Posted on 15 September
2010
Berlin, Germany: Worldwide application of
a new standard for sustainable harvesting
of wild medicinal, aromatic, dye and food
plants and trees is charting new ways to
protect the species
and their habitats and benefit the communities
that depend on them, according to a new
report from world wildlife trade monitoring
network, TRAFFIC.
In Karnatka, India,
it is now possible to collect the resin
of the White Palle tree used in traditional
Indian medicine and incense without removing
the bark and killing the trees that provide
it. In Cambodia, a new co-operative has
boosted returns to medicinal plant harvesting
communities through better harvesting, drying
and marketing.
In Brazil, a women’s
co-operative in Amazonia State and a major
natural cosmetics company are aiming to
co-operate on the marketing of sustainably
harvested products. In Lesotho and South
Africa, a harvesting and management strategy
for Kalwerbossie, whose tubers are used
to treat digestive disorders, will ensure
sustainable harvest of the plant, thus providing
long term benefits to communities.
Guidelines a success
from Bosnia to Brazil
Wild for a cure: ground-truthing
a standard for sustainable management of
wild plants in the field details projects
ranging from South America to Southern Africa
and South-East Asia where new methods were
devised to protect key natural resources
from the wild while improving the livelihoods
and benefits for local people through application
of guidelines on sustainable wild collection.
“With around 15,000
of the estimated 50,000–70,000 plant species
used for medicine, cosmetics or dietary
supplements threatened, the need for developing
practical guidelines to ensure supplies
are sustainable has never been more urgent,”
said Anastasiya Timoshyna, TRAFFIC’s Global
Medicinal Plants Programme Leader and co-author
of the report.
The project demonstrated
sufficient flexibility in the guidelines
to allow them to be adapted to meet local
conditions, including a variety of governance
and land tenure systems in Bosnia and Herzegovina,
Brazil, Cambodia, India, Lesotho, Nepal,
and South Africa.
The report notes the
importance of ensuring all local stakeholders—from
collectors to local organizations, resource
management authorities, and businesses—are
involved in partnership from the outset,
and that clear and realistic market openings
should be identified for harvested products
and with ways devised to give “added value”
to products and a fair share of benefits
to the owners of traditional knowledge.
Adequate resources should
be allocated for training of local project
workers in wild plants’ resource assessment,
harvest monitoring, collection and processing
techniques and most importantly for protection
of their traditional knowledge and benefit-sharing.
“The BMZ-funded ‘Saving
Plants that Save Lives and Livelihoods’
project has taken an important step in bridging
the gap between words and action to manage
wild plants for the future of humankind,”
said Dirk Niebel, Germany’s Federal Minister
for Economic Cooperation and Development
(BMZ).
“We are glad to demonstrate
just ahead to the forthcoming Convention
on Biological Diversity that by supporting
TRAFFIC, we were able to contribute to the
conservation of key natural plant resources
from the wild, while improving the livelihoods
of and benefits of local people.”
The International Standard
for Sustainable Collection of Wild Medicinal
and Aromatic Plants (ISSC-MAP), evaluated
in this study has now been combined with
an existing FairWild Foundation standard
aimed at ensuring trade in medicinal and
aromatic plants is conducted fairly. The
new FairWild Standard version 2.0 for the
sustainable management and trade in wild-collected
natural ingredients came into effect on
8th September
.
“Germany’s continued commitment to helping
guarantee the sustainable use of medicinal
plant resources, particularly in countries
that depend on them the most, is a model
example for integration of conservation
and development aid policies.” said Dr Carlos
Drews, Director of WWF’s Global Species
Programme.
“The newly developed
FairWild guidelines are an invaluable tool
to support sustainable harvesting and management
regimes, a worldwide challenge facing the
conservation community” says Jane Smart,
Director, IUCN Biodiversity Conservation
Group.
+ More
Funding key to save
tigers from extinction
Posted on 16 September
2010
The PloS Biology Journal, a respected scientific
journal, published a paper Wednesday entitled
Bringing the Tiger Back from the Brink -
the Six Percent Solution, which presents
a powerful case for the need to refocus
efforts on the protection of the last remaining
strongholds for the tiger.
The paper is based on
a study led by the Wildlife Conservation
Society (WCS) and focuses on how much it
will cost to stop tigers from becoming extinct.
WWF helped to provide data for the study.
WWF supports the paper’s
conclusion that there is a need to rebalance
conservation efforts to safeguard the tiger’s
last strongholds.
The study highlights
the need to redress the balance of tiger
conservation investment to focus on the
protection of the last remaining core or
potential core breeding sites used by tigers.
For too long now, good protection and monitoring
of the most important living areas for tigers
has been neglected, and the global population
has suffered severely because of the lack
of good protection in these sites.
“The situation for the
wild tiger is very serious now and we can
expect to lose the tiger throughout much
of its range before the next Year of the
Tiger in 2022 if we do not urgently step
up action to protect the wild tiger,” said
Michael Baltzer, leader of WWF’s tiger programme.
The wild tiger population
has fallen probably from around 5,000 in
1998, the last Year of the Tiger, to as
few as 3,200 now. Given that projection,
tigers could disappear from the wild in
the next 10 years. Some countries such as
Cambodia and Vietnam may have already lost
their wild breeding populations.
Protection of these
core tiger sites and other potential protected
areas is fundamentally necessary to the
future survival of the wild tiger.
The paper calls for
the urgent and immediate injection of around
$35 million extra per year to match the
funding already provided by governments,
donors and NGOs to protect tigers.
“Stopping the extinction
of the wild tiger, is unfortunately, the
greatest concern we face at this moment
and therefore protection of the core sites
and potential core sites is the most critical
action required now. So the emphasis must
be there as this paper suggests,” Baltzer
said.
While this protection
is necessary and fundamental to the survival
of the tiger, extra funds and resources
are needed to ensure that the habitats required
for the population to expand are at least
maintained (especially critical movement
corridors), and to reduce the trade in tiger
parts, WWF said.
However, the study did
not look at the cost of these actions, but
focuses on what is needed to halt the extinction
of the wild tiger.
WWF’s goal is to secure
the tiger’s future and double its population
within the next 12 years. As such, WWF believes
that several actions are need to protect
tigers, including protecting critical areas,
keeping wider landscapes intact, and eliminating
the illegal trade in wild tigers as well
as demand for them.
Investing in core breeding
sites alone, as the paper suggests, could
lead to tigers becoming trapped in small
core areas and the chance for expansion
gone forever.
“We therefore need to
ensure the wider landscape is intact with
adequate prey for tigers to survive. Action
has to be taken now as habitats once lost
will never be returned. While addressing
demand issues is a much longer term solution,
as it may take perhaps 20 or more years
to change behaviour enough to have an impact,
we also have to start now if we ever hope
to achieve it,” Baltzer said.
Funds are necessary
for a wider spectrum of tiger conservation
work. The process to decide the actions
and the balance of the investments is underway
culminating in a Heads of Government Tiger
Summit in Russia in November this year.
“Hopefully the funds
and commitments to protection of the last
tiger stands will be found, otherwise all
other efforts will be wasted,” Baltzer said.
