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Draft Note on Need
for a National
Medicinal Plants
Conservation Policy
Need for National Policy on
Medicinal Plants Conservation
India has one of the longest, richest and most diverse
cultural traditions. This is especially so in the use of medicinal
plants which is something India's people know a great deal about.
Over 7,500 species of plants are estimated to be used by 4,635
ethnic communities for human and veterinary health care.
Medicinal plants continue to provide health security to rural
people in primary health care. According to the WHO, over 80%
of people in developing countries depend on traditional medicine
for their primary health needs. In India, modern health coverage
of rural populations varies from 3 to 30 %, which means that
between 400 & 500 million people take recourse to some form of
traditional medicine as the only feasible alternative. This is also
borne out by the fact that there still exist over 10 lakh (one million)
traditional, village-based carriers of the herbal medicine traditions
in the country.
The growing demand for herbal products has led to a
quantum jump in the number of medicinal plant species and their
volumes traded within and across countries. Conservative estimates
put the economic value of medicinal plant related world trade at
over US $ 60 billion. And this is growing. In fact, apprehensions
are being expressed that with the inexorable monetisation and
commercialisation of the medicinal plant economy, we could have
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a future scenario where the rich alone would be able to afford
herbal products while the poor would have to make do with cheap,
mass produced, synthetic, allopathic drugs.
This vast biocultural resource with its enormous promise
for human welfare and major economic potential is a significant
part of our national heritage. A national policy on conservation of
this resource must ensure its access to all categories of users,
including the large number of rural people who depend on medicinal
plants for their basic health needs.
A national policy on medicinal plants conservation is,
therefore, essential.
Essential goals of National Policy
TThe goals of a national medicinal plants conservation
policy would include:
i)
A heritage under seige
ii)
Most threats to the continued existence of medicinal
plants are man-made : habitat loss, fragmentation and degradation
due to population and developmental pressures are the bane of
biodiversity. What threatens medicinal plants the most is overexploitation from the wild for commerce. Estimates suggest that
over half a million tonnes of dry raw material is indiscriminately
and mostly destructively collected from the wild each year. In
area terms, this implies over 165,000 hectares of forests being
clear-felled.
The National Forest Policy, 1988, like its predecessor of
1952, continues to refer to medicinal plants as a sub-set of Minor
Forest Produce (MFP), a position that does not actually help focus
management or conservation efforts on this genetically and socially
very important group of plants.
Ensuring long-term conservation in situ, of the country’s
medicinal plant diversity in the context of inter-generational
equity;
To encourage and support ex situ conservation as a
supplementary and complementary measure to the above;
iii)
To ensure that medicinal plants requirements of industry
can be met sustainably through policy instruments that
create a favourable economic environment;
iv)
To ensure access of medicinal plants to village
communities for their primary health care needs and to
address issues relating to empowerment of local people in
conserving and managing their forest and non-forest
resources.
v)
To regulate, improve and make sustainable medicinal plants
collections from the wild;
vi)
To carry out appropriate legislation and/ or modify existing
ones to regulate internal and external trade in medicinal
plants and to ensure adequate training of agencies involved;
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and to safeguard IPRs relating to medicinal traditions of the
country;
To develop a cadre of taxonomists/ forest scientists to
vii)
support and sustain rapid, prioritised baseline surveys w.r.t.
medicinal plants conservation status and to monitor changes
on a long-term basis.
viii) To identify, review and clearly mandate appropriate
institutions, governmental and non-governmental, to
implement this policy;
ix)
To strengthen/ build adequate institutional structures and
capacity in government and non-government institutions
which are essential to initiate and sustain effective policy
implementation.
To encourage setting up funds and facilitate time-bound
x)
“projects” through governmental and non-governmental
institutions and further the goals of the policy.
xi)
To continually monitor, evaluate and analyze the impact of
this Medicinal Plants Conservation Policy.
xii)
To create widespread public awareness on the need for
medicinal plants conservation.
Policy directions
In situ Conservation
species and eco-system level can be conserved on a long-term
basis. Unless plant populations are conserved in the wild, that
is in their natural habitats, they run the risk of extinction.
The aim of in situ conservation would be to maintain
in perpetuity viable, breeding populations of medicinal species
in the wild. It would help to conserve in distinct,
representative biogeographic zones inter and intraspecific
genetic variation. This alone would ensure that species would
have the necessary resilience to adapt to change in the future.
Medicinal plant populations have large and often disjunct
areas of distribution, while there are also endemic species confined
to a few pockets. Conservation of these disparate and widely
separated populations is therefore possible only through setting up
of a network of representative medicinal plants conservation
reserves with a broadly common management framework. This
network would ideally include areas within and outside the existing
Protected Area network in the country.
For long-term institutional support the conservation and
management of this medicinal reserves network would need to be
integrated into regular forestry and wildlife management in the
country. But for this to happen appropriate changes in forest
management priorities, backed by intensive training at various levels
including local community are necessary.
