Sharing Innovative Experiences (Vol.7)

INTRODUCTION

The material culture of nearly every civilization throughout the world is based more on plants than on animals. The people of the earth have long depended on plants for food, clothing, shelter, transportation, medicines, rituals and traditions. With their vast factories of chemical diversity, plants produce food and medicines by combining atmospheric gases, sunlight, water and minute quantities of inorganic nutrients. Indeed the crucial difference between the two life forms is that plants produce while animals consume.

The food chain of animals, including people, ultimately reaches to the vegetation source. Diet often determines the behaviour, activity level. Migration pattern and lifespan of every human being. In this sense, we are what we eat. Beginning as fruit-and vegetable-gatherers, prehistoric humans slowly learned to cultivate plants species by systematically growing and harvesting edible fruits and nuts. The development of agriculture is a relatively recent phenomenon in human history. Modern agriculture techniques, including agrochemical and new genetic varieties of cereals and other crops have contributed immensely in increasing the feeding and raising the nutritional profile of the world's growing population. However, in the process, people have lost both the traditional varieties of crops and the lifestyles associated with the traditional ways of agriculture.

People, moreover, rely on plants for much more than food and shelter. The plant kingdom helped meet the health needs of humans when no synthetic medicines were available and no concept of surgical management existed. Even today almost 25 percent of all prescribed medicines in the developed world contain ingredients derived from medicinal plants. The world has witnessed growing scientific and commercial interests in medicinal plants, mainly due to their immense economic potential and the widespread cultural acceptability of plant-based products. An inventory of medicinal plants compiled by the World Health Organization (WHO) on the basis of literature from 91 countries, including the classical Indian texts on Ayurvedic and Unani medicines, lists 21,000 species of medicinal plants. According to pharmacognosist Norman Farnsworth of the University of Illinois, USA, there are 89 plant-derived drugs currently prescribed in the industrialized world. According to WHO researchers, about 80 percent of the 5 billion people in the developing world rely on herbal remedies for their basic health care needs.

More than 250,000 species of higher plants differ not only in form but in biochemistry. The amazing richness and diversity of chemicals in the plant kingdom make a particular species of plant fit or unfit as food or medicine.

Human beings, who have interacted and depended on plants for tons of time, have acquired a great deal of knowledge about the plant world. Through trial and error, traditional medical healers and folklorists, for example, have learned to distinguish plants that have therapeutic actions from plants that are toxic or ineffective.

This is indeed an exciting time in the human history when recent advances in molecular biology and analytical chemistry can be used not only to conserve floral diversity but also to "prospect" the biochemical richness of plants for human use as food or medicine.

The developing world is rich in natural resources, including floral resources. With the long continuous tradition of plant use for a variety of purpose, the developing world is blessed with a potentially winning combination of information and resources. However, the South's floral wealth has not been fully utilized for the benefit of its people. Unfavourable contractual arrangements with multinational pharmaceutical companies often have depleted this resource, leaving behind nothing but environmental degradation, lost traditions and dependency on synthetic medicines and canned food from the North.

In this report we have compiled case studies from 12 developing countries. These studies, which are based on best practices on the sustainable use of medicinal and food plants in various regions of the world, demonstrate that (1) plants still play a major role in determining the trajectories of changing cultures, (2) the wisdom of indigenous people cannot only provide insight into the human condition but enrich modern culture, (3) conservation of plant biodiversity and indigenous plant lore is in the interest of the global community, and (4) the rich floral diversity of traditional plants can be used for the sustainable economic and social development as well as the environmental protection of developing nations.

These down-to-earth practical examples demonstrate that much ca and has been done by scientists and scientific institutions in the South. The rich experiences in the preservation and sustainable use of medicinal and indigenous plants conveyed in the pages that follow are testimony to the principles that have driven this United Nations Development Programme (UNDP) Special Unit for Technical Cooperation among Developing Countries (TCDC) project: The South does indeed have a treasure trove of valuable experiences in science and technology and Southern scientists working within the societies and cultures in which they live have a great deal to share and much to learn from one another.

Atta-ur-Rahman
Minister for Science and Technology
Pakistan

M. Iqbal Choudhary
Professor
H. E. J. Research Institute of Chemistry
University of Karachi
Pakistan