Medicinal Aromatic Plants and trade.

 Plants were the first medicines and remain an important tool for treating illness in most cultures. Today the commercial demand for these medicines exceeds supply in many cases, and the unregulated collection of these plants has the potential to endanger plant species’ survival in the wild. Given the expanding use of herbal remedies, coupled with the minimal practiced cultivation of medicinal herbs-it is reasonable to conclude that collection of plants is often unsustainable.

 For example: • in Ecuador, Cascarilla cinchona pubescens - the original source of the potent antimalarial drug Quinine-may be threatened as a result of overexploitation; • in Eastern Europe, unsustainable collection of the wild herb Pheasant’s eye, Adonis vernalis - which is used to treat cardiac ailments - has led to dramatic declines throughout the plant’s range, and today the species is protected from collection in many countries; • Orchids are an important ingredient in traditional Chinese medicines; yearly, tens of thousands of orchids (genus Dendrobium) are used to make products that are shipped to Hong Kong for consumption; • in the United States of America, American ginseng (Panax quinquefolius) and Goldenseal (Hydrastis Canadensis) are collected in the wild in large quantities. Although much of the ginseng exported from the United States of America is now cultivated, enough collection of the wild plant occurs that trade in the species is now carefully regulated. Both ginseng and Goldenseal are listed in Appendix II of the Convention on International Trade in Endangered Species of Wild Fauna and Flora (CITES), which regulates international trade through a permitting system.

Much of MAP trade is within the informal sector and within borders, not between, so it is difficult to accurately estimate and regulate. International trade of about 20 plant species is regulated because of the pressures of herbal medicine, and an additional 200 plant species used in herbal remedies are regulated in trade, largely as a result of pressure from the herbal medicine market. In Europe many countries regulate or prohibit trade in species whose populations have evidenced decline in recent years, however, in many countries where endangered MAPs are found - particularly in Africa and Latin America - there is insufficient protective legislation and what laws exist are often inadequately enforced. In the cases where MAP species are protected from trade, smuggling occurs if the plants are rare and valuable enough to risk the consequences. For example, wild Asian ginseng, which grows only in two provinces of far-eastern Russia and one province of the People’s Republic of China, is protected from trade in these two countries. But the finest specimens of wild Asian ginseng sell for tens of thousands of dollars per kilogram, creating a tremendous incentive for poachers, and as many as 600 kilograms of wild ginseng are smuggled out of Russia every year. Sustainable ethical wild harvesting of MAPs, and an increased supply of cultivated specimens, helps protect species. Historically and unfortunately cultivation has been attempted only when wild populations were already threatened by overexploitation. 

Source: Adapted from The World Wide Fund for Nature Conservation, 2010