Regulation on wild collection
Today we have a situation where 95% of industrial
It is only in Nature that plant diversity at the genetic,
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requirement of medicinal plants is met through indiscriminate
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collection from the wild. An essential corollary to in situ
conservation of medicinal plants is therefore regulating the harvest
of medicinal plants from the wild for commercial purposes . Data
on trade in medicinal plants is sketchy, unorganised, unsystematic
and not based on their real botanical identity.
Very often the field level forestry and wildlife staff are
unaware of restrictions on collection and trade of medicinal species
notified by the Central Government under CITES or the List of
Negative Exports of the Ministry of Commerce. This is further
complicated by the fact that most medicinal species are
commercially known by their ‘trade’ names and in dried/ raw drug
form. The forest department officials issuing transit or export
permits are largely untrained in identification of species in such
forms. Illustrated manuals and comprehensive lists correlating
local/ trade names to botanical names need to be prepared to aid
national/ international efforts at regulating trade in wild medicinal
plants.
estimate puts the figure of world trade in medicinal plants & related
products at USS 5 trillion by A.D.2050 (World Bank Report, 1996).
The demand has been and continues to be met mainly from wild
sources. This cannot go on for much longer. Policy intervention
is urgently needed to encourage and facilitate investments
into commercial cultivation of medicinal plants.
Cultivation of medicinal plants, however, is inversely linked
to prevalence of easy and cheap collection from the wild, lack of
regulation in trade, cornering of the profits from wild collection
by a vast network of traders and middlemen, and absence of
industry’s interest in providing buy-back guarantees to growers.
Cultivation of medicinal plants is also difficult due to lack of
standardised agronomic practices for most species and unavailability
of sources of quality planting materials.
Policy measures to promote cultivation of medicinal plants
therefore need to encourage industry’s participation by way of tax
incentives, etc. for investments in cultivation and agricultural
research and simultaneously by stricter controls on indiscriminate,
Ex situ Conservation
At the outset it may be mentioned that ex situ conservation
of medicinal plants does not merely imply their cultivation as
agricultural or horticultural crops. It is a vast, expansive area of
species conservation with many elements, the main ones of which
are discussed below:
Cultivation and Marketing
Figures projecting demand and trade in medicinal plant
species globally indicate a steep upward trend in the future. One
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destructive collection of medicinal plants from the wild, while
improving their conservation status in situ. Industries also need to
have access to databases and research findings.
Considering the low value of many medicinal plant species
(in raw drug form), a strong case exists for promotion of
community level enterprises for value addition to medicinal plants
through simple, on site techniques like drying, cleaning, crushing,
powdering, grading, packaging, etc.
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In both these areas i.e. cultivation and value addition, clear
policy guidelines are needed to facilitate active intervention and set
forth a role for public and private financial institutions.
A national policy must encourage commercial cultivation
of medicinal plants but the investment on research as well as
production should be forthcoming from the pharmaceutical industry .
and financial institutions. In the context of medicinal plants, there
is a special case for encouraging organic farming systems & poly
culture models instead of the conventional mono-culture models in
agriculture and agroforestry.
nodal institutions similar to the National Dairy Development Board
(NDDB), with participation from government, industry, ISM
A national policy on conservation of medicinal plants must
as an educational and shorter term conservation measure, promote
the creation of a “network” of regional and sub-regional “ethnomedicinal plant gardens” which should contain all the medicinal
plants known to the various ethnic communities in different regions
of India. This chain of gardens will act as regional respositories
of our cultural and ethnomedicinal history and embody the living
traditions of our society’s knowledge of medicinal plants.
professionals, research institutions, rural communities, commerce
and trade.
Gene Banks
While it is known that the largest proportion of local
biodiversity in all our eco-systems is used for medicinal purposes,
'
The most urgent and primary task to ensure immediate
availability of plants and planting materials to various user groups
like farmers, the professional ISM community and industry, is to
promote a nation-wide network of medicinal plant nurseries which
will multiply all the region-specific plants that are used in the
current practice of traditional medicine by rural communities, ISM
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In view of its importance and urgency, Government can
promote national coordination of this program through national
Educational Gardens
Nursery Network
professionals, industry, trade and commerce. These nurseries
should become the primary sources of supply of seed material that
can be multiplied by the various users. The forest departments,
agricultural extension agencies, village panchayats, NGOs and
private enterprises should be encouraged to establish these nurseries
or to grow medicinal plants in existing ones. In the initial years,
interest-free, short-term loans or loans at differential rates of
interest can be offered by banking institutions to this nursery
network.
(app. 7,500), very little is known about their conservation status
in the wild. What is likely is that probably a large number of
medicinal plant species are also under various degrees of threat.
The ‘precautionary principle’ would suggest that an immediate
country-wide exercise be taken up to deposit seeds of wild
medicinal plants in gene banks and a simultaneous effort be
launched to evaluate the genetic variation of such collections with
a view to enriching them.
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The National Bureau of Plant Genetic Resources (NBPGR),
New Delhi, does maintain some seed collections of medicinal
plants. These collections need to be widened, diversified and
improved, and facilities need to be opened up for such seeds of
preservation of medicinal plants at least regionally in the country.
