medicinals at Dolpa (Nepal)44, 54, while the Shuhi people of the Hengduan mountains in China use only 27 species52. Most published information on medicinal plants in the Himalayas is biased towards those used by traditional doctors or those which enter the market. It is possible that, just as in East Africa, there are many species used in homes that are common plants either cultivated in home gardens or found growing in the wild near homesteads. Not all Himalayan medicinal species favour pristine habitats; there are many which prefer habitats strongly disturbed by people52, 55.

Much village medicine in the Himalayas has a strong folk element, but the region is also home to several of the world’s great traditions of systematic medicine, namely Ayurveda, Tibetan medicine, Traditional Chinese Medicine and Unani. Practitioners of these medical traditions can use plants from far and wide, for example with a considerable use of lowland Indian plants in Tibetan medicine44. The number of species of medicinal plants Traditional medicine – Amchi Gurmet (not all Himalayan) used by these major medical traditions are reported to be 1250- Namgyal treats a patient in Kanji village, 1400 for Ayurveda, 1500-1600 commonly for Traditional Chinese Medicine, 1100-3600 Ladakh, India (Case study 6). for Tibetan Medicine and 342 for Unani43, 56, 57. Photo Tsewang Gonbo.

4.2. Recognition of traditional medicine by government

Politics has a big influence over herbal medicine, as can be demonstrated historically. East Africa and parts of the Himalayas were subject to colonial rule until the 1940s to 1960s, during which time traditional medicine tended to be neglected or even denigrated by the authorities58. Since independence, traditional medicine has gradually gained increasing recognition in East Africa, especially recently with the declaration by the African Union of 2001-2010 as ‘The Decade of Traditional African Medicine’. A ‘Traditional Healer Policy’ was established for Tanzania in 2002 and similar policies are at an advanced state of preparation in Kenya and Uganda59. An East African Network on Traditional Medicine and

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5. Medicinal plants and livelihoods – trading and markets

Medicinal Plants has been established with its hosting since 2007 in the Lake Victoria Basin Commission of the East African Community60, 61.

Among the Himalayan countries, Bhutan has accorded an equal status to Tibetan and western medicine, influenced by Buddhism and regard for environmental stewardship. The government in China has provided strong encouragement to Traditional Chinese Medicine, and recognised several other medical traditions, such as those associated with the Dai, Mongolian, Tibetan, Uigur and Yi peoples. In India, several indigenous systems of medicine have been legally recognised (for instance, Ayurveda, Siddha and Unani, but not Tibetan) and the government has established a National Medicinal Plants Board to develop and regulate the medicinal plants sector. In Nepal, recognition has been accorded Tibetan stall in the medicinal plant market to Ayurveda, but not Tibetan medicine, and development of the medicinal plants sector at Dali, Yunnan, China. Over 500 species of has been accorded a priority in government planning A high-level Herbs and Non Timber mainly wild collected medicinal plants are Forest Products Coordination Committee has been formed with 12 medicinal and sold in this market. Photo AH. aromatic species selected for the development of agronomic technologies62.

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5. 5.Medicinal plants and livelihoods – trading and markets

5. Medicinal plants and livelihoods – trading and markets

Trade in medicinal plants is difficult to research, because of the secrecy and sometimes complexity of trading networks. In the Himalayas (where the situation is better understood than in East Africa), wild medicinal plants are collected in large quantities in some areas by large numbers of people, for whom this activity provides a substantial part of their income. The collectors include local villagers, nomadic herders (especially in the western Himalayas) and in some places ‘outsiders’ working either for themselves or on contract. Collectors can be permanently in debt with little bargaining power, as reported for Rasuwa (See Case study 8): “The economic status of most of the herb collectors is below the poverty line, so normally they take money in advance from the road head trader and pay back later the equivalent value in terms of herbs. So, the collectors are forced to sell their herbs to the same traders from whom they took the money in advance. They easily accept the price value of the herb offered by the traders. Collectors hardly bargain for the value of their herbs because they are less aware or mostly unaware about the latest prices. The prices of the herbs entirely depend on the wisdom of the trader.”

Himalayan medicinal plants pass to lowland areas around the Himalayas, usually in unprocessed form, with many eventually ending up in wholesale markets established in an arc around the Himalayas – at Rawalpindi, Lahore, Amritsar, Delhi, Kolkata, Mandalay, Kunming and Dali. A survey at Dali counted a total of 517 species of plants in trade, nearly all collected from the wild (though not all Himalayan)63. About 100 of the 750 native species of medicinal plants traded throughout India are sourced from the Himalayas64. The livelihood benefits of this business have been best studied in Nepal, where an estimated 323,000-470,000 households (2.6 million people) are engaged in the collection of wild medicinal plants for sale64-67. Medicinal plants are economically so important in Uttarakhand that this Indian state has labelled itself the Herbal State. It is estimated that 25-80% of income in the Tibetan Autonomous Prefecture of northwest Yunnan, China, stems from the sale of non-timber forest products, the most lucrative commodity being matsutake (pine mushroom, Tricholoma), a medicinal and culinary mushroom68.

In East Africa, the demand for herbal medicine in cities and towns creates a substantial flow of plant material inward from the countryside. Much is collected by urban-based herbalists or members of their families, or harvested for them by villagers on request3. A more structured trading system has only been reported for Kampala, where, since 2005, an association of professional collectors has been formed now with around 150 members69. Some well-prepared local herbal medicines are today starting to appear in pharmacies, being sold alongside conventional medicines.

The prices of medicinal plants sold by professional collectors in Kampala are reported to be higher with a greater distance of collection, which can exceed 300 km, and their legal status (collection in protected areas puts up costs). However, in contrast, no relationship between price and difficulty of collection has been recorded for Tanga3. Where collection is by villagers, the number involved can be substantial. Twenty-two per cent of villagers are involved in the commercial collection of medicinal plants at Sango Bay (see Case study 2), while research in one hamlet near Tanga has revealed that a minimum of 20% of the villagers (mainly women) are involved in the (illegal) commercial collection of medicinal plants from a nearby forest reserve3.

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6. Medicinal plants and cultural traditions

Long residence and close dependence on the local natural environment tend to result in a profound knowledge of local plants and their uses, and related beliefs and practices that promote their continuing survival. A common practice is for traditional doctors to collect medicinal materials in ways that avoid undue damage to the plants or which promote regeneration3. Such methodologies can be documented in literate societies, as they are in Gyud Zhi (the fundamental text of Tibetan medicine), which offers guidance on seven techniques for harvesting medicinal plants sustainably. Another common traditional practice is for medicinal plants to be retained when land is cleared or crops are weeded. Again, many villages in East Africa and the Himalayas have associated sacred forests or pastures, granted special protection for spiritual reasons or to protect water sources69-71. These can be exceptionally rich in medicinal plants72. There are an estimated 150,000-200,000 sacred groves in India73.

Most people’s lives in East Africa are profoundly influenced by their membership of tribes, clans and lineages, strongly influencing their abilities to maintain good health or cope with illness. The importance attributed to family position has a bearing on nature conservation, for example in terms of the protection accorded to certain organisms (usually animals) seen as the totemic ancestors of clans. Ancestral graveyards are sometimes associated with sacred groves – even today, when the graveyards may have become Christian cemeteries.

Holy forest (on triangular hill, left The Himalayas are the home of several major religions, each associated with a particular background) protected by the Tibetan tradition of systematic medicine – Ayruveda with Hinduism, Traditional Chinese Medicine community of Kegong, Yunnan, China. with Confuscianism and Taoism, Tibetan medicine with Buddhism, and Unani with Islam. Photo AH. There are traditional connections between these religions and nature conservation. For example, in Pakistan, Islamic cemeteries in the Himalayan foothills are sometimes home to the last vestiges of wild olive forest (decimated elsewhere), while Buddhist philosophy teaches care for all forms of life. Buddhist beliefs protect whole landscapes in Tibet, such as the Holy Mountain of Khawa Karpo (Meili Snow Mountain) in northwest Yunnan72 70-72.

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PART 2: The case studies

PART 2: The case studies 7. Community-based case studies

Introduction

These ten case studies of medicinal plant conservation initiatives were supported by Allachy Awards from Plantlife International. After submission of applications to Plantlife, the selection of projects to fund was based on an initial vetting by Plantlife and then review by members of an international advisory group (see introductory pages for their names). In some cases, the proposals were revised following advice received from the group.

These are all independently conceived projects though united by geography (East Africa and the Himalayas) and in being community-based. Some are new projects, while others represent new phases in projects that have existed for some time. The projects cover a wide spectrum of activities, reflecting the interests of their proposers and the stages reached in project development.

Box 2: List of community-based case studies (for localities, see Figure 1 on page 7).

CS1 Uganda: First aid herbal toolkit for the Rwenzori region

CS2 Uganda: Conservation and sustainable use of malaria medicinal plants

CS3 Uganda: Community-based cultivation of commercial medicinal plants

CS4 Kenya: Building capacity for community-based conservation

CS5 Pakistan: Promotion of sustainable harvest of medicinal plants, Swat

CS6 India: Development of methodology on medicinal plant conservation, Ladakh

CS7 India: Capacity-building to link medicinal plants conservation and livelihoods

CS8 Nepal: Community-based conservation of medicinal plants, Rasuwa

CS9 India: Strategy development for medicinal plants conservation, Darjeeling and Sikkim

CS10 China: Development of methodologies for conservation of medicinal plants

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Case study 1

Demonstration homestead and garden Case study 1: First aid herbal toolkit for under construction at Tooro Botanical Gardens, Uganda (Case study 1). the Rwenzori region (Uganda) Photo Rudy Lemmens. Organisation responsible for the project: The project was run by Tooro Botanical Gardens (TBG), a non-profit organisation founded in 2004 based in a 40 hectare forest reserve on the outskirts of Fort Portal, western Uganda. TBG has been established under a 25-year licence from the National Forest Authority. The mission of TBG is to establish a living collection of plants from the Rwenzori region (Albertine Rift) for the purposes of conservation, development and research.

Project team: the late Monik Adriaens, Rudy Lemmens, Professor E.B. Rugumayo (Chair of TBG), Clovis Kabaseke.

Period of grant support: October 2006-September 2007.

Geographical context

The Rwenzori region is a land of varied topography and climate, ranging in altitude from 913 m in the relatively dry rift valley to 5109 m on the glacier-capped peaks of Rwenzori. The natural vegetation is highly varied, including rainforest, savanna and afroalpine vegetation. Wetter parts of the region are densely populated, with most of the local people basing their livelihoods on farming. The average income is low (less than US$ 1 per day). Parts of the region have been severely affected by rebel activity and cross-border incursions, with many people only able to return and rebuild their homes since 2001.

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Case study 1

Medicinal plant issues

The project is concerned with the distribution of a home herbal first aid kit for the safe treatment of common medical conditions. There are few clinics or medical staff in this region, particularly in its remoter parts and, in any case, treatment is beyond the pockets of many people. There is a strong reliance on herbal medicine, although unfortunately some of the more knowledgeable and trusted healers and herbalists have disappeared during the periods of violence and instability.

The Rwenzori region hosts a large number of non-governmental organisations (NGOs) dedicated to the development of agriculture and rural livelihoods. Fifty-five of these NGOs are members of a Sustainable Agricultural Trainers Network (SATNET), which is dedicated to training communities in sustainable organic agriculture and natural resource management. Prior to the present project, the network was asked by its members to do something about the use of traditional medicinal plants and prepare a simple and practical handbook for trainers to use in the communities. The idea of a First Aid Kit consisting of medicinal plants was born. The species to be included should be safe to use for everyday treatments at the household level. More than 50 healers and herbalists were consulted on their most popular medicinal plants and the medical conditions that they cure. After further selection, the results were compiled in a technical handbook by Monik Adriaens Family Medicinal Plant Gardens in the Rwenzori region.

Project aims, activities and achievements Drying shed for Artemisa annua at The project aimed to extend the work described above, reaching out to the wider Tooro Botanical Gardens, Uganda community through providing training and materials. There were three main areas of activity: (Case study 1). This Chinese herb is ● The establishment of a demonstration homestead at Tooro Botanical Gardens with becoming increasingly popular as an construction of a farm similar to that of a local farmer and with medicinal plants antimalarial in Uganda. inter-planted among the crops. Photo Rudy Lemmens. ● The use of the demonstration homestead for training trainers from NGOs, with these trainers then providing further training within their communities. ● Production of training materials in the local language for the use of trainers in the SATNET network.

A 4 metre diameter hut was built in TBG and a garden established around it with crops typical of the area, including bananas, sweet potatoes, sugar cane, cassava and beans. The garden is intended to serve as a demonstration site for improved organic agriculture, as well as for medicinal plants. Accordingly, improved varieties of fruit trees have been included among the plantings for demonstrative and comparative purposes.

Thirty-two species of medicinal plants

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Case study 1

were selected for planting in the garden, with the great majority soon becoming well established. More than 50% of these chosen species are already well known to local farmers, the others being herbs known in other parts of the world to be medicinally valuable and considered useful for local health improvement. Scientific information on the known medical effects of these newly introduced plants is made available to the people.

In collaboration with SATNET, a six-day seminar was organised at the demonstration homestead in March 2007, with 29 trainers from various NGOs and community-based organisations attending. Items on the agenda included the identification and cultivation of medicinal plants, and how to prepare and use medicines made from them. Fourteen of the trainers were given planting materials, so that they themselves could establish their own demonstration gardens at their homes. The idea was that the trainers would then use their own gardens to train their neighbours. Accordingly a four-day course was designed for their use. By September 2007, eight such out-posted training sessions had been held, each attended by at least 30 farmers. An unexpected outcome of the training at TBG has been that some of those receiving training have opened a herbal clinic, where neighbours can buy some herbal preparations.

Prospects

Sadly, the project leader Monik Adriaens passed away in March 2008. Naturally, this proved a serious blow to the project. Nevertheless, other members of TBG remain and are continuing the work.

A planned poster and booklets on medicinal plants will be available soon. The booklets will be in local languages and will contain information on everyday diseases and ailments, and how to treat them with herbal medicine. New activities have been triggered by the project, including cooperation with Rukararwe Partnership Workshop for Rural Development (an NGO at Bushenyi) for research into the vegetative propagation of endangered species of medicinal trees. A processing plant has been opened for medicinal herbs cultivated by women living near Tooro Botanical Gardens, and a medical centre has been established at Kasese to promote the First Aid Kits in the Rwenzori Mountains region.

Flowers of Erythrina abyssinica, a medicinal tree reported to have become scarce in the Rwenzori region (Case study 1). Photo Rudy Lemmens.

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Case study 2

Case study 2: Conservation and sustainable use of key malaria medicinal plants (Uganda)

Organisation responsible for the project: The Uganda Group of the African Network of Ethnobiology (UGANEB) is a non-profit membership organisation formed in 1997 to promote indigenous knowledge in Uganda and undertake activities to enhance the understanding, management, conservation and utilization of biological resources for improved human welfare and environment. Its facilities include a resource centre, coordination office with communication and computing facilities and a vehicle. The main base of UGANEB is Makerere University, Kampala, the longest established university in the country.

Project team: Professor Joseph Obua, Dr Gerald Eilu, Dr Paul Ssegawa, Charles Galabuzi

Period of grant support: April 2006-March 2008.

Geographical context

The project is based in the district of Rakai, Uganda, where the five Sango Bay Forest Reserves lie near the equator close to Lake Victoria. This is an area with subdued topography (altitude 1100 m) characterized by a high Warburgia ugandensis in rainforest at water table and a floristically unusual tropical forest flora. The dominant forest trees Sango Bay, Uganda (Case study 2). This include the gymnosperm Podocarpus usambarensis (now largely logged out), Baikiaea insignis, tree has been stripped of its bark, much Cleistanthus polystachyus and Trichilia dregeana. The forest reserves are managed by the valued for the treatment of malaria. National Forestry Authority, working with local people organised into Community Forest Photo AH. Management committees. Most of the boundaries of the five forests, which together cover 150 km2, are considered natural, rather than their positions being the result of human influences. The forests are generally surrounded by seasonally inundated grassland or swamp. The mean annual maximum temperature is 25oC with two rainy seasons per year.

Medicinal plants issues

The project is concerned with the conservation and sustainable production of some of the most important medicinal plants used for the treatment of malaria. Malaria is a very common disease at Sango Bay, with medicinal plants being much used for its treatment. Malaria is the main cause of mortality in Uganda after HIV/AIDS, with infants less than 5 years old being particularly vulnerable. Rakai District has the lowest number of health centres per head of population in Central Uganda and they often lack drugs.

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Case study 2

The project focuses on the two forest reserves of Minziro and Kanabulemu and on the trees Hallea rubrostipulata, Syzygium guineense, Warburgia ugandensis and Zanthoxylum chalybeum and the shrub Vernonia amygdalina. All these plants are known from earlier research to be key anti-malarials at Sango Bay. Vernonia is found outside the forest, but all the other plants are medium to large sized forest trees and there is concern about their unsustainable harvesting. This is especially so because the parts collected are bark and roots and the trees die with excessive or careless harvesting. Warburgia, which is a rather rare tree both here and elsewhere in Uganda, is a very popular anti-malarial and considered especially vulnerable.

Visiting a monitoring site for medicinal Collection for the market, rather than for home treatment, is believed to be the main plants in the rainforest at Sango Bay, cause of excessive damage. According to research carried out by the project, 51% of the Uganda (Case study 2). Photo AH. local people harvest Hallea, Syzygium or Warburgia for home use and 22% sell one or more of these species commercially. Research has demonstrated that there is a greater intensity and frequency of collection near forest edges and footpaths than in the forest interior. Commercial collection of medicinal plants within the forests is illegal, but studies carried out by the project show that plants from Sango Bay are being traded within Rakai District and to outside markets.

Project aims, activities and achievements

The ultimate aim of the project is to improve the health and livelihoods of rural households through ensuring the continuing availability of low cost malaria treatments based on indigenous plants. A more immediate objective is to ensure conservation and sustainable supplies of the selected medicinal species at Sango Bay, both for local healthcare and to provide a long-term source of income for the people. Activities undertaken under the project include community education, agreements with the communities on their involvement in the project, research to back up project activities, steps to improve the management of the plants in the forests, and the establishment of nurseries to provide seedlings for planting on private land.

