[Pirateninfo] Herbal medicine boom threatens plants

[pcl at jpberlin.de]

Nicht mehr taufrisch (New Scientist Online News 08 January 04), aber 
ging wohl noch nicht über den Verteiler.
Gruß,
Peter.

Herbal medicine boom threatens plants

The multimillion-pound boom in herbal medicine is threatening to wipe 
out up to a fifth of the plant species on which it depends, wrecking 
their natural habitats and jeopardising the health of millions of 
people in developing countries. And yet the herbal medicines industry 
has been accused of doing nothing about it.
Most people around the globe use herbal medicine for everyday 
healthcare, with as many as 80 per cent relying on it in some 
countries. But two-thirds of the 50,000 medicinal plants in use are 
still harvested from the wild, and research to be published later in 
2004 suggests that between 4000 and 10,000 of them may now be 
endangered.
A study by Alan Hamilton, a plant specialist from the global 
environment network WWF, will point out that the market for herbal 
remedies in North America and Europe has been expanding by about 10 
per cent a year for the last decade and the world market is now 
thought to be worth at least £11 billion. Many of the plants are 
harvested by poor communities in India and China whose livelihoods 
will suffer if the plants die out.
"It's an extremely serious problem," Hamilton told New Scientist. He 
is a member of the World Conservation Union's Medicinal Plants 
Specialist Group, and has drawn his estimates of the number of 
species at risk from expert analyses of the IUCN's Red List of 
threatened plants. His study is due to be published in Biodiversity 
and Conservation.

Anti-cancer drugs 
Hamilton has also helped compile a report, Herbal Harvests with a 
Future, which is due to be unveiled next week by the conservation 
group Plantlife International. "With demand and commercialisation 
growing fast, the future of the wild plants which have helped most of 
humanity for centuries is now more uncertain than it has ever been," 
says the group's Martin Harper.
One species highlighted by Plantlife as being under threat is tetu 
lakha (Nothapodytes foetida), a small tree found in rainforests in 
south India and Sri Lanka and used for anti-cancer drugs in Europe. 
Others include a saw-wort known as costus or kusta (Saussurea lappa) 
from India whose root is used for chronic skin disorders, and the 
tendrilled fritillary (Fritillaria cirrhosa) from Sichuan, China, 
used to treat respiratory infections.
Although the crisis has been looming for years, Plantlife accuses the 
herbal medicine industry of failing to ensure the sustainability of 
its supplies. It has established that 11 of 16 herbal companies in 
the UK, for instance, harvest all the plants they sell from the wild, 
and the remaining five grow only a small proportion.
A leading UK natural skin care company, The Body Shop International, 
accepts that it does not grow its own medicinal plants, but insists 
that it is environmentally aware. "The protection of flora and fauna 
is an integral part of The Body Shop approach to products. We do not 
source materials derived from endangered and threatened species," 
says a company spokeswoman in London.

Health fads 
But Plantlife says awareness of the environmental problems among 
companies in general is limited and sometimes vague. "Given the scale 
of the threat, this is alarming," Harper warns. "It is time for the 
industry to join forces with environmental organisations to ensure 
that herbal harvests have a sustainable future."
Another leading international expert on medicinal plants, Gerard 
Bodeker from Green College, Oxford, thinks that the assessments of 
the crisis by Hamilton and Plantlife are conservative. Most of the 
processes involved in supplying the growing market for herbal 
remedies are "the result of unsustainable and often destructive 
practices driven by poverty", he says. 
The industry is characterised by changing health fads which keep 
favouring different plants, so there is little incentive to 
sustainably produce particular species, he argues. "They are eating 
their own nest. They are not replacing what they take."
The market for African cherry (Prunus africana), the bark of which is 
popular in Europe as a treatment for prostate enlargement, has 
collapsed because too many trees have been destroyed. In the past the 
trees, which grow in Africa's mountain regions, survived because 
traditionally less than half of their bark was harvested.
But according to a recent study by Kristine Stewart, from consultants 
Keith and Schnars in Florida, growing commercial pressures have led 
to whole forests being stripped or felled. Exports of dried bark 
halved between 1997 and 2000 and the main exporter, Plantecam, had to 
close its extraction factory in Cameroon (Journal of 
Ethnopharmacology, vol 89, p 3). 

Lack of education 
In its report, Plantlife urges the industry to invest in cultivation. 
It also proposes the introduction of a kite mark to identify products 
that have been sustainably harvested.
"There is a complete lack of awareness and lack of education amongst 
consumers," Bodeker says. Although those that use herbal medicines 
might be expected to be more environmentally aware than most, that 
does not seem to be the case. "They don't make the links," he adds.
The UK's largest association of herbal practitioners, the National 
Institute of Medical Herbalists, is very concerned. "We all need to 
work together to address this issue and to put pressure on 
suppliers," the institute's Trudy Norris says.