Research, Training and Information
The policy framework needs to facilitate and promote
time-bound, applied research programs for medicinal plants
conservation, both in situ and ex situ. Lack of reliable and
authentic information and failure to transfer to the field what is
there, has been one of the main reasons for limiting management
options and directing further research in this field.
Research
In order to help conservation of medicinal plants, the thrust
of research should be on immediate field-related problems. Priority
areas in medicinal plants research need to include: inventorisation
and distribution mapping; threat categorisation based on IUCN
guidelines; propagation and agro-technology of economically &
clinically important species along with effective & quick technology
transfer, and major support to research in conservation biology of
medicinal plants.
Research on medicinal plants based on ISM theories like
desh vichar, traditional guidelines on suitable collection times and
habitats, advice based upon indigenous texts like vrksh-ayurveda
and krishi shastra need to be promoted so that parameters for
quality of plants can be evolved based on ISM principles. Such
tested data when computerised would be unique and its application
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would greatly benefit medicinal plant related work.
Training
In-service training programs for staff of various
government and non-governmental agencies like forests, wildlife,
botanic gardens, schools and colleges in both in situ and ex situ
conservation techniques of medicinal plants need to be developed
and supported in a large way. Similarly, to encourage the use and
sustainable economic benefit from medicinal plants so that local
communities can develop a stake in their conservation, suitable
training and extension in the use, sustainable harvest (esp. for tribal
collectors), value addition and marketing of medicinal plants need
to be promoted.
There is a need to encourage institutions like the Botanical
Survey of India to study the distribution of species and its
population levels in the wild and, more importantly, its current
conservation status.
One of the major user groups of medicinal plants is the
community of practitioners of traditional medicine, both classical
and folk. Unfortunately, this group is least involved in the
conservation of medicinal plants, although they form the material
resource base of their profession. With adequate orientation and
training, this large group could make significant contributions in
the ex situ conservation of medicinal plant diversity and its
sustainable use.
Databases
There are several institutions in the country that hold
specialised data on various aspects of medicinal plants.
from being granted patents in India, for uses similar to their
Unfortunately, much of this data is neither organised nor
standardised, much less computerised. In short, there is no national
database on medicinal plants, consolidated or networked, available
in the country. This results in almost total lack of access to
information that could be useful for various applications and
research, not to mention the duplication of efforts that might be
traditional use.
In order to uphold traditional knowledge as a priceless
* national heritage, this knowledge of plant and plant products ought
to be in the public domain. The proposed biodiversity legislation
(in the context of the Rio convention) must ensure that all our
taking place.
indigenous medical knowledge systems (both oral and codified) and
As the existence and accessibility of databases is crucial
to organised development and growth of any sustained medicinal
plants conservation effort, a policy on the building, improvement,
computerisation and public access to a national database network
is the need of the hour. Easier access to updated information
would in turn surmount the main bottleneck in transfer of
technology to user groups.
their associated biological resources remain the sovereign property
of our traditional communities. Commercialisation of this
knowledge will require “informed consent” by interested parties.
Similar conditions of informed consent should be brought
into the Plant Breeders Act for medicinal plant genetic materials.
National and State Level
Coordination
The key to providing such ready access to information lies
in networking existing databases which would also facilitate
information exchange within and outside the country.
The national policy on medicinal plants conservation
Intellectual Property Rights
<
leased on Clause 27(ii) of TRIPs related to public
interest, India should modify its 1970 Patents Act to exclude i
products, processes, extracts, derivatives and any modification of
its plants and natural products (as known in the folk stream of
medicine which is prevalent in its various ethnic communities and
in its codified systems of medicine like Ayurveda, Unani, Siddha
and Amchi including their numerous manuscripts & literary works)
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should be widely circulated to all concerned institutions and
organisations in the government and private sector to encourage
participation in its implementation.
In the implementation of the national policy, coordination
is needed between various depts, and ministries like the Forest
Department, Health, Agriculture, Biotechnology, Dept, of Science
and Technology, Commerce and Non-Government Research,
Community Health and environmental organisations, including
industry and the banking sector.
Today, medicinal plants “conservation” is not a focused
mandate of any national institution, so both a nodal ministry as well
as a nodal institution may need to be identified to advance national
efforts. Suitable mechanisms for coordination are needed both at
the central and state levels to facilitate synergy, promote interinstitutional cooperation and avoid duplication of efforts.
References
All
l.
India Coordinated Research Project on Ethnobotany, GOI,
MoEF, Report, 1993.
The
2.
Anthropological Survey of India.
Guidelines
3.
on the Conservation of Medicinal Plants; WHO, IUCN\\.'
& WWF; GLAND, Switzerland. 1993.
4.Ministry of Health & Family Welfare, GOI, New Delhi.
5.The Forest Policy of 1988, MoEF, GOI, New Delhi.
Medplan Conservatory Society
No.8, 1st Floor, IV Main, II Stage, MSH Colony,
Anandnagar, Bangalore-24.
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