Mr Charles Galabuzi, a postgraduate student of forestry, coordinated the project locally. Apart from his project work, Mr Galabuzi was engaged in research for an MSc on the medicinal species of interest to the project. Mr Dennis Ssebugwawo, a local villager, assisted him in the field. Other members of the project team visited occasionally for project review, research, discussions with the communities and to conduct training.

Two local project committees were formed for the project (the Mugamba-Mujanjabula and Kigazi Allachy Committees), each linked to an established Community Forest Management committee. Each Community Forest Management committee already has a Traditional Medicine Minister, providing a useful point of contact for the project team. The Mugamba- Mujanjabula and Kigazi Allachy Committees were based on the villages of Minziro and

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Kanabulemu respectively, lying about 15 km apart. Each Allachy Committee has two sub- committees, one concentrating on plants in the forest and education of the communities, and the other on developing nurseries for medicinal plants.

The local project committees decided on the detailed activities of the project, being supported in their deliberations by the project team. On the in situ side, training has been provided to the villagers on methods of inventorying medicinal plants, assessing damage to the trees from collection of bark or roots, estimating regeneration of the trees, and monitoring and managing the plants.

Sites for nursery development were selected at Minziro and Kanabulemu, the former being Women preparing seeds of Warburgia in the home garden of Ms Scholastic Namayanja and the latter at a nursery site of a ugandensis for nursery planting (Case study 2). previous project. Tasks were allocated among community members to cover all aspects of Photo Paul Sssegawa. the nursery work, including identification of ‘mother trees’ in the forests (to provide seed), collection of the seed, and construction and maintenance of the nurseries themselves.

A visit was organised for a group of seven local herbalists (four men, three women) to Tooro Botanical Gardens in Fort Portal (see Case study 1) and Namanve Tree Seed Centre (Kampala). These visits, for experience-sharing in relation to nurseries, were much appreciated by the people from Sango Bay. A consequence of the visits was an expansion in the number of species of medicinal plants grown in the nurseries, now including some others of interest to the communities for their home healthcare. The Sango Bay community was visited by a church group from nearby northern Tanzania during the course of the project, which proved to be a fruitful occasion for passing on their experiences.

The project has established 19 monitoring sites in the forest and two nurseries for medicinal plants. The project team considers that the local community has become more aware of the importance of protecting the forest and of developing nurseries to secure future supplies of medicinal plants. An indication of this is a great reduction in the illegal harvesting of medicinal plants in forests close to the project villages, as noted by the project team.

Progress on growing the medicinal plants in the nurseries has been mixed. Warburgia has been a success, with good germination and growth; along with Syzygium, it has already been planted out into the farms. On the other hand, problems were encountered in obtaining viable seed of Hallea and Zanthoxylum. Cuttings were also tried for these species, but with only limited success. Vernonia grew well in the nurseries, but its seedlings have not been taken for planting by the communities, probably because it is already common and generally available. In any case, it is considered a relatively weak anti-malarial by these communities. There appears to be some competition between pines and eucalyptus versus medicinal plants when farmers select species to plant on their farms. Pines and eucalyptus have been encouraged by the National Forestry Authority and are widely believed locally to have good financial prospects.

The project team has written a handbook on propagation of Hallea, Syzygium and Warburgia.

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Case study 3

Case study 3: Community-based cultivation of commercially used medicinal plants and their integration in home healthcare in Bunza village, Mpigi District (Uganda)

Organisation responsible for the project: Joint Ethnobotanical Research and Advocacy (JERA) is a non-governmental organisation dedicated to the development of An elderly man sharing his expertise on indigenous knowledge for sustainable utilization of plant resources. medicinal plants during a field inventory in Bunza village, Uganda (Case study 3). Project team: Dennis Kamoga, Frank Olwari, Cyprian Osinde, Scovia Adikin, Nsereko Photo Dennis Kamoga. Patience

Period of grant support: September 2007-August 2008.

Geographical context

The project is set in Bunza, a village in Kalamba Sub-County, Mpigi District, Central Uganda. Lying at an altitude of 1182-1341 m close to Lake Victoria, the land here is hilly, with flat- topped hills interrupted by broad swamps with papyrus. Temperatures are fairly high and the rainfall reliable (mean annual rainfall 1513 mm). There are two rainy seasons per year. The natural vegetation is lowland tropical forest, athough much of the land is cultivated or under scrub today, and the area of forest has been reduced to 720 km2 (this figure is the area of land in Mpigi District lying within Forest Reserves or Community Forests). Most of the local people – mainly ethnically Baganda – are subsistence farmers. The Baganda have strong cultural attachment to certain plants and animals, some of which have symbolic significance Psorospermum febrifugum, a severely to the society as a whole, such as the bark-cloth tree Ficus natalensis or the small tree endangered species much in demand as a Draceana fragrans (used for land demarcation), or serve as totems for clans. The land is medicinal plant, Bunza, Uganda (Case mainly under customary tenure, but some is privately owned, termed mailo land. study 3). Photo Dennis Kamoga. Medicinal plants issues

The project seeks to ensure future supplies of medicinal plants for the benefits of healthcare and livelihoods. Bunza is an impoverished community with low earnings and poor access to healthcare services such as clinics. The people rely mainly on medicinal plants to meet their healthcare needs, especially for common minor complaints and to treat malaria. Some medicinal plants have become commercialized and traded to Kampala, about 30 km away, with the result that some have been over-harvested and are now locally endangered. An example is the small tree Psorospermum febrifugum, the trunk and root bark of which has gained a reputation for effectiveness in treating skin infections and for body nourishment. Today’s market price in Kampala for dried Psorospermum bark is 5000-10,000 Uganda Shs (US$ 3-6) kg -1 – providing an opportunity for collectors to make good money in the local context. Another example is Albizia coriaria, the trunk bark of which is the active ingredient in many locally produced ointments used for skin infections. Albizia coriaria became increasingly the target of destructive exploitation as it replaced the dwindling Psorospermum febrifugum. Now is an opportune time to find practical ways to conserve these plants in the wild, together with their habitats, combined with steps to ensure sustainable supplies to meet the people’s needs.

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Project aims, activities and achievements

The purpose of the project is to conserve and promote sustainable access to medicinal plants in Bunza for the benefits of local healthcare and livelihoods. The following are the main areas of activity: ● Research into the use of plants in home healthcare and thereby determine local priorities. The method of prioritisation chosen was an initial listing of diseases and medical conditions, and then of the plants used to treat them. These plants were then ranked in order of importance using pairwise sorting (a standard ethnobotanical procedure74). ● Training community members in the management of wild medicinal plants, for example sustainable harvesting techniques. ● Development of a village nursery for medicinal plants, including training for the community on the collection of seed from wild plants Community members at Bunza, and the raising of seedlings. Uganda, planting seeds in their nursery ● Training members of the community to plant out seedlings from the nursery into (Case study 3). Photo Dennis Kamoga. their farms or back into the wild in order to enrich wild populations. ● Production of a technical manual on the propagation, cultivation and use of selected medicinal plants.

Joint Ethnobotanical Research and Advocacy intends to maintain close working relationships with local government authorities and agency representatives such as forestry officers, hoping that that they will become stimulated to incorporate medicinal plants into their regular programmes of work.

The project has increased local awareness about the conservation of medicinal plants, helped the community to form a medicinal plants committee and supported the establishment of a nursery for growing medicinal plants.

The project started by identifying people within the community with a special interest in medicinal plants. Three-quarters of them proved to be women, a gender bias that reflects their greater involvement in healthcare in the home. On the institutional side, a village committee, the Bunza Medicinal Plants Committee, has been formed and is in the process of drafting a constitution. There are three traditional health practitioners on the committee (two male, one female), which also includes the chair of the local council. The committee has expressed a special interest in the cultivation of medicinal plants to generate income, and the project team intends to work with the committee and traders to achieve a good market price for their produce.

Discussions have been held with the district office of the Department of Natural Resources (DNR), which operates a number of plant nurseries in the district. This has resulted in an understanding that the nursery established by the project at Bunza will serve in the future as the entry point for DNR to the village. When this happens, and armed with a handbook on the use of plants in local home healthcare, JERA and the DNR will be in a stronger position to approach the district Department of Health to discuss how the nursery and booklet can best serve the district as a whole for the improvement of primary healthcare.

The results of the survey of plants used for home healthcare at Bunza were combined with the results of an earlier survey of national conservation priorities (a ranking of

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medicinal plants based on a market survey in Kampala). From this consolidated list, eleven species were selected for further attention by the project: Albizia coriaria, Aspilia africana, Clerodendron rotundifolium, Garcinia buchananii, Justicia betonica, Pseudarthria hookeri, Psorospermum febrifugum, Rhus vulgaris, Tetradenia riparia, Punica granatum (pomegranate) and Zanthoxylum chalybeum. Propagation and cultivation of these species was then attempted in the nursery. This was successful in the case of the first nine species as listed above, and these have now been planted out into home gardens or into the wild. Zanthoxylum has proved difficult as its seeds remain viable for only a short time and tend to split into two within a few days of drying. It is clearly a candidate for systematic research.

Landscape at Maya near Bunza (Case A decision was made to integrate the medicinal plant nursery with a eucalyptus nursery, study 3) showing the hilly agricultural which should increase the chances of it being financially viable. A further advantage is the countryside and a swamp. The dark pooling of skills on nursery techniques. A local citizen has kindly donated half a coloured trees (mid-distance on right) kilogramme of eucalyptus seed to the project, which it is hoped will result in the raising are a remnant patch of tropical forest of several thousand seedlings for sale. Eucalyptus is a fast growing species that can preserved at a traditional burial ground provide fuelwood and poles for local construction. Its increased availability as a result of (now a Christian graveyard). Photo AH the project should have the additional benefit of reducing the indiscriminate cutting of trees for domestic use, as this is currently degrading the local environment.

Training has been provided to the community on a variety of topics, including the sustainable harvesting of medicinal plants, the treatment of harvested plant materials, the selection of mother plants to supply seed for nursery planting, the correct time for collecting seed, the storage and pre-treatment of seed or other propagules prior to planting, the selection of sites for nurseries, the propagation of plants in nurseries (by seed or vegetative means), and nursery management (preparation of nursery beds and growing media; decision-making on watering, root pruning, hardening-off, etc).

Prospects

The technical manual has now been written and is awaiting publication. It includes information on the propagation, cultivation and use of the 11 species identified as priorities. The manual draws extensively on the community’s knowledge, based on the premise that sustainable development is best founded on the culture and practices of the community. Herbal processing has been identified as a future topic for training.

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Case study 4

Case study 4: Building capacity for Project team and members of Nyandera Green Valley Conservation Group, Kenya community-based conservation of (Case study 4A). From left to right: Mrs Naomi Hamilton; Dr John Otuoma medicinal plants (Kenya) (Kenya Forestry Research Institute); Ms Penina Ochieng, Mr Peter Oyolo and Organisation responsible for the project: The National Museums of Kenya (NMK) Mr Samwel Otieno (all of NGVCG); has been established for over 100 years ago and has contributed greatly to the Ms Peris Kariuki (National Museums of understanding of the cultural and natural heritage of Kenya. Working with various Kenya). Photo AH. partners, NMK has made significant contributions to documenting knowledge about medicinal plants and fostering appreciation of this knowledge in the wider society, and to the management and use of medicinal plants. The present project was based in the Kenya Resource Centre for Indigenous Knowledge (KENRIK), part of the Centre for Biodiversity of NMK. The mission of KENRIK is to ‘identify, record and disseminate indigenous knowledge for use in conservation, education and development programmes with a view to preserving culture and promoting use of natural resources’.

Project team: Peris Kariuki, Patrick Maundu, Staline Kibet, Phanuel Oballa, Ndua Chege and Peris Kamau.

Period of grant support: February 2006-June 2007.

The project has developed from other work on medicinal plants undertaken by NMK and supported by the International Development Research Centre (IDRC). Part of this

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work was in the Luo-Suba region and aimed at enhancing the capacity for the sustainable use and conservation of medicinal plants. Since 2003, NMK has acted as the coordinating institution for Kenya in a ‘Network on Medicinal Plants and Traditional Medicine in East Africa’.

Geographical context and medicinal plant issues

The field activities of the project were conducted in three parts of Kenya, described separately below. These places are geographically separate and culturally varied, representing contrasting conditions for the analysis of best practice in conservation of medicinal plants. Kenya is a tropical country with a varied climate and natural vegetation from tropical forest to semi-desert. However, little forest now remains, now covering less than 2% of the total land area; most of that which survives is now in public hands (managed by the Forestry and/or Wildlife Service). Forests are a major source of medicinal plants in Kenya, so that forest preservation and improved forest management Nursery run by Nyeri Traditional Health are matters of central concern with medicinal plants. Practitoners Association, Nyeri, Kenya (Case study 4B). The large leafed plant is The main thrusts of efforts to improve the conservation status of medicinal plants in Cordia africana. Kenya have been attempts at improved forest management and initiatives to cultivate Photo AH. species in commercial demand. Since 2005, official government policy has favoured the

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participatory management of forests, involving agreements on the use and management of forests drawn up between local communities and the Forest or Wildlife Service. These are early days and a lot more effort is needed to determine how such agreements can best be formulated with respect to medicinal plants. As for cultivation, only a few species (for example, Aloe spp., Artemisia annua, Prunus africana) are cultivated on any scale. A major limitation in developing cultivation for slow-growing species is that wild stocks are generally still available – and this is the cheaper option, although in practice this often involves illegal collection.

Project site (4A): Bondo and Kisumu East Districts, Nyanza Province: These neighbouring districts, lying at 1140-1350 m close to Lake Victoria, enjoy a reasonably high rainfall (1630 mm at Maseno) and equitable temperature (20-300 C). The principal productive activities are agriculture and fishing. Traditional medicine is extremely popular among the local Luo community and there is booming trade, with buyers of medicinal plants coming from all over Kenya to make purchases in Kibuye Market (Kisumu City). Some species of medicinal plants are becoming scarce, related to commercial over- harvesting, forest loss and agricultural spread. The trees Erythrina abyssinica and Kigelia africana have a particular problem. Although popular medicinal plants, they are little planted because of cultural beliefs and taboos.

Project site (4B): Nyeri District, Central Province: The traditional inhabitants are the Agikuyu, most of whom (thanks to early exposure to modern education and Christianity) show little interest in maintaining their cultural practices such as traditional medicine. Nyeri is a productive and intensively farmed district, with much of the land under private ownership. There has been widespread planting of exotic trees, with natural forest surviving on Mt Kenya and the Aberdare Range. Many species of medicinal plants have become depleted as forest has been lost and this, together with cultural forces, has resulted in a marked erosion in traditional knowledge. Traditional wild greens (nutritionally significant in Africa) – such as Amaranthus and Urtica massaica in the Nyeri area – are little used today, except by communities living adjacent to forests. However, the wild plant Strychnos henningsii (muteta) is a common delicacy in bone soup in hotels.

Project site (4C): Mbeere District, Eastern Province: This district is predominantly occupied by the Mbeere community. It is a drier area than Nyeri, liable to droughts and famines and more on the margins of national social and economic development75. The natural vegetation ranges from broadleaved wooded savanna with Acacia and Combretum – in relatively wet areas – to thorn scrub with Acacia and Commiphora in drier areas. Indigenous foods are still commonly eaten and traditional medicine widely practiced; consequently the local residents display a detailed and perceptive knowledge and understanding of their environment. Their main concern regarding medicinal plants is a growing scarcity of some species, the causes of which include a decline in natural habitat with the expansion of cultivation, the over-harvesting of some species and competition from invasive plants. Some species are over-harvested because of demands for them as medicinals (e.g. Aloe spp. and Osyris lanceolata), while others are over-harvested for other purposes, such as charcoal manufacture or woodcarving.

Project aims, activities and achievements

The purposes of the project were to build the capacity for community-based conservation of medicinal plants through activities at local, national and regional levels. A six-person Project Advisory Group (PAG) has overseen the project, its members drawn

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from NMK, the Kenya Forestry Research Institute (KEFRI), and the Department of Culture. The PAG selected the three field localities for the project based on competitive tendering. The main tools for capacity building at community level have been seminars, training sessions, community exchange visits, support to the communities to document their knowledge, and support for nurseries.

4A. Bondo-Kisumu East: Two groups were supported in Nyanza Province – Nyandera Green Valley Conservation Group (Bondo District) and Miguye Conservation Group (Kisumu East). Activities with the Nyandera group (membership 150) have revolved around an existing multi-purpose tree nursery, boosted under the project with medicinal plants, especially local species that are becoming rare. The Miguye group, comprising herbalists and traditional birth attendants (membership 28), has set aside a 50-hectare area of species-rich scrub specifically for the conservation of medicinal plants. The project team has assisted the group to prepare a legal agreement on the status and management of the reserve, including a specification that its resources must be used sustainably. Ten Fruits of Strychnos spinosa, a medicinal members of the Miguye group have planted about 50 species of medicinal plants around tree in Kianjiru Forest Reserve, Mbeere, their homesteads to provide handy sources of supply and to reduce pressure on the wild Kenya (Case study 4C). populations. The project has facilitated exchanges between the Nyandera and Miguye Photo AH. groups, located some 10 km apart, to share their experiences on medicinal plants.

4B. Nyeri: The project at Nyeri was implemented by the Nyeri Traditional Health Practitioners Association (NYETPA), a district association of traditional healers, registered in 2004 and based in Nyeri Town (the headquarters of Central Province). As an example of its service, NYETPA offered a free medical clinic in 2004 for people suffering from opportunistic infections associated with HIV/AIDS (at celebrations marking African Traditional Medicine Day – on 31 August). Members of NYETPA have been involved in drafting Kenya’s National Policy on Traditional Medicine and Medicinal Plants59. Capacity building for NYETPA under the project has taken the form of training sessions on the conservation, processing and marketing of medicinal plants, and assistance with the establishment of a two-acre nursery and botanical garden at Nyeri Cultural Centre, Nyeri Town (a public facility). Medicinal trees planted in the garden have included Albizia gummifera, Croton megalocarpus, Prunus africana and Warburgia ugandensis. Seedlings produced in the nursery have been planted out at the homesteads of members of NYETPA and in public places. NYETPA has held monthly meetings for its members to exchange knowledge on medicinal plants, including about their medicinal use.

