New Yardstick for Medicinal Plant Harvests

摘要

Every year more than 400,000 tons of medicinal and aromatic plants from approximately 3,000 species are traded internationally, according to TRAFFIC, a nonprofit '? watchdog group that monitors commerce in natural products. (Up to 70,000 species are used medicinally worldwide, most of them locally.) Such a growth in demand for these plants threatens natural resources, since about 80% of commercially traded species are gathered from the wild, according to the World Conservation Union (IUCN). in February 2007, several groups concerned about potential adverse effects of this rise on plant habitats announced an international standard designed to preserve nature's medicine chest for future generations. A year later, the standard appears to be bearing fruit.The IUCN Medicinal Plant Specialist Group, IUCN Canada, the German Federal Agency for Nature Conservation, WWF Germany, and TRAFFIC proposed the standard and coordinated several rounds of international vetting in 2005 and 2006. The new International Standard for Sustainable "Wild Collection of Medicinal and Atomatic Plants (ISSC-MAP) is intended to balance the needs of people whose traditions and livelihood depend on these species with the plants' long-term survival in their native habitats.