What you can do
Everyone can play an important role in the conservation of medicinal plants. All efforts - large and small - will contribute, provided that everyone pulls together in the same direction.
"To achieve such synergy requires that thought be given to priorities about what they can practically do, within the context of the bigger picture." (Think global, act local - Patrick Geddes, 1915).
Here's a short list of suggestions of what people might do
- Community development workers, through ensuring that herbal resources are available for local treatments, income generation and cultural strengthening.
- Land and resource managers, through giving special attention to the conservation and sustainable use of these often neglected resources.
- Manufacturers of medicines and botanical products, through taking care that their botanical ingredients come from sustainable sources.
- Consumers, through giving attention to the sustainability of their herbal purchases.
- Policy makers, through creating laws and regulations that favour the conservation of medicinal plants, and their equitable and sustainable use.
- Scientists, through working with communities to bring the benefits of science (combined with local knowledge) to devising solutions to issues of conservation and development.
- Those using local plants for treatments, knowing that these resources are still available.
- Everyone, through the availability from trade and industry of existing or novel medicines.
- Local communities, proud to retain plants that are part of their cultural heritage.
- Traditional doctors, who can continue to follow their professions.
- Those involved in the medicinal plant trade (such as collectors of wild plants, growers, traders and manufacturers), assured of a continuing income.
- Crop breeders and healthcare developers, through having access to a diversity of species and varieties of medicinal plants to develop new crops and medicines.
- And, of course, all those who care for conservation of the botanical diversity of the world as a whole, aware of its endangerment and the special responsibility of current generations for its survival.