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4C. Mbeere: Two groups were supported by the project at Mbeere – Endangered Species of Kianjiru Forest (ENSOMEP) and Kwamachembe Womens Self-help Group. More than 40 members of these groups have been provided with training on the collection and propagation of seeds, nursery management, and techniques of sustainable wild harvesting or East African sandalwood (Osyris lanceolata). Each group was supported with nursery equipment and a water tank. Medicinal species raised by ENSOMEP and planted on members’ farms have included Dalbergia lactea, D. melanoxylon, Olea europaea and Warburgia ugandensis. The Kwamachembe group has been a pioneer in propagating East African sandalwood from cuttings – this is a semi-parasitic tree in high commercial demand.

The achievements of the project have included: ● Over 200 community members trained on approaches to the conservation of medicinal plants. ● Five medicinal plant nurseries initiated and/or strengthened. ● Medicinal plants documented in three regions of Kenya. ● Medicinal plants re-introduced into farms in three regions. ● Local health traditions revitalised in the three regions. ● Public awareness of the project enhanced through a project poster and a display at the Nyandera and Nyeri sites.

Prospects

The project supported a regional meeting in Nairobi in September 2006 to consider national reports on the status of community-based conservation of medicinal plants in Kenya, Tanzania and Uganda. The meeting provided the opportunity to start the preparation of a larger regional project, funds for which are currently being sought. Steps taken in Kenya in preparation for this project have included prioritization of species for home healthcare by the Nyandera and Kwamachembe groups (herbal home healthcare is expected to be a major focus of the intended project) and preparation of management plans for medicinal plants in Kianjiru Forest Reserve and in the medicinal plants conservation area at Miguye. It is intended to develop three provincial-level Medicinal Plants Conservation Parks under the new project (for a description of this concept, see Case study 12). These parks will provide various services, including information, education, research and nurseries. Negotiations are in hand to establish these at Kisumu Regional Museum, Nyeri Cultural Centre and Embu Cultural Centre. These provincial centres and associated community-level activities will be supported in their development by the establishment of a national information centre on medicinal plants at KENRIK.

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Case study 5

Looking down on Miandam Town, Case study 5: Promotion of sustainable Pakistan (Case study 5). Photo AH. harvest of medicinal plants at Miandam, Swat (Pakistan)

Organisation responsible for the project: WWF-Pakistan, part of the worldwide WWF network, was established in 1970 with the mission of saving wildlife species and their habitats, and the promotion of nature conservation and environmental protection for sustainable development. It is the largest non-governmental conservation organisation in the country. WWF-Pakistan first became involved in ethnobotany and community- based approaches in 1997 especially through activities at Ayubia National Park.

Project team: Ashiq Ahmad Khan (until February 2008), Syed Kamran Hussain and Shabana Haider (all WWF-Pakistan).

Period of grant support: June 2006-May 2008.

Geographical context

Miandam, a valley in the Hindu Kush mountains of northern Pakistan, is located in the northern part of the district of Swat, part of the North West Frontier Province (NWFP). Well known as a summer resort, the valley ranges in elevation from 1200 to 3660 m and

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contains 11 villages and 15 hamlets with a total population of about 20,000. The lower slopes of the Miandam valley are extensively farmed, while forest especially of pine (Pinus wallichiana) becomes prominent at higher altitudes. Forest at Miandam is the property of a number of private landowners, with the Provincial Forest Department of NWFP maintaining some responsibility for management. Revenue from timber sales is split between the owners and the Forest Department. Although forests at Miandam can potentially provide a sustainable source of many goods and services, they are suffering today from degradation, mainly due to timber harvesting. Overgrazing by domestic stock is a contributory factor. It is estimated that the volume of illegal harvest exceeds that of the legal harvest (which amounted to 2.6 million cubic feet in 2007). Miandam is considered to be a prime site for Himalayan medicinal plants in Pakistan with forest their main habitat. There are no regulations controlling the collection of medicinal plants, some of which have become scarce due to commercial over-harvesting combined with high grazing pressure.

Medicinal plant issues

Many people at Miandam, especially women and children, suffer from ill health related to poverty, lack of knowledge and poor hygiene. In earlier times, people at Miandam relied principally on herbal remedies to prevent and cure their illnesses (with 179 locally growing species of plants used), but such practices have declined in recent years due to a shortage of some of the species, cultural change and a lack of institutional support for the development of herbal medicine. Western medical facilities are seriously deficient with only one primary healthcare centre in this valley of 20,000 people. This centre suffers from shortages of staff (no doctor, just one medical officer and two technicians), equipment and medicines. The nearest hospital is 56 km away in Saidu Sharif (the capital of Swat), but this is not realistically accessible to the poorer inhabitants of Miandam. Women with samples of wild-collected medicinal plants (including Viola biflora, Two groups of people at Miandam are involved in the commercial collection of wild Paeonia emodi, Skimmia laureola and medicinal plants - poorer local residents and migrant pastoralists. The latter are believed Valeriana jatamansi), Miandam, Pakistan. to be responsible for 75% of the harvest. The main species collected are Adiantum Photo Shabana Haider. venustum, Berberis lycium, Bergenia ciliata, Bistorta ampilexicaulis, Geranium wallichianum, Morchella esculenta, Paeonia emodi, Podophyllum emodi, Valeriana wallichii and Viola biflora. The number of local residents involved in this work is estimated at 3000, providing them with an estimated average of 25% of their income. Among the local residents, 60% of the collectors are boys and girls (12-16 years old), 30% are men and 10% older women (over 40 years old). According to research undertaken by the project, the collectors at Miandam are poorly organised, untrained in the art of sustainable collection (often uprooting whole plants unnecessarily) and not fully aware of the best ways to store the collected material. They have little knowledge of the market.

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The nomads responsible for the bulk of collection of medicinal plants at Miandam pass through the valley annually, bringing more than 40,000 goats which browse their way through the forests and higher pastures, seriously impeding the regeneration of trees. The owners of the pastures exact a tax known as Qalang from the nomads in exchange for the use of their pastures, amounting to around US$ 85-120 annually, which from the nomads’ perspective is more than offset by the income they gain from the sale of medicinal plants, estimated at US$ 450. It is reported that the owners have little awareness of the scale of collection of medicinal plants by the nomads.

Project aims, activities and achievements

A range of activities have been undertaken in support of the Demonstration garden of medicinal project’s purpose, which is to build capacity at Miandam for the conservation of plants, Miandam, Pakistan (Case study 5). medicinal plants. An initial project step was the holding of a consultation meeting Photo Shabana Haider. involving all sectors of the community, including forest owners, medicinal plant collectors, representatives of local non-governmental organisations and local government officials. All present agreed to give their full cooperation and support to the establishment of Miandam as a demonstration site for the sustainable use of medicinal plants. Two local project groups were formed, the Miandam Development Organisation (for men) and Miandam Women’s Organisation for Development and Conservation of Medicinal Plants.

The project has held two training workshops for a total of 45 local commercial collectors of medicinal plants. Subjects covered included techniques of sustainable collection, post-harvest treatment, storage and marketing. Two demonstration nurseries have been established to promote the cultivation of medicinal plants by local farmers and these now contain 78 species. Achievements at the nurseries have included multiplication of bulbs of saffron (Crocus sativa) from 2000 to 5000 and propagation of local yew trees (Taxus fuana76 ) from cuttings and without the use of rooting hormones. Apart from serving as demonstration sites, these nurseries are regarded as ex situ germplasm stores for threatened species. They have been used for research by students of botany from several universities.

Most activities to raise awareness about medicinal plants have been aimed at schools, known by WWF-Pakistan from previous experience to be the best targets for such activities in communities similar to those at Miandam. There are seven schools in the valley, making it very difficult to reach the entire student population directly. Instead, the project has concentrated on teachers, with the aim of making them more environmentally aware and motivated. In turn, the teachers have been encouraged to equip their students with clear visions about a bright future for the environment, and with the knowledge and skills for them to participate meaningfully in processes aimed at conservation and sustainable development. Two training workshops have been organised for the teachers. An achievement of the project has been the establishment of a Nature Club in every school in the valley, each with an average of 14 members. Nature Club members are now participating in various activities related to plant conservation, including celebrating various events, documenting indigenous knowledge about medicinal plants, and organising quizzes in schools on knowledge of nature.

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Various research activities have been undertaken by the project. One of these was a study of the impact of the nomadic grazers on medicinal plants, taking advantage of a ban on the use of their land imposed by some of the forest owners. This research revealed a huge difference between the areas open to the nomads and those closed to them, the number of species of medicinal plants being much higher in the latter (78 species, compared to 33) and with much higher population densities (reduced by 90% in the open area). Species absent from the open areas included Paeonia emodi and Podophyllum emodi.

Prospects

WWF-Pakistan intends to maintain its commitment to the development of Miandam as a demonstration site for the sustainable use of medicinal plants. Awareness-raising is seen as especially crucial and to this end two strategies for continuing the work have been developed by the project team. One of these is a general Awareness and Communication Strategy aimed at all stakeholders at Miandam, including permanent residents, seasonal visitors, schools teachers, students, religious leaders and the local government. The other is a Women’s Participation Strategy.

A consultancy has been established to trial the sustainable harvesting of medicinal plants in five forest compartments belonging to private forest owners. The arrangement is for the consultancy to pay the royalty (Qalang) traditionally paid by the nomadic grazers, Itinerant traders in morels Morchella, develop a plan for sustainable harvesting, and engage the local residents in collecting the Bulashar valley, Pakistan (Case study 5). medicinal plants according to the plan. The local residents will be paid 10% above the Photo AH. going market rates.

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Case study 6

Some of the 80 amchis who attended a Participatory Workshop on Strategic Policy Case study 6: Development of a Development for Medicinal Plants methodology on medicinal plant Conservation, Ley, Ladakh, India (Case study 6). Some members of LSTM are conservation to strengthen amchi medicine seated at front left. Photo Tsewang Gonbo. in Ladakh (India)

Organisation responsible for project: Ladakh Society for Traditional Medicines (LSTM) was founded in 2000 by a group of Ladakhis concerned about the problems facing Tibetan medicine, also known as Sowa Rigpa or amchi medicine, in contemporary Ladakh (an amchi is a healer and physician following the Tibetan medical tradition). Working at first as the local implementing partner of Nomad Research and International (Nomad RSI, France), LSTM has progressively increased its autonomy in terms of decision-making and project management, becoming registered as an Indian NGO in 2002. LSTM is today an autonomous entity, designing, implementing and evaluating its own activities, while maintaining a close partnership with Nomad RSI.

Project team: Tsewang Gonbo, Thupstan Chosazng and other members of Ladakh Society for Traditional Medicines (LSTM), working closely with Mohammed Abbas (Forest Range Officer, Forest Department) and Fanny Jamet and Calum Blaikie (NOMAD RSI).

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Period of grant support: September 2005 – February 2007.

LSTM believes that Sowa Rigpa (Tibetan medicine) is vital to the health status of Ladakh, representing an important part of the social fabric and cultural heritage of the region. LSTM’s mission is to revitalise the Sowa Rigpa medical system through a range of activities focusing on education, capacity building and medicinal plant conservation. Building on in-depth research, the revitalisation programme aims to address the problems facing Sowa Rigpa according to the social dynamics of contemporary Ladakhi society. The present programme phase, concentrating on conservation of medicinal plants, follows an earlier programme phase that included mounting a four-year full-time training course in Sowa Rigpa. Many of the 15 apprentice amchi who graduated from this course come from remote villages, in which they have since established medical clinics. These newly qualified amchi have proved useful local contact points for the present project, which is specifically concerned with supplies of medicinal plants.

Geographical context

Ladakh is a trans-Himalayan region in Jammu and Kashmir State in northwest India with a unique environmental and cultural heritage. Located between 2900 and 7200 metres above sea level, Ladakh is characterized by extreme conditions, including severe cold in winter and high solar radiation in summer. Annual rainfall is very low, making the area a high-altitude cold desert. These conditions are highly challenging for the growth of plants, for agricultural production and for the balance of healthcare. Sowa Rigpa remains extremely important for the health and wellbeing of the Ladakhi people and is particularly valued in the many remote rural areas where access to western treatment is problematic and often impossible during the winter months.

Medicinal plant issues Sapi, where the first community group in Ladakh has been formed to manage wild Many of the region’s medicinal and aromatic plants (MAPs) are under threat due to medicinal plants (Case study 6). increased commercial harvesting, unsustainable collection, overgrazing by livestock and Photo Tsewang Gonbo. ineffective management systems. Unskilled outside collectors sometimes take MAPs in the wrong seasons or misidentify the plants. Road construction, increasing trekking and damage by vehicles are other causes of environmental degradation. As many Himalayan MAPs are slow-growing perennial herbs with roots or rhizomes the parts collected, and grow in very limited areas, they are particularly vulnerable to these pressures.

Project aim, activities and achievements

The eventual aim of LSTM’s conservation programme is to ensure that supplies of medicinal plants are available for local healthcare, especially through effective management of wild populations, but also

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through cultivation. The present project was a pilot phase, designed to lay the foundation for larger-scale efforts. Its specific purposes were to: ● Build the capacities of key local partners regarding the conservation and sustainable management of MAPs. ● Organise awareness campaigns on MAPs at village level, develop partnerships and lay the foundations for future collaborative and effective actions. ● Gather information on MAP distribution, abundance, collection practices, use and trade. ● Prioritize species and areas for in situ conservation and ex situ cultivation. ● Produce and distribute materials for raising awareness of MAP conservation and cultivation in Ladakh. ● Organise information sharing, training and field activities on MAP issues.

One of the principal activities has been visits by a team from LSTM to villages selected because of their fame in Ladakh as hotspots for medicinal plants. Many of the 20 villages so visited have been in the Zanskar valley. An average of 175 people (including from neighbouring communities) has attended each meeting. The purposes of these visits were to gather information about medicinal plants, raise awareness about the need to conserve medicinal plants and help empower the communities for better management of the plants. Local amchi and other knowledgeable people (such as shepherds) were interviewed about their knowledge of the local distribution, abundance, harvesting and cultivation of medicinal plants. This information was later entered into LSTM’s database, authenticated by voucher specimens. For their part, LSTM provided information to the villagers on the growing pressures on medicinal plants, the reasons why they should be conserved and on practical ways in which the villagers could act.

One example of a community visit shows how these worked to raise awareness. On a Rhodiola (roseroot) in Ladakh, India – an visit to the village of Kanji, the project team included an expert Ladakhi healer (Amchi important medicinal plant (Case study 6). Gyurmet Namgyal), who ran a clinic for the community during the visit to provide Photo: Tsewang Gonbo. treatments and to increase interest in the project. Many villagers availed themselves of this service. The main event during the visit was an evening workshop for the whole community, which included activities carried out in sub-groups, in which men, women and children (separately) listed and ranked local medicinal plants according to their knowledge (the total number of species named was 80). Sketch maps were drawn showing the sites where the medicinal plants occur. Some educational and Ladakhi movies were shown at the start of the meeting to attract attendance and lighten the atmosphere.

This workshop was not intended as a one- off event. Rather, it is planned as the first of a series of activities to be carried out in the village over a period of time, hopefully leading to the development of practical measures to enhance the conservation of medicinal plants.

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The project was subject to a formal evaluation carried in October-December 2006 and was judged to have met all its objectives.

The main results of the project include: ● Improved capacities for working with MAPs by LSTM, amchis and communities. ● One seminar with 80 participants and 21 awareness campaigns held in 20 villages across Ladakh, raising local awareness of the importance of MAPs for Sowa Rigpa and drawing attention to their increasing scarcity, as well as empowering communities to better manage their natural resources. ● Species prioritization criteria developed to establish important species for protection and cultivation in the target areas. ● 500 posters on MAPs distributed to amchis, schools and public buildings across Ladakh, aiding identification of plants and raising awareness. ● A special issue of the Trans-Himalayan Amchi Medical Education Newsletter (THAME) produced and distributed across Ladakh and to other parts of the Himalayas. This issue was concerned specifically with MAPs. The newsletter aims to provide detailed information for practitioners of Sowa Rigpa.

Progress at the village level has varied according to local conditions. One of the first villages to be visited was Sapi in Kargil District, a site well known to amchi in Ladakh for its medicinal plants. The work at Sapi has proved exceptionally fruitful, the villagers soon deciding to create their own Medicinal Plants Conservation Committee (MPCC) to ensure sustainability in the harvesting of wild medicinal plants – this is the first such management group established in Ladakh. Sapi is a mixed community of Muslims and Buddhists and the committee has been established with equal representation from each religion and also with gender equity.

Members of the MPCC at Sapi decided that they would monitor and advise on the collection of medicinal plants by outsiders (whether amchi or commercial collectors), from whom a fee (100 rupees) would be requested for village development. LSTM held a follow-up training session at Sapi in July 2006, partly for the MPCC and partly for the general community.

Prospects

The next steps in LSTM’s ongoing programme include: ● Further training for the Medicinal Plants Conservation Committee at Sapi. ● Continue to build the general capacities of the project team and key stakeholders (including practical skills for in situ conservation and cultivation). ● Continue awareness-raising activities and follow them up with activities to implement community-based conservation in ‘hot-spot’ areas (formation of MAP management committees; in situ conservation activities; small-scale cultivation; improvement of exchange networks). ● Complete a detailed database about Ladakh’s MAPs and disseminate the data to partners and others through the publication of a bilingual book. ● Conduct regional workshops and training sessions to enhance skills and knowledge related to the conservation of medicinal plants, and encourage exchanges and cooperation in specific hot-spot zones. ● Improve communication and collaboration with other organisations working on similar projects in the Himalayas.

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Case study 7

Case study 7: Capacity-building for linking medicinal plants conservation and sustainable livelihoods in Western Himalayas, Uttarakhand (India)

Organisation responsible for the project: Applied Environmental Research Foundation (AERF) is a non-governmental organisation (NGO) founded in 1994 and based at Pune (India). Most earlier work by AERF has been in the Western Ghats, though with some involvement in the eastern Himalayas at Arunachal Pradesh and Nagaland. AERF’s expertise is working with communities for the linked purposes of conservation of biological diversity and improved rural livelihoods based on natural resources.

Project team: Archana Godbole, Jayant Sarnaik and Tapajit Bhattacharya.

Period of grant support: July 2006-May 2007.

Geographical context including medicinal plants issues

Uttarakhand declared itself The Herbal State in 2003 demonstrating the high official status accorded here to medicinal plants. Medicinal plants are found at all altitudes, from the sub-tropics up to the alpine zone. At higher altitudes, which are of particular concern to the project, high value medicinal plants are especially concentrated in pastures known as bugiyals, found between the tree-line and the glaciers. Bugiyals are also prime grazing grounds for domestic stock. Agriculture is the principal economic activity, but the topography is very rugged and only limited space is available to cultivate crops. The average farm size is very small at less than one acre. Many types of crops are grown, including wheat, Amaranthus and potatoes. The average per capita in 2001 income was US$ 160.

