Mgmt and trade of medicinal plants

Mgmt and trade of medicinal plants

Feb 2007 - A new standard 
to promote sustainable management and trade of wild medicinal 
and aromatic plants was launched Friday in Nuremberg at 
Biofach, the World Organic Trade Fair. The standard is needed 
to ensure plants used in medicine and cosmetics are not 
over-exploited. 
About 15,000 species, or 21 percent of all medicinal and 
aromatic plant species are at risk, according to the report by 
the Medicinal Plant Specialist Group of the IUCN's Species 
Survival Commission that sets forth the new standard. 
More than 400,000 metric tons of medicinal and aromatic plants 
are traded every year, and about 80 percent of these species 
are harvested from the wild. 
Flowers of the threatened medicinal tree ashoka, Saraca asoca 
(Roxb) de Wilde, grows in the state of Karnataka, India. The 
dried flowers are used to treat syphilis, the bark for 
dysentery, and the seeds for urinary diseases. 
Almost 70,000 species are involved, many of them in danger of 
over-exploitation or extinction through over-harvesting and 
habitat loss. In India, for instance, 319 medicinal plants are 
listed as Threatened by IUCN-the World Conservation Union. 
In Ecuador, one of the best known medical herbs in the world, 
Cascarilla cinchona pubescens - the original source of the 
anti-malarial drug quinine - may be threatened as a result of 
over-exploitation, according to the global conservation 
organization WWF. Today the herb is used to treat a variety of 
ailments, from upset stomach to immune system problems. 
In Eastern Europe, unsustainable collection of the wild herb 
Pheasant's eye, Adonis vernalis, used to treat cardiac 
ailments, has led to declines throughout the plant's range, 
says WWF, and today the species is protected from collection 
in many countries. 
In the United States, large quantities of American ginseng, 
Panax quinquefolius, and goldenseal, Hydrastis canadensis, are 
collected in the wild. Although much of the ginseng exported 
from the United States is now cultivated, enough collection of 
the wild plant occurs that trade in the species is now 
regulated. 
American ginseng growing in New York State where a dealer 
permitting system, conservation practices, and certification 
procedures are in place. 
Both ginseng and goldenseal are listed on Appendix II of the 
Convention on International Trade in Endangered Species, which 
allows trade in these plants only through a permitting system. 

About 90 percent of the ginseng exported from the United 
States each year goes to countries in East Asia. The United 
States imports hundreds of thousands of tons of many different 
herbs each year to support its $3 billion market. 
Following extensive consultation with plant experts and the 
herbal products industry, the International Standard for 
Sustainable Wild Collection of Medicinal and Aromatic Plants, 
ISSC-MAP, was drawn up by the Medicinal Plant Specialist 
Group. 
The German Federal Agency for Nature Conservation was involved 
in the consultation along with WWF-Germany, and the wildlife 
trade monitoring network TRAFFIC, plus industry associations, 
companies, certifiers and community-based nongovernmental 
organizations. 
"Traders and companies, collectors and consumers must share 
the responsibility for maintaining populations of medicinal 
plants which are valuable natural resources," said Susanne 
Honnef of TRAFFIC. 
"The ISSC-MAP principles and criteria show how this can be 
achieved in practice," she said. 
The standard is based on six principles - maintaining 
medicinal and aromatic plant resources in the wild, preventing 
negative environmental impacts, legal compliance, respecting 
customary rights, applying responsible management practices, 
and applying responsible business practices. 
Traditional Medicinals, a California herbal medicine company, 
is testing the application of the new standard to the 
collection of bearberry, a shrub whose leaves are used to 
treat the kidney, bladder and urinary tract. 
"Our German supplier was able to prove the sustainability of 
their bearberry sources, and we are keen to see how the newly 
developed ISSC-MAP criteria apply to this trade. Sustainable 
supplies will mean long-term benefits for the local people who 
rely on the bearberry trade for supplementary income," said 
Josef Brinckman, vice-president of Traditional Medicinals. 
Detlev Drenckhahn, president of WWF-Germany, has been involved 
in consultations for development of the new standard. 
"I welcome the launch of this new standard, which presents an 
important step in ensuring the sustainable use of natural 
pharmaceutical products," said Professor Detlev Drenckhahn, 
president of WWF-Germany. "We’d like to see other companies 
use the standard and see how it works in practice for their 
benefit." 
One of the many challenges in applying a sustainable standard 
to the collection of wild medicinal and aromatic plants, MAP, 
is that the dependence of local communities on these resources 
for health and livelihood security is rarely assessed or 
recorded. 
Little research on harvesting techniques has been done on how 
to collect wild MAP species sustainably. 
Maximum quotas for wild collection of medicinal and aromatic 
plant species are often based on "overly simple and untested 
assumptions about the relationship between available supply 
and regeneration" of these plants, according to the Medicinal 
Plant Specialist Group. 
Products, uses, and markets based on medicinal and aromatic 
plant species are numerous and diverse, and there is a wide 
proliferation of labels and claims - such as organic and fair 
trade - which imply but do not provide a means of verifying 
sustainable wild collection. 
Finally, long and complex source-to-market supply chains make 
tracing a product back to its source extremely difficult, the 
specialist group says. 
Still, the new standard provides a benchmark to work with. 
Monitoring is an important part of the new standard. 
Collection and management practices must be based on adequate 
identification, inventory, assessment, and monitoring of the 
target species and collection impacts. 
The standard provides that the conservation status of target 
MAP species and populations is assessed and regularly 
reviewed. 
Woman gathers herbs in Nepal's Himalayan highlands. 
Negative impacts to other wild species, the collection area, 
and neighboring areas caused by collection activities must be 
prevented, especially if rare, threatened, and endangered 
species and habitats might be affected. 
The standard provides that collection activities are carried 
out in a transparent manner with respect to management 
planning and implementation, recording and sharing 
information, and involving stakeholders. 
Managers will work to support quality, financial, and labor 
requirements of the market without sacrificing sustainability 
of the resource, and will prevent and minimize the collection 
of plants unlikely to be sold. 
Managers will also provide adequate work-related health, 
safety, and financial compensation to collectors and other 
workers, and they will ensure that workers have adequate 
training, supervision, and experience to comply with the 
requirements of the new standard. 

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