Conservation of Medicinal Plants in Central America and the Caribbean

摘要

The issues of medicinal plant conservation have been the focus of many formal and informal discussions at national and international forums, seminars, workshops, conferences and congresses in the last 10 years. Many actions are recommended in declarations and documents like the Guidelines on the Conservation of Medicinal Plants (1993). From the global perspective, many questions relating to the conservation status of medicinal plants still remain unanswered. It is certainly a long way between the documents and the practical implementation of the proposed actions. Various conservation methods were mentioned in the past by many authors and are being repeated at present. These methods include protection of wild species in-situ, cultivation in botanical gardens, collection of germplasm, for establishment of germplasm banks, public information campaigns and others. Can the efforts of institutions, the scientific community and community based projects have a real impact, toward the conservation of medicinal plants? In a pragmatic way, Caribbean and Central American countries are adopting common policies on medicinal plant conservation and establishing collaborative projects and appropriate agreements for research programs in order to achieve a new status for the protection of medicinal plants diversity. Regional cooperation in ethnobotanical and, taxonomic studies, scientific validation of the significant use of medicinal plants and development of conservation activities are being encouraged. An example of this cooperation is the TRAMIL Program (Scientific Research on Medicinal Plants in the Caribbean Basin) coordinated by enda-caribe since 1982. TRAMIL has focused on conserving traditional community knowledge of folk remedies, and providing scientific validation of safety and efficacy needed to encourage national health policies that include traditional medicine in primary health care programs. The main objective of the TRAMIL Program has been validation and evaluation of useful information on of the local popular therapeutic traditions, through scientific studies conducted by a network of collaborators in the Caribbean Basin. In Honduras, Nicaragua, Panama, and the Dominican Republic, four of the countries in which the TRAMIL Program is currently well established in local and national institutions, interest within government ministries in linking sustainable use of biodiversity to other community benefits, such as public health, has been particularly encouraging. In these countries and with support of a GEF Medium Size Project GF/2713-01-4356: "Biodiversity Conservation and Integration of Traditional Knowledge on Medicinal Plants in National Primary Health Care Policy in Central America and Caribbean " the TRAMIL Program will add a forest ecosystem conservation component to the existing regional applied research program on traditional remedies derived from medicinal plants. The project has been developed by enda-caribe (under responsibility of the regional office in Nicaragua), with assistance and in-kind support from the Medicinal Plant Specialist Group (MPSG) of the IUCN.