Commercial medicinal plants have been widely over-harvested in Uttarakhand so that many today have become hard to find. In response, the government has promoted cultivation of medicinal plants and banned the collection of 28 of the most seriously endangered species, including Aconitum heterophyllum, Cordyceps sinensis, Dactyloriza hatagirea, Nardostachys grandiflora (N. jatamansi), Podophyllum emodi (P. hexandrum) and Swertia chirayita. Government-backed co-operatives known as Bheshaj Sangh and the Herbal Research and Development Institute are responsible for prescribing areas and species allowed for collection, and for encouraging cultivation.

Project aims, activities and achievements

The goals of the project were relatively modest, given that funding was only available for one year and that this part of the Himalayas is new to AERF. Activities included the identification of people and organisations involved with medicinal plants, awareness raising about the need for conservation and sustainable use of medicinal plants, the provision of information on medicinal plants to communities, a stakeholders’ workshop, and the building of village-level capacity for sustainable harvesting. On the awareness front, a coloured poster of some major species of Himalayan medicinal plants has been printed and distributed, and two booklets in Hindi on Himalayan medicinal plants and

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relevant government regulations have been prepared and distributed to more than 20 Ali bugiyal, a high altitude meadow in villages in Chamoli. Chamoli District, India – the habitat of many rare and endangered species of On the basis of secondary data, it was assessed that two districts in Uttarakhand (Paudi Himalayan medicinal plants (Case study 7). and Chamoli) are especially important for the collection and cultivation of medicinal Photo Archana Godbole. plants. Based on this finding and with the help of local NGOs, awareness-generating meetings were held in both districts. Information received at these meetings confirmed the key position of Chamoli, which was then selected for subsequent field activities. In the case of Paudi, two meetings were organised, attended by people from 10 villages. It was clear at these meetings that the local people are interested in medicinal plants, but it was also found that about 80% of the local men have migrated to urban areas to seek employment and that most commercial collection of medicinal plants in Paudi is by Nepali immigrants rather than local people (a finding subsequently substantiated by local NGOs). It was decided that, with these complications, Paudi would not be included in the immediate field plans of the project.

The next step was to carry out Rapid Livelihood Analyses (RLA) in 21 villages in Chamoli. These analyses were designed to give a quick picture of the status of medicinal plants within the district and to reveal how activities relating to medicinal plants fit into the lives of different sections of the community. The RLA techniques used included semi- structured interviews, village resource mapping, transect walks and focus group meetings74, the latter especially with Mahila Mangal Dals, which are women’s groups active in forest conservation in Chamoli.

The survey identified two groups of local people as having an exceptional interest in medicinal plants, including knowledge of their availability, conservation status, uses and correct times for harvesting. They are shepherds in more remote villages, accustomed to taking their flocks to the bugiyals for summer grazing from May to September, and the

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Bhotia community – nomadic herders involved in long-distance annual movements including periods of summer residence at high altitude. With regards to gender, it is men rather than women who are largely responsible for the commercial collection of wild medicinal plants. The survey revealed that there is much illegal harvesting of medicinal plants, although (perhaps not surprisingly) little was learnt in detail about precisely what is happening. Apart from illegally harvested species, medicinal plants are being collected from protected areas, such as the Kedarnath Wildlife Sanctuary, from where they are carried over the border into China. Over the last 20 years, there has been an upsurge in outsiders visiting Uttarakhand, especially from Nepal, to collect medicinal plants for sale.

Within Chamoli, AERF decided to concentrate its more detailed activities in two smaller administrative areas, Ghat and Dewal, where interest in medicinal plants is particularly high. One of these activities was a stakeholders’ workshop held in April 2007 at Nandprayag, a small town accessible to various villages having a strong interest in medicinal plants. The purpose of this workshop was to bring together different players involved with medicinal plants, identify and discuss related conservation and livelihood issues, and seek solutions especially through collaborative programmes. In the end, 49 participants representing 14 stakeholder groups attended, including collectors, local community groups, companies, research institutions and government line agencies. Unfortunately, traders were reluctant to attend, but otherwise the workshop was judged a success.

Participants from the villages of Balan Two villages close to Nandprayag (Ghese and Ramni) have embraced cultivation of a few and Himni at a training session on species of medicinal plants, such as kuth (Saussurea costus) and kutki (Picrorhiza kurrooa). medicinal plants, Chamoli District, India Information from these villages and other sources has revealed serious constraints on (Case study 7). Photo Archana Godbole. the cultivation of medicinal plants. They include difficulties relating to the small size of

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land holdings, problems with combating pests and with marketing. The small farm size means that there is an added risk to livelihoods from growing medicinal plants for sale (rather than growing food crops for subsistence, or annual cash crops such as potatoes). Medicinal plants tend to take several years to reach maturity, meaning that there is a long time-lapse before any possibility of financial return. Additionally, no government subsidies are available to support farmers with less than 2.5 hectares of land under medicinal plants cultivation. With regards to marketing, the villagers have little knowledge of the markets, or skills to negotiate effectively with traders. They report problems in obtaining permits to transport their produce. It was found that women in these communities have generally little interest in Women processing harvested medicinal cultivating medicinal plants due to the problems described above, but are more plants in Himni village, Chamoli, India interested in nursery raising and the processing of products, both of which have the (Case study 7). potential to provide more immediate income. Photo Archana Godbole.

Four training workshops were held in Chamoli, each attended by people from a number of neighbouring villages. The aims of the workshops were to increase the knowledge and skills of the communities in relation to medicinal plants. A training module was prepared for use at the workshops. The development of management plans for medicinal plants was discussed, including issues of tenure and access, the size of annual harvesting quotas, parts or sizes of plants to be harvested, methods of monitoring, and how to periodically re-evaluate the plans. On the awareness side, information was provided at the workshops on the identification of medicinal plants and on district level institutions relevant to development based on medicinal plants.

The project has allowed a crosschecking of popular ideas about the medicinal plant sector in a particular part of Uttarakhand, where it has increased awareness among the communities and other stakeholders of the importance of conservation and sustainable use of medicinal plants. It has resulted in increased local knowledge, including identification of species and better understanding of the markets.

Prospects

Looking forward, the project has highlighted more precise areas in which facilitation from an agency such as AERF would be useful. Fortunately, following the project, AERF has been able to secure funds from the Indian National Medicinal Plants Board, which has allowed the work to continue. AERF is now in the process of establishing two medicinal plants resource centres in Chamoli to provide one-stop services at the block level for people interested in medicinal plants. AERF is working towards the development of a comprehensive long-term proposal for the conservation of medicinal plants in the western Himalayas.

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Case study 8

Case study 8: Community-based conservation and sustainable utilization of potential medicinal plants in Rasuwa (Nepal)

Organisation responsible for the project: The work is led by the Ethnobotanical Society of Nepal (ESON), a national non-governmental organisation (NGO) devoted to botanical aspects of conservation and sustainable development. ESON regards the work described here as the first stage in a long-term commitment to the people and plants of Rasuwa. ESON has worked closely on this project with two district level NGOs, Manekor Society Nepal and FECOFUN-Rasuwa. Manekor is an NGO dedicated to the well-being and development of Rasuwa’s Tamang people who make up 65% of the population. FECOFUN-Rasuwa is the district branch of a national NGO which co- ordinates more than 30,000 Community Forest User Groups in Nepal.

Project team: Professor Krishna K. Shrestha, Mr Ram C. Poudel, Dr Narendra N. Tiwari, Mrs Ila Shrestha and Ms Sangeeta Rajbhandary (all of ESON), Mr Kamal Humagain and Ms Saroj Yadav (MSc students), Mr Kaisang N. Tamang (President, Manekor Society Nepal), Mr Binod Poudel (President, FECOFUN-Rasuwa), and Ms Kabita Ghale (Social Mobilizer, Tatopani village, Chilime, Rasuwa District).

Periods of grant support: September 2006-September 2007 (1st phase); June 2008- May 2009 (2nd phase).

View from Tatopani village, Chilimi, Nepal Geographical context (Case study 8). Medicinal plants are found in both the forest and the sub-alpine meadows Rasuwa is a district in Central Nepal (900-7410 m), bordered to the north by Tibet. above. Photo AH. Dhunche is the district headquarters. About half of Rasuwa is covered by Langtang

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National Park established in 1976. Langtang is well known to trekkers (10,000-20,000 tourists visit annually) and pilgrims, more than 50,000 of whom annually walk up to the holy lake of Gosainkunda at 4400 m. Most of the Tamang are engaged in small-scale farming and pastoralism, and the average household income is extremely low.

Rasuwa falls mostly into the Temperate and Alpine zones of the Himalayas, the vegetation including various types of coniferous and broad-leafed forest, as well as high altitude pasture. The flora is rich, with over 1000 species of vascular plants recorded from within and around Langtang National Park, including 16 endemics77. Forests outside the park fall either under the authority of Community Forest User Groups, each with an assigned area of forest and required to follow an Operation Plan as agreed with the Forest Department, or else are National Forests directly under the Forest Department.

Medicinal plant issues

There is high dependency on traditional medicine in Rasuwa, especially by people living at high altitude. Commercial collection of medicinal plants is a major activity, providing the sole source of income for many. Species harvested to sell include those given in Table 1 and also Acorus calamus (Bojho), Asparagus racemosus (Kurilo), Bergenia ciliata (Pakhanved), Delphinium himalayai (Nirmasi), Fritillaria cirrhosa (Kakoli), various species of lichens (Jhyau), Paris polyphylla (Satuwa), Podophyllum hexandrum (Laghupatra), Taxus wallichiana (Lauth salla) and Zanthoxylum armatum (Timmur). Most plant materials are traded to Kathmandu and then pass on to India, but some move northwards illegally into Tibet. Prices paid to collectors are very low, even for good quality material. No care is taken in collecting plants for sale, related to the open-access nature of these resources. There is a complete lack of management, apart from blanket bans on the collection of certain species or on collection within the national park, neither of which is particularly effective. The only species of medicinal plant cultivated on any scale is Chiraito although still only very little, encouraged by the park authorities in the buffer zone of the national park.

R Latin name Local name Part used Elevation (m) T D A 1 Swertia chirayita Chiraito Entire plant 1500-2500 + + 3 2 Nardostachys grandiflora Jatamansi Rhizome, leaves 3000-5300 + 2 3 Aconitum spicatum Bikh, Bish Root 2500-4300 + 4 4 Neopicrorhiza scrophulariiflora Kutki Rhizome 3500-4500 + 3 5 Rheum australe Padamchal Rhizome 3200-4200 + 2 6 Valeriana jatamansi Sugandhabal Rhizome 1300-3300 + + 2 7 Dactylorhiza hatagirea Paanch aunle Rhizome 2800-4000 + 5 8 Aconitum bisma Nirmasi Root 3000-4500 + 4 9 Rhododendron anthopogon Sunpati Flowers 3300-5100 + 1 10 Rubia manjith Majitho Root 1200-3200 + 2

Table 1.Top ten medicinal plants at Rasuwa, Nepal, as prioritised by the communities involved in Case study 8. R = rank order; T = traded; D = in domestic use; A = abundance (1 = abundant, 5 = extremely rare).

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Project aims, activities and achievements

The aim of the project is to build capacity among the Tamang community for the sustainable use and conservation of medicinal plants. The project has been active on many fronts, always taking a participatory approach. Initial steps included a literature review and an assessment of local and national organisations relevant to the project. Agreements were signed with Manekor Society Nepal and FECOFUN-Rasuwa, once they had been identified as key partners for the project. Both these NGOs are accustomed to working in remote villages and are well respected by the communities.

An inception workshop was held at Dhunche in November 2006, organised jointly by ESON, Manekor and FECOFUN- The project team in Rasuwa, Nepal (Case Rasuwa. A wide range of stakeholders attended, including the Chief District Officer, study 8). Left to right: (back row) Local Development Officer, District Forest Officer, Acting Warden of Langtang National Mr Ram C. Poudel, Ms Sangeeta Park, Nepal Police Officer, and representatives of NGOs, CFUGs and herbal traders. The Rahbhandary, Mr Kaisang Tamang workshop proved very useful for gaining local acceptance of the project and forging (Manekor Society Nepal), Professor collaborative partnerships. The Forest Department agreed to work with ESON to Krishna K. Shrestha, Dr Narendra N. update the Operation Plans of Community Forests so as to incorporate medicinal Tiwari, Mrs Ila Shrestha; (front row) plants, with a target of two Operation Plans per year. Two sites were identified as field Mr Pinod Poundel (FECOFUN-Rasuwa), areas for the project, one inside Langtang National Park and the other elsewhere. In Mr Kamal Humagain, Ms Saroj Yadav, practice, most of the work of the project has been outside the park, where there are Mr Yagya Rokaya (Manekor Society Nepal). fewer legal obstacles to achieving sustainable use of medicinal plants. Chilime Village Photo ESON. Development Committee (VDC) was selected as the out-of-park site, based on its substantial involvement in the commercial collection of medicinal plants. Finally, it was decided that a Plant Information Centre should be established at Dhunche to supply the public with information on medicinal plants.

An immediate follow-up meeting was held at Chilime attended by 35 members (18 male, 17 female) representing all 16 CFUGs in the VDC. Participants discussed the challenges that they face with respect to medicinal plants and prepared a one-year project plan. All agreed that improved management of medicinal plants within the forests was needed, along with increasing the stocks of medicinal plants through cultivation and enrichment planting. Another meeting of six of the CFUGs soon followed, attended by more than 40 forest users. These six CFUGs, which are clearly very committed to making progress, decided to form a joint Medicinal Plants Management and Conservation Committee. Since then, with organisational help from Ms Kabita Ghale (Social Mobilizer, a local member of the project team), the committee has been meeting monthly to exchange information on medicinal plants. Medicinal plants have been prioritised according to the community perspective (Table 1) and local traders have been invited to, and have attended, the meetings to develop cooperation and provide the latest information on the market prices for the herbs.

Legally, the improved management of medicinal plants requires specific management measures for these plants to be included in the Operation Plans for Community Forests. Currently, Operation Plans at Rasuwa do not cover medicinal plants. Steps needed to achieve this legal requirement include agreement by the relevant CFUG to revise its Operation Plan, an inventory of the medicinal plants within the Community Forest,

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agreement on specific management measures (such as collecting areas, collecting areas and the division of tasks and benefits within the community) and finally sign-off by the District Forest Officer. An additional challenge at Rasuwa is that the current Operation Plans only poorly reflect the actual physical boundaries of the Community Forests and the species of trees that they contain.

The project team decided to take a particular Community Forest to trial these processes and Kaltache Community Forest belonging to a CFUG in Tatopani village, Chilime VDC, was chosen. After a half-day workshop at Tatopani, the project team worked with the CFUG for a week in the forest undertaking research and training (12- 18 May 2007). A short list of the main commercial species of medicinal plants was made, the patches where these species were concentrated identified, and counts made of the abundance of the species in the patches. A rotational harvesting plan was agreed and sign-off of the revised Operation Plan achieved in September 2007. A complication at Chilime is that members of different CFUGs sometimes collect in each other’s areas. This matter was discussed with the villagers and, in response, a VDC-level CFUG was formed in 12 March 2007, covering all 16 CFUGs in Chilime with the purpose of enhancing coordination.

Cultivation of medicinal plants is not new to Rasuwa, but is only carried out on a very small scale. Considering it inadvisable for villagers to replace food crops with medicinal plants in their tiny landholdings, the project team has suggested that medicinal plants Aconitum growing in Rasuwa, Nepal should be grown on wasteland and marginal land, such as on the banks between the (Case study 8). terraced fields. Cultivation has been promoted of chiraito (Swertia chirayita) in particular, Photo Kamal Humagain. for which there is some local expertise in nursery development and cultivation, and with local seed sources available (considered desirable, since the plants will be adapted to the local conditions). The project has provided support for the development of nurseries and distributed chiraito seeds to farmers in five villages. The response has been encouraging. Some farmers, who have benefited from this initiative, have inspired their neighbours to try out chiraito cultivation for themselves.

The project has addressed the problem of low prices paid to collectors by undertaking surveys of market prices in Kathmandu and Nepalgunj (a major trading post on the Indian border) and feeding back information to farmers, collectors and traders at Rasuwa. This has encouraged some collectors and farmers to bargain for better prices and for everyone concerned to take a closer interest in product grading.

The project has undertaken an inventory of medicinal plants in the Cholangpati-

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Gosainkunda area of Langtang National Park, but otherwise has mounted only limited activities in the park. Collection of medicinal plants in the park is prohibited, although allowed in its buffer zone for domestic purposes; in reality there is considerable illegal commercial collection of medicinal plants. These matters were discussed at a meeting held by the project in May 2007, attended by representatives of three Buffer Zone Management Councils. It is arguable that improved management of medicinal plants within the park will only be achieved if an agreement is reached between the park and the people, allowing some commercial collection of medicinal plants within designated parts of the buffer zone, linked to agreements not to collect elsewhere.

Free herbal healthcare camps and an associated awareness campaign were organised on 25-29 August Medicinal plants collectors return from 2007 to coincide with a popular religious pilgrimage within the park. The aims were to the forest, Chilime, Nepal (Case study 8). support the pilgrims and to raise awareness about the values of preserving medicinal Photo Ram C. Poudel. plants and knowledge about them. Two camps were established at Cholangpati (3500 m) and Gosaikunda (4400 m) along the trekking route used by the pilgrims, the project team working in collaboration with the Gosaikunda Management Committee, the Nepalese army, and local branches of the Scouts and Nepalese Red Cross. Gosaikunda is famous for its medicinal plants, although with many pilgrims collecting them during their pilgrimage, they have now become scarce near the paths. The campaign included handing out pamphlets and the placing of posters and banners along the trekking route explaining various ailments (such as altitude sickness) and the plants that can be used to treat them. Almost 1000 pilgrims were treated at the health camps during the pilgrimage, the impression being that they were receptive to the messages of the campaign.

The project has managed to make considerable advances in promoting the conservation of medicinal plants at Rasuwa. An evaluation workshop was held at Thambuchet on 6 September 2007 attended by representatives of all 16 local CFUGs in Chilime. All concerned were very keen for the project to continue and indeed expand. Fortunately, it proved possible to proceed with a second one-year project phase (June 2008-May 2009) through receipt of an additional Allachy Award. This project is concentrating on expanding activities from Chilime VDC to neighbouring VDCs at Gatlang and Thuman, in each of which a community forest has been selected for revision of its Operation Plan. The Plant Information Centre will also be opened in Dhunche as this was not achieved in the first project phase.

Prospects

ESON has a long-term commitment to conservation and sustainable development based on medicinal plants in Rasuwa. This project has demonstrated possible ways to conserve Himalayan medicinal plants in strong commercial demand. Since this addresses a major regional problem, Plantlife has applied to the Darwin Initiative (a UK-based funding scheme) to enable the work to continue.

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Case study 9

Case study 9: Development of a strategy for participatory conservation of medicinal plants in the Darjeeling and Sikkim Himalayas (India)

Organisation responsible for the project: Ashoka Trust for Research in Ecology and the Environment (ATREE) is a charitable trust founded in 1996 to meet the related challenges of environmental degradation and economic development in India. It is currently focusing on conservation and sustainable management of biodiversity, concentrating on the two biodiversity hotspots of Western Ghats and eastern Himalayas. ATREE’s overall programme in the eastern Himalayas has five major objectives: (a) assessment and monitoring of biodiversity, (b) development of concepts and tools for participatory Survey site for medicinal plants, Sikkim, management of biological resources, (c) enhancement of conservation education, (d) India (Case study 9). development of human and social capital for conservation, and (e) improvement of policy Photo ATREE. and governance for conservation. ATREE is building a database on medicinal plants.

Project team: The principal investigator of this project was Dr Upakar Rai of ATREE, supported by Mr Anand Gajmer and Dr Santosh Chettri.

Period of grant support: March 2006-February 2008.

Geographical context

Darjeeling and Sikkim Himalayas in the eastern Himalayas cover a very wide altitudinal range from 150 to 8548 m and exhibit an extremely diverse topography from rugged snow-capped rugged mountains in the north to flat alluvial plains in the south. Accordingly, the climate, vegetation and flora are extremely varied. The climate at low altitudes is warm and humid during the summer and moderately cool during the winter. High altitudes (including Thangu, Tsongmo Lachen and Sandakphu) are typically snow-covered during the winter. The high rainfall with an annual average of 4000 mm falls mostly between June and September associated with the southwest monsoon. There are three main vegetation zones, a Tropical Zone (150-1500 m) characterized by semi-evergreen and broadleaved deciduous forest, a Temperate Zone (500-3900 m) with coniferous and rhododendron forests, and an Alpine Zone (3900-5500 m) with coarse meadow and stunted shrubs.

Corresponding to these different vegetation zones, the flora of Darjeeling and Sikkim is extremely diverse, carrying 25.7% of all India’s species of flowering plants in an area only 0.22% of the total. The 5000 species present include 550 species of orchids (out of a national total of 1200), 36 species of Rhododendron (out of 80), 58 species of bamboo (out of 100) and 25 species of Hedychium (out of 60). The state is impressively rich in agro-biodiversity, with 573 species of crops and wild relatives, including of cereals, pulses and oilseeds. 425 species of medicinal plants have been documented as being used by 20 local tribal groups78, 79. Some of the most extensively used species of medicinal plants are Aconitum spp., Ephedra girardiana, Nardostachys jatamansi, Picrorhiza kurrooa, Podophyllum emodi (P. hexandrum), Swertia chirayita and Taxus baccata.

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The population density varies according to climatic condition and elevation. Almost 80% of the people live in rural areas, mostly being farmers, daily wage workers or labourers in tea gardens. Pastoralism becomes significant at higher altitudes. The main ethnic groups are Nepalese, Bhutia, Lepcha, Limbu and Sherpas. The Lepcha people, who have been settled here for the longest time, have a very extensive knowledge of medicinal plants – and the other ethnic groups have learnt much of their own knowledge of medicinal plants from them. North Sikkim, which is inhabited mainly by Bhutias (Lachenpa and Lachungpa), has a unique administrative system (Zumsa) with a government headed by an elected official (Pipon).

Medicinal plant issues

Habitat of Picrorhiza kurrooa. Forty species of medicinal plants in Darjeeling and Sikkim have been listed as threatened Chopta Valley, Sikkim, India (Case study following IUCN criteria78. Once abundant, the natural populations of these plants have 9). Photo ATREE. either been completely destroyed or have become confined to small pockets in inaccessible places. Conservation measures are urgently needed. Commercial over- harvesting is the principal cause of endangerment78, with destructive grazing by wild and domestic stock and harvesting of the medicinal plants for local use being additional factors. Official records for 1990-1991 give volumes of trade for Aconitum heterophyllum, Nardostachys grandiflora (N. jatamansi), Picrorhiza kurrooa and Swertia chirayita as nearly 50 tons annually. Little or no effort is being made to develop cultivation, an increase in which it is believed would reduce the pressure on the wild plants. Despite a number of ethnobotanical studies78-82, very little detailed information is available on the distribution, abundance and population status of the threatened species, as considered necessary to prepare proper conservation plans.

Project aims, activities and achievements

The project is concerned with generating information on the in situ status of eight species The highly valued medicinal plant of threatened medicinal plants (Aconitum palmatum, Dactylorhiza hatagirea, Mahonia Picrorhiza kurrooa (kutki), Chopta Valley, napaulensis, Nardostachys grandiflora, Panax pseudoginseng, Picrorhiza kurrooa, Swertia chirayita Sikkim, India (Case study 9). and Valeriana hardwickii) and standardisation of propagation protocols for six of these Photo ATREE. species (all except Dactylorhiza and Valeriana).

The project started with a literature survey, the listing of localities for medicinal plants recorded on herbarium specimens, and assembling available data on use and trade. This preliminary work allowed selection of places for field studies. There then followed a reconnaissance survey conducted with the assistance of knowledgeable local people (five to ten individuals at each potential site), which allowed the more precise demarcation of areas for ground sampling. Each area so demarked contained at least one of the chosen species. One metre square quadrats were then laid out along transects within the demarked areas, and the abundance, density and reproductive status of each of the targeted species recorded.

Propagation trials were conducted in a nursery at Upper Chatakpur in Darjeelingat an altitude of 2700 m. Germination trials were undertaken on seeds of Aconitum, Mahonia, Panax, Picrorhiza and

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Swertia, with seeds sown in February-March 2007 and subsequent checks on germination and seedling survival. Two different treatments were tried for Swertia seeds – seedbed burning prior to sowing and wetting the seeds with cowdung (a commonly used nursery technique in this region). Experiments on vegetative reproduction were carried out on Mahonia, Nardostachys and Picrorhiza.

The main results of the field survey are shown in Box 3. Dactylorhiza is clearly a very rare plant, but some of the other species are still quite abundant (for example, Swertia and Valeriana). With regard to the germination trials, the percentage of seeds that germinated proved to be highly varied, ranging from a minimum of 0% (Picrorhiza), to 25-50% for Aconitum, Panax and Mahonia, and with varying percentages for Swertia depending on the treatment (80% – burning; 15% – cowdung). The average germination time for Aconitum, Mahonia and Panax was 31-37 days, but much longer for Swertia (80 days, regardless of the treatment). Clonal trials on Nardostachys (involving separation of daughter plantlets from the mother stock) showed high survivability (81%), while survivability was somewhat lower for cuttings (treated with rooting hormone) of Picrorhiza (67%) and Mahonia (38%).

Box 3. Occurrence of some principal species of medicinal plants, Darjeeling and Sikkim Himalayas, India (Case study 9).

Aconitum palmatum is found in open scrub in the sub-alpine zone (density 16,222- 30,667 individuals per hectare – found at five sites). Dactylorhiza hatagirea was not recorded on the transects. Mahonia napaulensis is a temperate zone species (2900-3500 m) abundant in open degraded forest (density 800-2200 individuals per hectare – found at six sites). Nardostachys grandiflora grows above 4200 m in open alpine pasture grazed by cattle (density 52,000-70,889 individuals per hectare – found at four sites). Panax pseudoginseng is a sub-alpine species (2900-3500 m). There are two varieties (angustifolia and binnatifidus), the former growing at very variable density (4889- 77,778 individuals per hectare – found at four sites) and the latter always scarce (2444-4000 individuals per hectare – found at three sites). Picrorhiza kurrooa is found in open alpine pasture above 4200 m at high densities (78,889-202,222 individuals per hectare – found at two sites), with a tendency towards clumping (related to its rhizomatous habit). It is abundant on sandy soils under Rhododendron. Swertia chirayita is a temperate zone plant (2900-3500 m) with good populations where it occurs (17,00-23,800 individuals per hectare – found at three sites). It is most abundant on soils exposed by burning. Immature individuals were more abundant than reproductive plants at all sites. Valeriana hardwickii shows good populations in open forests of the temperate zone (2900-3500 m) (density 2000-5000 individuals per hectare – found at three sites).

Prospects

The project is considered by ATREE as a necessary first step needed to achieve in situ conservation and cultivation of these species. Full standardization of the propagation protocols is underway.

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Case study 10

Ludian, Yunnan, China (Case study 10). Case study 10: The development of Much of the valley is devoted to cultivation of medicinal plants, such as methodologies for conservation of Gentiana (foreground). The two Medicinal Plants Conservation Areas medicinal plants based on field-level which the community has established are application at Ludian, Yunnan (China) in the forests on the surrounding hills. Photo AH. Organisation responsible for the project: This project is run by the Applied Ethnobotany Research Group of the Laboratory of Ethnobotany, Kunming Institute of Botany (KIB), Chinese Academy of Sciences. KIB is a global pioneer in community-based approaches to conservation and sustainable development, having been active in this field since 1987, especially in Yunnan Province. The team formed to implement the project included Professor Pei Shengji and Mrs Yang Lixin of KIB, Dr Huai Huyin of Yangzhou University and, once the project started on the ground, local community members, including Mr He Yun (Mayor of Ludian) and Mr Yang Shengguang (a local Naxi doctor). An inventory of medicinal plants at Ludian had been previously undertaken by Dr Wang Yuhua, a student of Professor Pei, and was updated by the project team. Dr Huai Huyin is an expert on medicinal plants in Yunnan and Mrs Yang is fluent in Naxi, the main local language at Ludian, which has greatly facilitated project progress. Mrs Yang Lixin has been visiting the project site in pursuit of project activities at intervals of about two months. Apart from the Allachy Award from Plantlife, the project has benefited from a grant from The Nature Conservancy, a US-based international conservation agency assisting the government of Yulong County in community development related to the establishment of Laojun Mountain National Park.

Project team: Professor Pei Shengji and Mrs Yang Lixin (Kunming Institute of Botany); Dr Huai Huyin (Yangzhou University)

Period of grant support: June 2006 – May 2008.

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Geographical context

Ludian is an Important Plant Area for medicinal plants in the Chinese Himalayas. Located within the northern buffer zone of Laojun National Park, altitudes range from 2000 to 3000 m and its area cover 107km2. It was selected as a suitable site for field implementation of medicinal plant conservation following a planning exercise to identify Important Plant Areas for medicinal plants in the Himalayas (see Case study 11) and a follow-up ground survey. Ludian is a community of 6000 people, living in 29 villages and hamlets within Yulong County, Lijiang City, Yunnan Province. The landscape is mountainous, 60% being covered by forest and with agricultural fields in the valleys and on the lower slopes. Both coniferous forest (mainly Pinus armandii and P. yunnanensis) and species-rich broad-leaved forest are represented. There was destructive logging during the Cultural Revolution (1966-1975) from which much of the forest is still recovering. The agricultural land at Ludian is state-owned, but under private management. Thee forests are also state owned, but are managed either directly by the state, as community forests under the villages, or divided into small plots leased to individual households on 49-year terms.

The local people, 90% of whom belong to the Naxi minority, have a rich tradition of medicinal plants. Ludian has been a source of supply for cultivated medicinal plants for over 200 years, and more than 363 species are currently used in local folk medicine. Surveys undertaken in 2007 in two sample villages at Ludian revealed that 13% of the people rely exclusively on herbal medicine, 26% use western medicine and 61% use a mixture of both. Of the plant species used by local healers, 60% are collected from the wild, 30% grown in home gardens and 10% purchased in markets.

Ludian is known in Yunnan as the ‘Home of Medicinal Plants’. Material from Ludian is held to be especially ‘authentic’ and of high quality – termed Dao Di medicinal material according to Chinese practice. This perception raises external demand for medicinal plants from Ludian, whether cultivated or collected from the wild.

Most households are engaged in farming with 90% of the farmers cultivating medicinal plants to sell and this provides 10-70% of household income. Contrasting with the large number of species used in local medicine, only about ten species are cultivated commercially on any scale, among them Aconitum stapfianum, Eutrema yunnanense, Gentiana rigescens, Paris polyphylla var. yunnanensis, Saussurea (Auklandia) costus (=S. lappa), Platycodon grandiflorum, Ligusticum sinense, Atractylodes macrocephala, Dipscacus asper and Angelica sinensis. An unusual high priced local crop is the fungus Morel (Morchella).

Medicinal plant issues

Many species of wild medicinal plants have become reduced in abundance at Ludian due to loss of their forest habitat. Additionally, some species are under threat from commercial collection, especially high value species such as Anisodus acutangulus, Fritillaria cirrhosa, Heracleum candicans, Notopterygium franchetii, Gastrodia elata, Paris polyphylla var. yunnanensis and Taxus wallichiana. Commercial pressure on wild medicinal plants has been increasing over recent years as medical industries have expanded in China as part of general economic development. Under-employment has also contributed, notably with local people searching for new sources of income following a banning of commercial logging in 1998 after severe flooding along the Yangtze River. At the start of this project, there were no local measures in place at

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Case study 10

Ludian to regulate the collection of wild medicinal plants – this is the usual situation in China. Conservation and sustainable harvesting of wild medicinal plants are needed at Ludian to maintain local health services based on herbal remedies and to retain local sources of germplasm from which crops can be developed when new species become popular in the market.

Many people at Ludian depend on local doctors following the Naxi medical tradition. Unlike some other indigenous medical traditions in China, Naxi medicine is not recognised officially, which creates problems in its application and development. There are related issues of conservng traditional medical knowledge. On the livelihoods front, 99% of the medicinal plants produced at Ludian are sold to outside traders, who have been allowed to operate here since 1998 following market liberalisation. Currently, farmers and collectors at Ludian receive A Yi lady (centre) sells medicinal plants to low prices for their produce, lacking the benefit of collective bargaining and being a trader in Ludian, China (Case study 10). ignorant of market prices. Photo Pei Shengji. Project aims, activities and achievements

The main purpose of the project is to explore methods for the practical conservation of medicinal plants, taking into consideration people’s related interests in healthcare, earning an income and maintaining cultural traditions. Initial discussions revealed a low level of knowledge or concern within the general community about the conservation of medicinal plants. However, several individuals proved to be exceptions, especially local herbal doctors and the then village headman (Mr He Yun). On the basis of their common concern, this nucleus decided to form the Ludian Medicinal Plants Conservation Association to instigate practical activities promoting conservation. This is the first such conservation group in China. The association was registered at the local governmental level in February 2007 and a constitution agreed in March 2007. Mr Yang Shengguang, a herbal doctor, was elected as the first chairman of the association, which currently has 40 members. Since its foundation, the association has played a major role in guiding and delivering the project.

The two major concerns expressed by members of the association were the increasing rarity of some wild medicinal plants and that few younger people were interested in becoming herbal doctors. Awareness-raising and education in Naxi medicine were seen as important initial activities, and also creating conditions to push the government into taking the conservation of medicinal plants more seriously. Dian Nan and Dian Bei were selected as pilot villages for project activities, the former being relatively prosperous and having eight herbal doctors, in contrast to a

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single herbal doctor at Dian Bei (Mr He Chong Shan, a very knowledgeable community botanist).

The project has supported the development of herbal gardens to serve as convenient sources of herbs for local treatments, sources of germplasm for commercial cultivation and educational resources for the community. So far, 30 herbal home gardens and two ‘wild cultivation’ sites (medicinal plants planted within natural vegetation) have been established or further developed. One of the ‘wild cultivation’ sites is situated in Dian Bei close to the village water source, conveniently situated to raise awareness about medicinal plants when villagers celebrate the Spring Festival. The average number of medicinal plants per home garden has increased from less than ten to over 30. Some particularly interested individuals are cultivating some locally endangered plant species (not necessarily medicinal) to safeguard against their complete local extinction. Three training workshops involving a total of 60 The medicinal plant garden of Mr He villagers have been held making use of these demonstration gardens. The subjects of Chong Shan (left), a very knowledgeable these workshops have included the development of home herbal gardens, the Naxi herbalist, Dian Bei village, Ludian, sustainable harvesting of wild medicinal plants and Naxi traditional medicine. China (Case study 10). Considerable interest in medicinal plants and Naxi medicinal culture has been Photo Pei Shengji. expressed by local youth.

Following the Dialogue meeting between China, India and the UK (see Case study 13), the idea was raised of establishing special sites for the conservation of medicinal plants at Ludian, termed Medicinal Plants Conservation Areas (MPCAs). Discussions were held with the Ludian Medicinal Plants Conservation Association and with other members of the pilot villages. The result was a decision to establish two MPCAs on community forest land, one at each of Dian Nan and Dian Bei.

The MPCAs have been established in the richest local sites for medicinal plants, one extending over 330 hectares and the other 300 hectares. The legal status of the MPCAs was agreed at Ludian local government level and confirmed later by Yulong County in November 2007. A Ludian MPCA Management Committee has been established, comprising a representative of the Ludian Medicinal Plants Conservation Association, the headmen of the two village headmen and two elected community members. This committee is responsible for deciding which plants may be collected from the MPCAs – for local medical use or to use as planting materials – and how the benefits from such collection are distributed. Two community members have been hired as full-time workers at each site, initially paid from project funds. Regulations governing the management of the MPCAs have been agreed between the association, the Ludian government and the local forest station (Box 4).

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Case study 10

Box 4: Summary of regulations governing Medicinal Plants Conservation Areas at Ludian (Case study 10).

1. Management and monitoring is the joint responsibility of the Ludian Medicinal Plants Conservation Association, Ludian MPCA Management Committee and Ludian Township Forest Station. 2. The Ludian MPCA Management Committee is responsible for the direct management of the MPCAs, including conservation, sustainable harvesting following traditional methods and ensuring the guaranteeing of community benefits. The Ludian Medicinal Plants Conservation Association has an overseeing and wider coordination role. 3. The harvesting of rare, endangered and endemic medicinal plants is prohibited (a list is provided – this includes Eucommia ulmoides, Taxus yunnanensis, etc). A fine of 500 Yuan will be imposed for violations. 4. Logging, grazing and cutting firewood are prohibited. 5. Fire is prohibited in the MPCAs. A fine of 50 Yuan will be imposed for those starting fires or failing to assist in their control.

Prospects

The project team and community group intend to try to increase the financial benefits received locally from medicinal plants. At present, collectors and farmers of wild medicinal plants at Ludian receive only a tenth of the prices paid in the major regional market for medicinal plants at Dali. Planned activities are to help the farmers and collectors form a marketing cooperative to increase their bargaining power and enhance their access to market information through facilitating access to the internet, on which prevailing market prices for medicinal plants in China are posted. It is hoped improved market prices can help to ensure the financial sustainability of the MPCAs. In this context, the MPCAs will be promoted as an integral part of the culture and economy of Ludian, including as sources of germplasm for developing new crops.

On the wider political front, the government appreciates this project as being well aligned with two of its developmental priorities for northwest Yunnan – conservation of biodiversity and support for minority cultures. Following earlier contacts, a meeting was held in May 2008 at Lijiang City Nationality Technical College (within the same prefecture as Ludian) to raise awareness about the project and consider establishment of an Association of Naxi Traditional Medicine, a Naxi herbal garden and a Naxi hospital. College staff, senior government officials and traditional doctors attended the meeting. The college currently teaches some Naxi medicine in its courses on Traditional Chinese Medicine (TCM), but the lack of official recognition for Naxi medicine is problematic for developing this further. The main results of the meeting were agreement to form the Association of Naxi Traditional Medicine, to be hosted by the college, and to establish the herbal garden, also at the College. The Association, which will cover all local medical traditions and not just Naxi, will promote the official recognition of minority medical traditions in this part of China.

The concept of the MPCA was well received at this meeting. Discussions are currently being held with government officials and The Nature Conservancy conservation agency to expand the number of MPCAs into other parts of the buffer zone of Laojun Mountain National Park and also into the Meili Tibetan area to the north. A total of ten new MPCAs is being considered at Laojun, one per buffer zone village. The main ethnic minorities here are the Li Su and Naxi.

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8. Experience-sharing case studies

Introduction

Three of the Allachy Awards have allowed the sharing of experiences in conservation of medicinal plants between countries. One project (Case study 12) was initiated by the Foundation for Revitalisation of Local Health Traditions in Bangalore and the other two by Plantlife. Case study 11 involved five Himalayan countries, Case study 12 involved all the countries in which community-based projects have been mounted (Case studies 1- 10) plus Bhutan and Tanzania, and Case study 13 concerned China, India and the UK.

Box 5: List of experience-sharing case studies.

CS11 The Himalayas: Important Plant Areas for medicinal plants CS12 India: International course on medicinal plants conservation CS13 China/India/UK: Dialogue on conservation of Himalayan medicinal plants

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Case study 11

Participants at the regional workshop on Important Plant Areas for medicinal plants Case study 11: Identification and in the Himalayas enjoy a visit to conservation of Important Plant Areas for Kathmandu, Nepal (Case study 11). Photo AH. medicinal plants in the Himalayas

Organisations and individuals responsible: A regional workshop held in Kathmandu in 2006 was jointly organised by ESON and Plantlife. National Reports were presented at this conference for the following Himalayan countries83-85: Bhutan – Yeshey Dorji and Mr A Karma Rinzin (Ministry of Agriculture) China – Professor Pei Shengji and Mrs Yang Lixin (Chinese Academy of Sciences) and Dr Huai Huyin (Yangzhou University) India – Pragya, with presentations at the Regional Workshop by Dr Visvarup Chakravarti and Ms Manali Baruah Nepal – Dr K.K. Shrestha, Ms S. Rajbhandary, Mr R.C. Poudel and Dr N.B. Tiwari (Ethnobotanical Society of Nepal Pakistan – Mr Ashiq Ahmad Khan (WWF-Pakistan) and Dr Hassan Sher (Government Postgraduate Jahanzeb College)

Period of grant support: January to December 2006.

Important Plant Areas

Important Plant Areas (IPAs) are defined as the most important places in the world for wild plant diversity that can be managed as specific sites86, 87. Their identification and conservation have been promoted as a contribution to Target 5 of the Global Strategy

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Case study 11

for Plant Conservation (see Page 6). A site has the potential to be recognised as an IPA if it meets one or more of the following criteria: (1) presence of threatened species of global or regional concern; (2) exceptional botanical richness for its biogeographic zone; and (3) presence of threatened habitats. Recognising IPAs on the basis of medicinal plants uses only part of the total dataset potentially available, which encompasses all plants. On the other hand, in the case of the Himalayas, this dataset is probably of better quality than many other possible data subsets, because of the strong regional interest in medicinal plants.

The project is based on National Reports discussing the identification and conservation of IPAs for medicinal plants in each Himalayan country. These National Reports contain baseline information on medicinal plants, overviews of current conservation initiatives, and assessments of the contribution of existing information on medicinal plants to the identification of IPAs. These National Reports were presented at a regional workshop held on 19-22 September 2006 in Kathmandu in Nepal, at which some additional organisations from Nepal also gave presentations.

Objectives of the project

● Collate baseline information on medicinal plants, their habitats and their threats across the Himalayas. ● Provide an overview of existing initiatives on the conservation of Himalayan medicinal plants. ● Assess the contribution of existing information on medicinal plants to the identification of IPAs in the Himalayas. ● Assess recommendations for future progress in medicinal plant conservation at IPAs in the Himalaya, including through regional collaboration. ● Contribute to the development of a new regional project on the conservation of Himalayan medicinal plants.

Results: Identification of IPAs for medicinal plants

IPAs are places of significance for the conservation of global plant diversity, normally recognised at the national level. The experts from all five participating countries agreed that it is possible to recognise special areas for conservation of medicinal plants in the Himalayas at the national scale, and 53 such areas were recognised. However, they all stressed that these IPAs should be seen as provisional given the severe shortage of data reported for all countries. Recognition of these national-level IPAs was generally heavily dependent on the use of criterion 1 (‘presence of threatened species’), in practice relying especially on records of the distribution of popular and widely distributed species threatened by commercial trade. The recorded distributions of these species are likely to be highly influenced by the history of botanical collecting.

All experts noted that important areas for medicinal plants (less formally defined than as above) exist at several geographical scales (see Table 2). They can be recognised from the very large scale right down to small patches of forest or field. Larger scales are appropriate for large-scale planning, for example, by international conservation NGOs deciding where to commit their resources. However, it is the smaller scales that are most relevant to achieving practical conservation progress on the ground, since they relate to the activities of individuals and organisations in the field.

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Geographic scale Pakistan India Nepal Bhutan China

Scale 1 (largest) 6 very large IPAs (corresponding to existing Critical Regions)

Scale 2 15 IPAs often based 16 IPA Complexes 10 IPAs on river valleys or (based on river ridges basins or mountain ranges)

Scale 3 6 IPAs, based on 1 to several ‘core 54 sites within the 3 sites, each repre- valleys tracts’ of less than complexes (equiva- senting about 100 40 km2 within each lent to districts) households of the above

Scale 4 (smallest, (Community based Smaller sites within 230 micro-IPAs Smaller sites for Land managed by suitable for direct conservation should the core tracts, within the sites practical field individual house- field-level focus on smaller appropriate for (appropriate for management (to holds, including management) sites within the community community be located later) home gardens, forest above) management management) patches & wild cultivation sites

Table 2. Spatial units recognised as significant for the conservation of medicinal plants in the Himalayas (Case study 11). The table was constructed on the basis of National Reports from five countries and subsequent discussions at a regional workshop. The units for the different countries are arranged according to their approximate spatial equivalence. Terminology for the units follows that used in the National Reports.

All those attending the regional workshop agreed that the community-level is the critical level for conservation of Himalayan medicinal plants. Participatory research involving communities and scientists is needed to determine the key local places for medicinal plants, where efforts at improving their management should be concentrated. There was general agreement that, in the Himalayas, traditional doctors, religious leaders and elders in indigenous groups can often play key roles in encouraging and guiding communities on how best to conserve their medicinal plants.

Workshop activities at the IPA Prospects regional meeting at Kathmandu, Nepal (Case study 11). One of the challenges facing the conservation of medicinal plants in the Himalayas is Photo AH. impending climate change, which (it has been calculated) will here be on an exceptionally large scale. The ranges of many species must move or the species will perish. This reality needs to be recognised in planning the geography of conservation, for example, suggesting that protected areas should cover wide altitudinal ranges and be connected to one another by corridors. Even more importantly, impending climate change raises the urgency of creating conditions favourable for plant conservation across the whole landscape. Since there are people almost everywhere in the Himalayas, this means that efforts to involve communities in conservation should be pursed as a matter of urgency.

Finally, it was stressed at the regional workshop that all the Himalayan nations face similar challenges in achieving conservation and sustainable use of medicinal plants, so there is much to be gained from sharing case studies and suggestions on best practice. Joint initiatives are needed to tackle cross- border issues such as rampant unsustainable trade in medicinal plants.

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Case study 12

Case study 12: International training and capacity building on medicinal plants conservation and sustainable utilisation – based on Indian experience

Organisation responsible for the project: The Foundation for Revitalisation of Local Health Traditions (FRLHT) is a charitable society founded in 1993. Based in Bangalore, it is recognised as a National Centre of Excellence for medicinal plants and traditional knowledge. FRLHT believes that revitalisation of the medical heritage of India holds two promises – self-reliance in primary health care for millions of households and the continuing capacity to make original contributions to the world of medicine. FRLHT has identified three focus areas for its work: conserving natural resources used by Indian Systems of Medicine (ISM), demonstrating the contemporary relevance of the theory and practice of ISM, and revitalisation of the social processes responsible for the passing on and sharing of traditional healthcare knowledge.

Project team: Mr Giridhar A. Kinhal (Course Coordinator), Mrs G.B. Deepa (Assistant Course Coordinator) and many other members of FRLHT.

Period of grant support: January 2006 – December 2006 (course held on 4-18 October 2006).

FRLHT’s methodologies for conservation of medicinal plants

FRLHT’s achievements in conservation of medicinal plants are probably unrivalled by any other institution worldwide. Only an outline of the main building blocks of FRLHT’s approach is possible here: Headquarters of the Foundation for Forest Gene Banks. These form the physical heart of FRLHT’s approach to the in situ Revitalisation of Local Health Traditions conservation of medicinal plants. Most have two elements, Medicinal Plants (FRLHT), Bangalore, India (Case study 12). Conservation Areas (MPCAs), which are core areas of natural (or near-natural) forest Photo AH.

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managed for the conservation of medicinal plants, and Buffer Zones or Medicinal Plants Development Areas, which are areas of forest lying close to the MPCAs and which are dedicated to the production of medicinal plants for community benefit. The MPCAs are generally established within forest reserves, and only with the consent of the local people. Each MPCA has a management committee that includes local people with a special interest in medicinal plants (e.g. local folk healers). Based on conservation biology and ease of management, FRLHT has calculated that 200-500 hectares is an ideal size for an MPCA, though, based on ground realities, those established actually range between 80 and 400 hectares. A network of MPCAs is now spreading throughout India Staff of FRLHT use drama to from an initial nucleus of 34 in the three southern states of Karnataka, Kerala and Tamil demonstrate how to establish a home Nadu. The MPCA network is designed to cover all major types of natural vegetation herbal garden during the medicinal and include a large proportion of India’s medicinal flora (about 40% of India’s 19,400 plants course in India (Case study 12). plant species are regarded as medicinal). Photo AH. Medicinal Plants Conservation Parks (MPCPs): These are centres dedicated to community development based on medicinal plants. Eighteen have already been established in the three southern states of India, mostly managed by non-governmental organisations (NGOs) that have good links to communities. The services offered typically include information (herbaria, seed collections, information on local herbal use), garden displays of medicinal plants, nurseries for the supply of seedlings, and educational and training programmes. Outreach activities include encouragement for villagers to develop enterprises based on medicinal plants.

Home Herbal Gardens (HHGs): This programme encourages the establishment of backdoor herb gardens to supply materials for the safe treatment of common medical conditions. It is targeted especially at housewives. 150,000 HHGs have been established so far in the three southern Indian states, 95% of them by economically very poor people. It is calculated that an HHG results in an average annual saving of 1600 Rupees ($36) per family (healthcare costs plus other expenses, such as travel to clinics and lost income), a considerable sum in the local context. An HHG costs about 180 Rupees ($4) to establish. A typical HHG contains about 15 species chosen for their medicinal, cultural and ecological appropriateness, including being straightforward and safe to use. Based on community choice, about five of the species are typically selected for their nutritional or veterinary properties, rather than for curing human disease. The HHGs provide for preventive, promotive and curative aspects of healthcare.

Central Support Services of FRLHT: These include research into plant taxonomy and identification, threat assessments for species, a herbarium and raw drug collection, and a comprehensive database on medicinal plants.

Project aims, activities and achievements

The purposes of mounting the course were to build an international network for conservation of medicinal plants, mainstream medicinal plant conservation within the concerned countries, and to share experiences on methodologies. The expectation was that, by the end of the course, participants would be knowledgeable about the

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theoretical foundations of various aspects of the subject – from the Indian perspective- and be able to judge their applicability to their own countries.

The project consisted of a two-week training course on conservation of medicinal plants. The 24 participants included nine from East Africa (Kenya, Tanzania and Uganda), five from India and ten from other Asian countries (China, Nepal, Pakistan). Their backgrounds included forest management, non-governmental organisations (NGOs), government officers, research and academia.

The project included an eight-month period of preparation resulting in a comprehensive package of educational exercises (lectures, group discussions, field visits, periods of reflection, and so on) and materials, with many printed papers provided. Each lecture included time for discussion and was followed by well-structured group exercises facilitated by trained helpers. Yogic exercises were included in the course to build confidence in traditional knowledge and practices related to healthcare. Participants were requested to provide their feedback and their thoughts on the course on a daily basis, allowing modifications to be made to the planned programme where practicable.

The process chosen for the development of the course was participatory and inclusive, involving a series of in-house meetings within FRLHT to establish the course design, structure and pedagogy, deal with administration and logistics, and select appropriate experts and facilitators. Outside experts were requested to contribute to aspects of the course, including Dr Pushpangadan (on intellectual property rights and benefit sharing) and Mr G Raju (on community-owned enterprises based on medicinal plants).

The first week of the course was based in Bangalore, with two excursions to nearby sites. The second week was devoted mainly to a tour of the three southern states of India, especially Tamil Nadu. A wide variety of sites were visited, including villages, forests, Participants at FRLHT’s course on Ayurvedic hospitals and herbal industries. medicinal plants observe an outdoor botany class at Nadukuppam High An evaluation was made by email following the course, and this showed that the course School, Tamil Nadu, India (Case study 12). was highly appreciated by the participants. Photo AH.

Follow-up and prospects

A number of practical developments have followed from the course, including continuing exchanges of ideas between some of the participants, the stimulus for the Dialogue meeting later held in China (see Case study 13 below), and serious consideration given to the introduction of MPCAs in Nepal and MPCPs in Kenya. Teams from FRLHT have visited Kenya (July 2008) and Uganda (September 2008) to continue the exchanges.

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Case study 13: China/India/UK Dialogue on conservation of Himalayan medicinal plants

Organisations and individuals responsible for the project: The project consisted of a workshop held at the Kunming Institute of Botany (KIB), Chinese Academy of Sciences from 24-27 April 2007, organised jointly by Professor Pei Shengji (KIB) and Dr A.C. Hamilton (Plantlife International). Participants in the Dialogue included Dr G.S. Goraya and Dr G.A. Kinhal (both of FRLHT, India), Jonathan Rudge and Dr A.C. Hamilton (Plantlife International) and the following from China: Ms Chen Cui (Alpine Economic Plant Institute, Yunnan Academy of Agricultural Sciences), Dr Huai Huyin (Yangzhou University), Mr He Yun (Vice-Head, Ludian Community), Mrs Huang Caizhi (Social Development Section, Yunnan Science and Technology Department), Mr Jiang Shiwei (Wanglang Nature Reserve, Sichuan), Dr Li Dezhu (Director, KIB), Mr Liu Huachun (Yunnan Xitao Green Pharmaceutical Co. Ltd), Professor Pei Shengji (KIB), Dr Wang Yuhua (Division Head, KIB), Mrs Wang Yun (High Technology Section, Development and Reformation Committee of Yunnan), Mr Wang Zhaojie (Yunnan Science and Technology Department), Mrs Yang Lixin (KIB), Professor Yang Yongping (Vice-Director, KIB), Dr Yang Yuming (The Nature Conservancy), Dr Zhong Mingchuan (Yunnan Provincial Forestry Department, Dr Zhou Dequn (The Nature Conservancy) and Ms Zhou Min (Yunnan Phytopharmaceutical Co Ltd).

Period of grant support: January-May 2007.

Aims

● Bring together organisations involved in conservation of Himalayan medicinal plants to learn from each other. ● Exchange information approaches, methods and experiences on conservation of Himalayan medicinal plants. ● Explore avenues of potential future collaboration. ● Establish regional strategies on conservation of Himalayan medicinal plants.

Comparisons between China and India

The experts attending the meeting were able to make informed comparisons between China and India relating to the conservation of Himalayan medicinal plants. The two countries are similar in terms of their vast areas and strong interests in traditional medicine and medicinal plants.

It was agreed that, in both countries, folk healers are the local people most knowledgeable about medicinal plants and the social group most concerned about their conservation. They provide the foundation of primary healthcare in rural areas in both countries. It was concluded that it is essential to engage the folk healers in efforts aimed at conservation of medicinal plants, if these are to stand any chance of success. It was further noted that local health traditions are being rapidly eroded in both countries and that there is an urgent need to document this knowledge for the benefit of future generations (with due regard paid to the protection of intellectual property rights). Traditional doctor associations have proved very useful for supporting local efforts aimed at medicinal plant conservation and for lobbying for official recognition of local medical traditions. There are many such associations in India, but few in China (the De

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Quing Amchi Association founded in Yunnan in 2006 is said to be the first association for traditional doctors practising Tibetan Medicine in China). The Ludian Medicinal Plants Conservation Association, which the project at Ludian has supported in its foundation (see Case study 10 above), is the first community group established in modern times in China for conservation of medicinal plants; most of its members are traditional doctors.

The conservation of medicinal plants and the development of traditional medicine will benefit greatly if official recognition is afforded to traditional systems of medicine. In both countries, some traditional systems of medicine are officially recognised and others not. For example, Ayurveda, but not Tibetan Medicine, is recognised in India, while, in China, official recognition is accorded to Traditional Chinese Medicine (TCM), Tibetan medicine, Uigur medicine, Dai medicine and some others, but not to Naxi or Li Su medicine. This is relevant to KIB’s project at Ludian (see Case study 10).

Generally, herbal industries in both countries are insensitive to conservation, although they sometimes adopt green slogans for promotional purposes with little basis in fact. Certification of herbal products is considered to be viable in both countries only when sales are to ethical western markets willing to pay the extra dollars required. One way to increase the involvement of industry in conservation would be to include a requirement for traceability on the Product Specification Sheets associated with Good Manufacturing Practice (GMP) or the Authentication Certifications associated with TCM. The organisation of growers or collectors of medicinal plants into associations could be a grassroots way of achieving greater sustainability, the deal between suppliers and industry being an assured supply of high quality medicinal plants in exchange for assured (and preferably high) prices.

India has a National Medicinal Plants Board which co-ordinates matters relating to Participants at the China/India/UK medicinal plants, including conservation and sustainable use. There is no equivalent Dialogue on conservation of Himalayan body in China, where TCM authorities concentrate more or less exclusively on the medicinal plants (Case study 13). quality of TCM products.

On resource management, there are some similarities between China and India in policies relating to the management of Himalayan medicinal plants. In both cases, very substantial areas of land are under the control of state forestry agencies, for example 24% of India’s land surface, or assigned to protected areas, including 20% of China’s forested land. Logging in natural forests has been prohibited in China since 1998/9 with an extensive programme of forest restoration, while logging is banned in India above an altitude of 1000 m. Local communities have extensive usifruct rights in state forests in India, including for medicinal plants, based on the submission and approval of management plans. Forests in China are all state owned, but subject to various management regimes – directly state managed, managed by local

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communities or leased to individual households (under the individual responsibility policy). One of the main tasks required to improve the management of medicinal plants in both countries is to identify and promote the most effective forms of agreement between forestry authorities and local communities, relating to the use and management of medicinal plants in forested areas.

It was agreed that the conservation of medicinal plants in the Himalayas of both China and India should be pursued primarily through in situ activities. Only in this way will it be possible to maintain much of the genetic diversity of the plants and ensure that they remain widely available to support local healthcare and livelihoods. New surveys are urgently needed to establish the current conservation status of the most important commercial species as existing Dr G.S. Goraya (centre right) and Dr assessments are mostly out-of-date. Further studies on different geographical scales – G.A. Kinhal of FRLHT share a lighter from the local forest patch to the regional – are needed to identify the most important moment during the Dialogue meeting plant areas for medicinal plants in the Himalayas, so that priority can be given to with Professor Yang Yongping, Vice- improving their management. It was further agreed that industry should be encouraged Director, Kunming Institute of Botany, to augment supplies of medicinal plants through promoting their cultivation. China (Case study 13). Photo AH. Areas identified for enhanced co-operation between China and India

It was suggested that China and India could usefully share information relevant to the conservation of medicinal plants, especially in relation to community-based approaches. Priority fields for information exchange include: (1) methods for conserving the genetic diversity of medicinal plants, including through the establishment of networks of community reserves; (2) methods for sustainable harvesting; (3) methods for documenting and revitalizing local health traditions; (4) techniques of propagation and cultivation for key species; and (5) methods for interacting with communities through project approaches (including for building local capacities).

There is substantial cross-border trade, mostly unregulated, between China and India, as there is between these and other countries in the Himalayas. Collaborative research between China, India and the other countries is needed to better understand this trade, and to provide a firm foundation for the development of collaborative policies.

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9. Testing a sustainability standard Case study 14

9. Testing a sustainability standard

Case study 14: Field consultation of the International Standard for Sustainable Wild Collection of Medicinal and Aromatic Plants (ISSC-MAP) (India)

Organisation responsible for the project: The work was organised by the Foundation for the Revitalisation of Local Health Traditions (FRLHT) in Bangalore – for description, see Case study 12 above.

Project team: From the Peace Institute: Mr Manoj Kumar Misra (external consultant). From FRLHT: Mr G.A. Kinhal, Mr Jagannatha Rao, Mr Indersha, Mr Suresh and Mr Arthur. The consultation was undertaken in a participatory way with members of Task Teams at Savandurga and Agumbe.

Period of grant support: March 2006 – June 2007.

Background: Development of the international standard

This project tested the applicability and practicality to India of a new international standard for the sustainable harvesting of wild medicinal and aromatic plants (ISSC-MAP) (Box 6). The development of the standard has been guided by a steering group from the Medicinal Plants Specialist Group of the International Union for Conservation of Nature (IUCN), the Savandurga Forest Reserve, Karnataka, German Federal Agency for Nature Conservation (BfN, Bundesamt für Naturschutz), WWF India (Case study 14). There are many Germany and TRAFFIC. This test in India was made too late to influence the first edition of bare granite outcrops within the reserve. the standard, published in January 2007, but may be taken into account in future versions. Photo AH.

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Box 6: Summary of the principles and criteria of the International Standard for Sustainable Wild Collection of Medicinal and Aromatic Plants (ISSC-MAP) (Case study 14)88.

Principle 1: Wild MAP populations should be maintained. There are three criteria, stipulating regular monitoring of the populations of the targeted MAPs and of the impacts of collection. The conservation status of the species must be regularly reviewed.

Principle 2: Negative environmental impacts should be prevented. The two criteria cover protection of especially sensitive species and habitats, and a requirement that management activities carried out for MAPs should not adversely influence the diversity and ecological functioning of the ecosystem as a whole.

Principle 3: MAP management and collection should be carried out under legitimate tenure arrangements, and comply with laws, regulations and agreements. Two criteria on these points.

Principle 4: Customary rights should be respected. One of the two criteria refers to benefit sharing through agreements with local communities.

Principle 5: MAP collection should be based on adaptive, practical, participatory and transparent management arrangements. There are five criteria, the key one being a requirement for a species/area management plan, which sets out adaptive, practical management processes and good collection practices. The remaining criteria cover monitoring, documentation (necessary anyway if certification is intended) and a stipulation that management should be transparent and participative.

Principle 6: Wild collection should support quality, financial and labour requirements of the market without sacrificing sustainability of the resource. The six criteria refer to market requirements (including avoiding the excessive harvesting of material that cannot be sold), traceability, financial viability, training and capacity-building, and worker safety and compensation.

The perceived need for this standard arose during a project which started in 2003 to revise Guidelines on the Conservation of Medicinal Plants, originally published by the World Health Organisation (WHO), IUCN and WWF in 199389. The standard is regarded as potentially useful for guiding the management of wild MAPs, including setting standards for certification. Companies or trade associations might wish to refer to the standard in setting their own Voluntary Codes of Practice.

Background: Management of medicinal and aromatic plants (MAPs) at the test sites

The test was carried out at two of the Medicinal Plants Development Areas (MPDAs) that FRLHT has been promoting in India for sustainable production of MAPs (Case study 12). They are Savandurga and Agumbe (Karnataka State). Both MPDAs lie within forest reserves managed by the Forest Department and both are already subject to Joint Forest Management (JFM). JFM is an arrangement in India whereby local communities have been granted the rights of use of certain forest products. FRLHT’s efforts to

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improve forest management at these sites with respect to MAPs has therefore built on existing structures and procedures.

According to FRLHT’s ideas, sustainability for MAPs is conceived as related to both ecology and livelihoods, with the quality of the product a further consideration. Aspects of livelihood sustainability include sustainable trade, sustainable income and security of healthcare. On the quality front, FRLHT points out that good quality material can be more medically effective and have a higher selling price than an equivalent quantity of indifferent material. It is a very common problem in India (and indeed around the world) for collectors to harvest sub-standard (e.g. under-size or immature) produce, even when they know that this is not sustainable. This is because collectors nearly always work on their own accounts and think that, if they don’t harvest the plants, someone else will.

Efforts to improve the management of MAPs at the two sites have benefited from applied research carried out since 2003 by FRLHT in collaboration with the Environmental Change Institute, University of Oxford, UK90, 91. The approach taken, combining participatory methods with scientific rigour, involves monitoring the recovery and regeneration of selected species within permanent sample plots. Three types of treatment have been compared: habitual harvesting (‘business as usual’), no harvesting, and improved harvesting (i.e. more sustainable). Improved harvesting methods were chosen by the Task Teams based on local knowledge. As an example, a method of harvesting which might be considered more sustainable could involve collecting only Members of the Task Team at Savandurga, parts of tubers, leaving the rest in the ground to re-grow, rather than removing the India, with a sign explaining methods of whole lot. sustainable harvesting for four species of medicinal plants (Case study 14). A Task Team has been carrying out this research at each site. These report to their local Photo AH. Village Forest Committees (VFCs, established for JFM). The Task Teams are composed of villagers with a special interest in medicinal plants, such as folk healers, collectors, members of women’s self-help groups, local traders in medicinal plants, and teachers. The landowner (the Forest Department) is represented. The Forest Department and the VFCs have granted the Task Teams a degree of devolved authority to manage the medicinal plants in the MPDAs.

Project aim, activities and achievements

The aim was to test the applicability of the sustainability standard at the two sample sites, particularly with reference to the ability of local communities to understand its principles and criteria, and translate them into practical reality. The assessment was carried out by an independent expert (Mr M.K. Misra) in April 2007, principally through village interviews and discussions. Earlier introductory visits by Mr Misra prepared the ground. The conclusions reached have benefited from responses to a simple questionnaire distributed to senior officials.

The consultation found that the local people at both sites had little understanding of the concept of sustainability prior to the efforts of FRLHT. There was also general ignorance about the legal status of most species, except for a few which had been banned from wild harvest. On marketing, it was agreed that the receipt of market information ahead of sales would be very useful for the local people.

Problems were reported in involving local traders in efforts to improve the management of MAPs, although at Savandurga, a local trader did eventually become interested, once

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he realised he could obtain higher prices for the fruits of Limonia if harvested according to sustainability guidelines. At Agumbe, a trader revealed that he had supported the work through advising his labour force to collect MAPs according to sustainable harvesting prescriptions. The example quoted involves fruits (Garcinia), just as at Savandurga. It may be that sustainability will be much easier to achieve with fruits than with bark or roots. In somewhat contradiction to the positive remarks of the Agumbe trader, women at Agumbe revealed that “labourers from outside the village were destroying their valuable resources”.

Overall, the evaluation concluded that the Task Team at Savandurga would be able to undertake a species-specific testing of the sustainability standard, having considerable knowledge of some aspects of MAPs – such as what, where, when and how to collect, although they seemed less certain about monitoring. On the other hand, it was also concluded that the Task Team at Savandurga would be unlikely to invest much time and other resources into actually achieving greater sustainability for MAPs unless circumstances change. Task Team members considered that they have insufficient authority over the forest to be sure of receiving financial rewards for any efforts that they make. The evaluation concluded that the Forest Department too is unlikely to make much effort to improve the management of medicinal plants, being short of time and committed individuals.

Demonstration of how to harvest the Except for one Forest Guard, local people at Agumbe had no idea about IUCN roots of the medicinal climber Decalepis categorisations for threatened species (as used in Red Data Books), so there were hamiltonii in an improved way (leaving doubts about how to apply Principle 1 of the sustainability standard. After discussion, it some of the root in the ground to regrow), was agreed that an alternative practical way to meet Principle 1 might be to build a local Savandurga, India (Case study 14). consensus about the endangerment of species, with a listing into three categories – Photo AH. those not to be collected, those that can be collected but carefully, and those that can be freely harvested. This does not, of course, take account of the wider conservation status of the species (considering its whole range), but only the local situation.

The overall conclusion from this consultation is that the sustainability standard is a well thought-out document and (after explanation) is understandable by all types of stakeholders at the level of Principles.

Prospects

There were questions about the practicality of some of the criteria and indicators in the Indian context, especially relating to expense. To quote: “The amount of money generated by the sale of these naturally occurring raw materials or by charging a cess (tax) will not be enough for the programmes mentioned in the document”. Another major issue identified is the question of who will be responsible for pursuing the sustainability standard at particular sites. Neither the Forest Department nor the local communities would have pursued sustainability for medicinal plants at Savandurga or Agumbe (let alone considered the sustainability standard), if they had been left to their own devises. NGOs such as FRLHT might sometimes be able to help, but “the main responsibility towards conservation should be of the herbal industry since it is the industry which is using the bioresources on a commercial scale”. According to the evaluation report, industry is only likely to act for reasons of financial advantage. Therefore it was concluded that there should be exploration of the fiscal measures needed to push industry towards greater involvement in MAP sustainability.

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PART 3: Commentary 10. Basis of the analysis

PART 3: Commentary

10. Basis of the analysis

This commentary reflects on lessons learnt from the case studies (numbered from CS1 to CS14). We realise that community development is a long-term process and that the field projects, as supported by Allachy Awards, have been short-term events. However, these periods of support generally represent time-slices in longer projects or are the initial stages of new projects intended to continue. Considering the range of phases in project development represented, we detect considerable similarities in the approaches and methods that the projects have adopted. Because of this, we feel that our case studies, taken together, represent a reasonable sample of experiences in community-based conservation of medicinal plants, allowing this analysis and preliminary conclusions on ‘lessons learnt’.

We recognise three fundamental elements for improving the conservation status of medicinal plants: (1) community groups that put conservation measures into effect; (2) favourable enabling environments; and (3) project teams as catalysts (Figure 2). In an ideal world, the enabling environment would be adequately structured and empowered to foster conservation without the need for an external stimulus. However, our world is far from ideal. In the case of our case studies, the catalysts have mostly been non- governmental organisations (NGOs), and in three instances research institutes (CS4, CS9, CS10). Other types of organisation could certainly take this role, such as specialist task forces established within government departments of forestry, culture or health. Religious organisations would seem ideally placed to work at this intersection between human welfare and environmental care.

Community group interested in medicinal plants

Project team Enabling environment

Figure 2. Three fundamental elements in medicinal plant conservation.

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10. Basis of the analysis

The suggestions on principles, activities and conditions mentioned here are organised into four sections based on the three elements shown in Figure 2, adding one more – on modes of interaction between the project team and the community group. While presenting these general conclusions, we are aware that they will not hold in all cases, and also that many projects will concentrate on only a few of these points. We recommend a modest approach, starting small and thinking carefully about how the project can best evolve as it proceeds. In any case, a fundamental principle in community-based conservation is to approach each site, social group or person as unique92.

For the purpose of discussion, we have used a social model that assumes three levels in socio-political organisation: (1) the community, (2) the district and (3) the state. The community is taken as the level of social organisation relevant to the direct field management of medicinal plants, and the district to be associated with the local headquarters of government agencies, such as forestry departments, and often dominated by people of particular ethnic or cultural type (and thus with certain established ways of relating to medicinal plants). In the real world, each place will have its own peculiarities in the way that society is organised and in the specific institutions relevant to the conservation of medicinal plants.

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11. Suggestions for project teams

All the projects used the concept of the project team, normally with a core element of a small number of highly motivated and educated people. Some members of most teams had a particular expertise in ethnobotany. In some cases, frequent contacts with the communities were made by younger members of the teams, with more senior members providing overall guidance and heavyweight assistance when negotiating with officials. It can be advantageous for some members of project teams to be of the same ethnicity as members of the communities (as was the case with many of the case studies), since they are then more likely to be knowledgeable about local customs and to have an intuitive understanding of how members of the community think.

Project teams should come well prepared with knowledge about the districts and communities with which they will work. Sources of information can include publications, grey literature (government reports etc), discussions with experts and, when resources allow, original research. Useful types of research can include the availability and viability of medicinal plants (CS9), livelihood analysis (CS7), stakeholder analysis (CS7, CS8, CS10) and commercial trade in medicinal plants (CS3).

A helpful activity can be a district stakeholder meeting (CS5, CS7,CS8) to determine how the project can best contribute to district development, identify key district partners for project involvement and suggest communities suitable for field activities. Criteria for selecting communities may include strong involvement with medicinal plants, the estimated likelihood that the benefits of the project will continue once it closes and the usefulness of sites for demonstration purposes.

Medicinal plant conservation is based on a local interest in medicinal plants. Therefore, identification of the institutions that support knowledge about medicinal plants will be an important task for project teams. Some of these institutions will be community-based, for example the family and collecting groups, but others will be represented at district level. These may include religious organisations (CS6), ethnic associations (CS8) and community forest groups (CS8). At Tooro (CS1), a district network for organic agriculture has been critical for project delivery.

The project in Kenya (CS4) established a formal advisory group composed of experts from a variety of disciplines (conservation, forestry, health, culture), meeting twice a year to keep the project on track and provide a valuable link between policy and the field. Many projects have benefitted from good relationships with a range of experts (in government agencies and NGOs, also academics), who have been able to offer assistance as occasion demands. Conservation of medicinal plants is a multi-disciplinary challenge involving botany, ecology, sociology and economics in which project teams may be able to deal with many matters directly themselves, but will certainly benefit from help at other times. Because of the great demands placed on project teams, especially field workers, it is useful if attention in projects is given to capacity building within the project team (CS6).

Project teams should normally include local community members, as was the practice with several of our case studies (e.g. CS2, CS8, CS10). Care must be paid in their selection to ensure that the individuals concerned are well received by the communities and not just serving their own interests. In CS8 and CS10, much of the continuing work in the communities was undertaken by local team members, backed up by regular supporting visits by professional team members – an arrangement which seems to have worked well.

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11. Suggestions for project teams

Most project teams have regarded awareness-raising to be an important task and community groups can also see this as a priority (CS10). The need for awareness-raising may seem surprising when many members of communities are in almost daily contact with medicinal plants, but the fact is that people have many things to think about as they go about their daily lives and perhaps it is a normal human trait to accept the existing state of affairs as ‘the way things are’ without thinking too much about how they might be improved. The case study of Ladakh (CS6) reported that villagers had not thought much about links between medicinal plants and their supply, even though they have high dependence on them medically. There was little understanding of the concept of sustainability among local people in Karnataka, despite their membership of Forest Community Groups and having a strong interest in medicinal plants (CS14).

The case studies have used a variety of techniques for awareness-raising about medicinal plants. The projects at Nyeri (CS4B), Ladakh (CS6) and Rasuwa (CS8) mounted herbal medical camps to treat sick people (connected with a religious pilgrimage at CS8). At Miandam (CS5), schools were identified as the key arena for awareness-raising and a schools’ programme was developed. Medicinal plant gardens for demonstration and training purposes have been established at Tooro (CS1) and Ludian (CS10).

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12. Interactions between project teams and communities

Joint research by community members and 12. Interactions between project a member of the project team (Mr Kaisang teams and communities N. Tamang of Manekor Society Nepal – on the right) (Case study 8). They are undertaking desktop research, compiling Project teams should be able to bring several qualities to their work, among them lists of medicinal plants collected by the commitment to particular communities, including for the longer term, although it community for sale and making sketch is recognized that there are many uncertainties about future funding, especially for maps showing where they occur. NGOs. Setbacks, as will inevitably happen, should be faced resolutely, as they have been Photo AH. in our case studies with drought (CS2) and civil unrest (CS1, CS4, CS5, CS8). If project teams join in ordinary village life when they visit communities, then this will help to build trust (CS5), an essential ingredient in community-based projects.

Project success depends on raising the capacities for conservation within communities. A basic task for project teams, as recognised in several case studies, is the capacity- building of community groups, these being seen as composed of local people with a special interest in medicinal plants. Such groups are perceived as instrumental for pushing forward development based on medicinal plants within their communities.

The existence of suitable, already established, groups is very helpful for accelerating progress. Their primary concerns may not necessarily be medicinal plants. In our case studies, the primary interests of established groups have included agriculture (CS1), tree planting (CS4A), healthcare (CS4B), women’s affairs (CS4C) and forest management (CS8).

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12. Interactions between project teams and communities

Where project teams have helped form new community groups (CS2, CS3, CS5, CS10), these have been composed of people with a central interest in medicinal plants. Attention has been paid to how their membership is constituted so that they are perceived as serving the whole community. In southern India (CS12, CS14), community groups (termed Task Forces) were formed prior to the present programme under the umbrella of existing Village Forest Committees. Their members include traditional doctors, representatives of women’s groups, local forestry staff and local traders in herbs (who proved to be little interested). Several projects have taken pains to ensure a good representation of men and women. In the case of Miandam (CS5), separate groups were established for each gender; in such cases, conservation success will depend on how well these groups can negotiate with one another to ensure a fair distribution of duties and benefits with respect to medicinal plants. In Ladakh (CS6), care was taken to ensure a fair representation of different religions, to avoid divisiveness along this line.

Local healers have proved very important members of new community groups (for example at CS5, CS10, CS12) and also women (CS3) – because of their home carer role. In the China/India/UK Dialogue (CS13), its was concluded that the inclusion of folk healers in community groups is critical to success. So far, migrant herders have not been included in any of the groups, as they eventually should be in the western Himalayas (CS5, CS6).

Joint research by project teams and community groups is an excellent way to identify key issues and devise practical solutions for their resolution. It allows the bringing together of knowledge and skills from both the scientific and customary domains. Project teams need to be cautious about imposing their own priorities on communities, which may be orientated more towards species and habitats than developmental concerns93.

A variety of participatory research and ethnobotanical techniques can be used74, 94. Subjects of research can include the identification of priority sites and species for conservation, the development of improved ways of managing wild medicinal plants, the promotion of cultivation, the use of herbal medicines for home healthcare, and the improvement of community income when medicinal plants are sold. Exchange visits are a useful tool for exchanging lessons between communities (CS2).

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Whatever their origins, community groups will require wider recognition within their communities if they are to succeed. In some cases official recognition will be needed (CS10). Another early job is to identify local priorities with respect to medicinal plants. These are most likely to be framed initially in terms of providing healthcare, income generation for the community or support for cultural traditions, and only secondarily in terms of species or habitats.

A key subject to address is how to strengthen the management of wild medicinal plants. This will require the establishment of a community group or groups to take care of the designated areas. The best social arrangements will vary according to the location. The community group with which the project team initially interacted at Miguye (CS4A) is itself taking charge of a self-declared 50-acre medicinal plants conservation area. On the other hand, it was thought best to establish a separate sub-committee to manage the two new medicinal plant conservation areas at Ludian (CS10). The Ludian Medicinal Plants Conservation Association (which deals with all matters relating to medicinal plants, not just these reserves) is represented on this sub-committee. When communities are collecting on each other’s lands, then an umbrella group is needed to bring all concerned together to agree on their various rights and responsibilities (CS8). With our case studies, the motivations behind the commitments of community members to join the management teams of conservation areas have included their concern for maintaining both healthcare and income (CS4A, CS6, CS8, CS10).

The ability of community groups to improve the management of wild medicinal plants will depend on their recognised authority over the land or at least over its medicinal resources. There is thus a close connection to land tenure and resource rights. There is often a lack of clarity about these matters in the sorts of places where the case study projects are sited. Several of these projects have obtained (CS8, CS10) or are seeking (CS4A) legal recognition of their rights over the resources. In the case of Rasuwa (CS8), these rights have been assigned within the broader framework of a joint forest management agreement. Similar arrangements will be needed at Sango Bay (CS2) and Mbeere (CS4C), once agreements have been reached on the rights and duties of the communities in the forest reserves with respect to medicinal plants.

Priority areas and species for improved management need to be identified. Several different geographical scales may be relevant to developing the management system, with Farmer growing chiraito (Swertia chirayita) management prescriptions becoming increasingly precise as the scale decreases. The first on the banks between his terraced fields, step is to establish the boundaries of the medicinal plants conservation area as a whole. Chilime, Nepal (Case study 8). At Ludian (CS10), this was achieved through the two villages concerned each selecting Photo Ram Poudel. that part of its community forest with the best representation of medicinal plants. These areas are quite large at 300 and 330 hectares; in such cases, it is likely that medicinal plants will be concentrated in smaller patches. At Rasuwa (CS8), about six such smaller patches were recognised within the Community Forest for which a trial management plan was developed, and these patches were then subject to more detailed attention. Although this stage was not reached with any of the case studies, community groups will eventually need to develop monitoring systems based on even smaller areas. One suggestion is to establish a number of fixed points within a medicinal plants conservation area, which the management team can visit annually to jointly assess the state of the species and their habitats.

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There are many reasons why populations of wild plants may rise and fall – reasons that will often be not or barely understood. Because of this, an adaptive approach should be taken to the management of wild medicinal plants, based on periodic monitoring, reflection on the results of this monitoring (and using any other information available), agreement by the management team on the prescriptions needed to maintain or enhance the populations of plants, and then public pronouncement and enforcement of the prescriptions (Figure 3)95. Management tools can include rotational harvesting, collection quotas, specifications for methods of harvesting96, steps to encourage regeneration or regrowth, and enrichment planting (envisaged at CS3 & CS4C). Named collectors can be given specific collection rights at specific places to avoid competitive collection.

Inventory and any Reflections and agreement on additional information management prescriptions

A community group involved in the conservation of medicinal plants – Monitoring Management prescriptions (made by community known to the community) Kwamachembe Womens Self-help Group, Mbeere, Kenya (Case study 4C). The group is receiving equipment and materials provided by the project. Photo: Peris Kariuki Figure 3. Stages in adaptive management.

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When communities are collecting medicinal plants from government land, for example in protected areas or forest reserves (such as in CS2, CS4C, CS8), then agreements will be needed between the communities and government agencies on the rights and responsibilities of the communities in the reserves. Specific agreements on medicinal plants can be incorporated as special sections within general agreements on joint forest management (JFM). JFM is already common in India and Nepal (CS8, CS13) and is being developed in East Africa. There is much to be said for incorporating medicinal plants into JFM agreements, given the high value that communities usually accord these resources. Their high status has the potential to enhance community interest in the conservation of the forest as a whole. Project teams can help communities negotiate terms of agreement on medicinal plants with forestry departments, as happened at Rasuwa (CS8).

If cultivation is considered (as with most of our case studies), then there are questions about how nurseries are to be established and which species to plant. From experience in Kenya (CS4), it has been suggested that nurseries are best placed under communal management, perhaps associated with schools or churches, although at Rasuwa (CS8), good progress was made with private nurseries. Nurseries at the community level can sometimes be usefully linked to resource centres at the district level, as at Tooro (CS1) and in southern India (CS12). Growing medicinal plants alone may not always be economically viable and some of the case studies have moved towards mixed nurseries, including such sellable commodities as the seedlings of fuelwood and fruit trees (CS3, CS4A, CS4C). Species to grow in nurseries should have been previously identified as local priorities, but other medicinal species can be offered, such as those determined as conservation priorities through research in urban markets. Such species might be taken up by local entrepreneurs willing to take a risk in the interest of potential profit. Seedlings from nurseries should generally be sold (rather than distributed free- of-charge), because it is known that they will then be given greater care and anyway nurseries should aim at financial self-sufficiency.

Cultivation techniques should have been already established for medicinal plants that are distributed to the public (CS8). Several of the case study projects initiated research into the propagation and cultivation of species, where this information was not locally known (CS2, CS3, CS4B, CS9). Research on domestication should take account of local knowledge about the species – traditional doctors, in particular, often grow a variety of medicinal plants in their backyards24, 39, 97 and may be aware of especially promising local varieties. Where possible, seeds or other propagation materials for nursery trials should be obtained from local sources, as an aid to the conservation of genetic diversity and because these plants will likely be adapted to local conditions.

Cultivation protocols developed by projects should be relevant to the environments where the plants will be grown and to the people who will grow them. A major consideration can be a severe shortage of agricultural land, as at the localities of many of our case studies. In East Africa, it has been recommended that medicinal plants should be integrated into farming systems, for instance inter-planted among food crops or grown in multi-layered home gardens (CS1, CS4). According to theories of organic agriculture, the growing of a diversity of plants may generate benefits across species, for instance some medicinal species may help to protect food crops against disease. In the Himalayas, the use of marginal land such as on field margins has been recommended for the planting of medicinal plants. This avoids the displacement of food crops, which could present an unacceptable risk to livelihood security (CS8).

FRLHT in Bangalore, which is very experienced in the field of home herbal healthcare, has developed a protocol for introducing herbal gardens into homesteads (CS12).

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Recommended actions within each community include: (1) a listing of diseases and medical conditions currently treated with herbal medicines; (2) the establishment of local criteria for prioritising these diseases and conditions (for example, effectiveness of treatments, prevention of loss of income, and so on); (3) prioritisation of the diseases and conditions, and listing the species used for their treatments; (4) a community workshop to prioritise the species for each disease or condition, to include the participation of local healers, western-trained doctors and other experts; (5) desk research on the species to compare with information already available – resulting in a shortlist of about 15 species to recommend to the communities; and (6) training trainers from NGOs to deliver the herbal package. This is quite similar to the approach followed at Tooro (CS1), though Tooro used a greater number of species (32), with only half selected on the basis of local knowledge and the rest ‘internationally known’ herbs such as garlic and rosemary.

At Bunza (CS3), local people prefer to use fresh medicinal materials, which can result in the harvesting of medicinal plants several times a day. Much of the material is wasted. The existence of such practices demonstrates that project teams and community groups need to take an interest in the details of how plants are collected and used, rather than just making lists of medicinal species. In the Bunza case, the project team provided training in more efficient methods of preparing and storing herbal concoctions.

Lack of good market information is a major constraint for communities in maximising their income (e.g. CS3, CS5, CS7). A start has been made at Rasuwa (CS8) to tackle this problem by undertaking a survey of traders in Kathmandu to identify those prepared to pay better prices. This project has also tried to improve terms of trade between communities and roadhead traders by encouraging discussions between them so that communities are more aware of market requirements, including proper cleaning and sorting of materials, which should help them obtain better prices. The community group and project team at Ludian (CS10) are planning to help local producers form a cooperative to improve their market information through assisting with access to the internet, on which current market prices for Chinese herbs are posted. In Uganda, JERA (CS3) has tried to develop improved linkages between producers at Bunza and traditional doctors in Kampala, based on the mutually beneficial formula of assured supplies of good quality produce for fair prices.

There is still a long way to go in improving sales prices for communities. One approach is value addition. Even simple steps are often needed – collecting the right species, cleaning, drying, grading and storage. JERA has helped a number of communities near Bunza (CS3) develop primary processing for medicinal plants, including pulverisation to prepare powders from raw materials and even manufacture of some finished products. The project team at Chamoli (CS7) has identified some potential opportunities for communities, being aware that some species growing in abundance at Chamoli have value in Indian markets, but are not currently being commercially collected by the Chamoli people. Certification as a way of obtaining market advantage is probably not usually a viable option when selling to local markets in East Africa and the Himalayas (CS14), but might work when sales are directed towards ethically minded consumers in Europe or the USA. The often prohibitively high costs of certification can be reduced to more realistic levels if local certification companies emerge, as has recently happened with organic certification in Uganda.

Community groups should engage in activities to ensure that traditional knowledge about medicinal plants is remembered and appreciated within their communities. Methodologies can include the establishment of cultural centres (CS8), the development of medicinal plant gardens (CS1, CS10) and schools’ programmes based on local ethnobotany (CS5).

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Medicinal Plants Conservation Park, 14. Suggestions for the enabling Gramodaya, India (Case study 12). The environment ladies are buying seedlings of medicinal plants to take back to their villages. Participants in the international Governments can create more favourable conditions for the conservation of medicinal conservation course in the background. plants if their policies are supportive of indigenous groups and minorities. They can Photo AH. do so through recognising that the “knowledge and experiences (of such people) are valuable, interesting, important, and relevant to outsiders, scientists, and government workers – and that it has a wider significance than to just their own village”3. Such acknowledgement of the value of traditional knowledge has not always been achieved. In the past, it has “tended to be shunned, denigrated and seen as inauthentic by health officials and foresters”3. This problem is not confined to East Africa and Himalayan countries. From the late 19th century, ‘scientific’ foresters in Britain accorded the same low value to traditional knowledge of forest management, only correcting this stance towards the end of the 20th century, by which time most traditional knowledge had been lost98.

Several of the countries of the case studies have national organisations serving as centres of information on medicinal plants. They include government-connected research institutes, such as the National Museums of Kenya (CS4) and the Kunming Institute of Botany in China (CS10), and well established NGOs like FRLHT in India

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(CS12, CS14). These organisations have demonstrated their abilities to stimulate conservation and development based on medicinal plants, and should be properly supported. There is potential for other types of organisation to become similarly engaged, such as national women’s groups, religious organisations and ethnic associations.

Organisations offering services on medicinal plants should have policies on information sharing about medicinal plants that are consistent with the ‘access and benefit sharing’ requirements of the Convention on Biological Diversity99, 100. From the perspective of community-based conservation, the key consideration is that information on medicinal plants useful for community development is available to the communities. Of course, it is necessarily to take safeguards against theft of intellectual property. However, much of the information useful for communities will be about medicinal plants commonly used at household level or which are commonly traded. In most cases, these will be well known medicinal species, with information about them already published in the scientific literature. Concerns about theft of intellectual property should accordingly be reduced.

Community development based on medicinal plants is a cross-disciplinary business, not adequately covered by any one government ministry. Consideration should be given to the establishment of one-stop resource centres for medicinal plants at the district level, similar to the Medicinal Plants Conservation Parks that FRLHT has been encouraging in India (CS12). There are already plans to develop such centres in Kenya perhaps under the auspices of the Ministry of Culture and Social Services. Many botanical gardens are in a good position to take on this role (CS1)101.

Conservation departments should note a key finding of the Himalayan Important Plant Area (IPA) project (CS11) that important areas for medicinal plants can be recognised on several geographical scales36. We have concentrated on the smaller of these scales here, as relevant to community conservation. On the larger scale, patterns in the distribution of medicinal plants should be identified and taken into account in the development of protected area networks. The principal objective should be to capture a good sample of the total genetic diversity of medicinal species, considering not only conditions today but also anticipated environmental change. On this basis, the Himalayan IPA project (CS11) recommended that protected areas in the Himalayas should ideally be sited to give a good west-east coverage along the axis of the range, each should have a wide altitudinal range, and they should be connected to one another by ecological corridors.

Forests are very important sources of medicinal plants both in East Africa and the Himalayas. Governments in all the countries of our case studies have moved towards greater recognition of community involvement in forest management over recent years. However, there is still little experience within forestry departments about how best to achieve this with respect to medicinal plants. It would be useful if the research branches of forestry departments could establish standard operating procedures which local forestry officers and park officials102 can then use, providing step-by-step guidance for developing practical arrangements with their local communities. Forest policy in China is unique in devolving much of the responsibility for forest management down to the level of the individual household, rather than the community, as is normal in most countries103. This unusual approach may prove helpful for improving the conservation status of many medicinal plants, once forest owners realise the possibilities that they offer for nurturing good populations of valuable medicinal plants.

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In the case of agriculture, there is an urgent need to develop protocols for the propagation and cultivation of important medicinal plants and make this information known to communities. Another area where more effort is required is in improving the availability of good quality planting materials, often a stumbling block in developing community cultivation.

With respect to health policies, most of the countries of the case studies have granted increased recognition to traditional medicine over recent years, but there remain some gaps, as with Tibetan medicine in India and Nepal, and Naxi and Li Su medicine in China (CS10). The development of national healthcare systems drawing on all available medical expertise will be a complex and taxing business requiring many years of work38, 103, 104.

The case studies have revealed a low level of interest among local traders in helping develop improved systems of management for medicinal plants, although with glimmers of hope at Bunza (CS3) and Rasuwa (CS8). Probably little can be expected from the great majority of herbal and pharmaceutical companies acting on their own initiative and government will have to enact tougher regulations in favour of sustainability for much progress to be made (CS14).

On the cultural side, policies should try and tackle the problem of rapidly eroding traditional knowledge of medicinal plants10, 38, 73, 105. Such knowledge is best preserved through its practical application, but documentation is also urgently needed. The experience in Kenya (CS4) is that communities can effectively document their indigenous knowledge, once they have been provided with the tools to do so.

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Ladakh Society for Traditional Medicines

Cover photo: A small part of the medicinal plant market at Dali, Yunnan, China. Photo AH.

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MEDICINAL PLANTS IN CONSERVATION AND DEVELOPMENT Print: www.crownlitho.co.uk Design: www.rjpdesign.co.uk ISBN: 978-1-904749-15-8