Foundation
for Revitalisation of Local Health
Traditions
Amruth
is a Sanskrit word meaning immortal and
is also a local name for Tinospora
cordifolia (Menispermaceae), a plant used
traditionally in India for its
rejuvenating properties. AMRUTH is
therefore a particularly appropriate
choice of name for the magazine of FRLHT,
which is working to rejuvenate
India’s medicinal heritage. /ALH
 |
| Drawing of la
ttotora (Typho spp.,
Typhaceae) from El Monte
Nos Da Comida. |
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The
Foundation for Revitalisation of
Local Health Traditions (FRLHT)
is a non-governmental
organization whose main objective
is to bring about a revival of
India’s medical heritage.
FRLHT has begun a medicinal
plants conservation project in
three states in southern India,
and has set up the Indian
Medicinal Plants Genetic
Resources Network, INMEDGERN, to
coordinate conservation
activities. 30 medicinal plant
conservation areas for in situ
conservation and 15 ex situ
conservation parks have been
established in cooperation with
Forest Departments and
environmental and health NGOs.
These areas will protect about
1000 medicinal plant species,
including endemic and threatened
species, in all the major forest
and vegetation types of the
region, from thorny scrub to rain
forests. In addition, work at the
conservation sites will include
surveying and documenting
indigenous knowledge,
particularly of local health
traditions, and demonstrating
methods for the sustainable
production and use of medicinal
plants. Another initiative of the
foundation is the Indian
Medicinal Plants Distributed
Databases Network (INMEDPLAN).
This seeks to link important
databases on medicinal plants in
order to facilitate access to and
standardization of data. FRLHT
produces a medicinal plants
conservation magazine entitled
AMRUTH. |
Community
Registers, or Peoples’ Biodiversity
Registers (PBRs), are being established
throughout India to document – at
the village level – local knowledge,
skills and techniques related to
biological resources. This initiative
began in 1995, with the goal of
revitalizing such knowledge, through
raising awareness of its value and also
by encouraging sharing of knowledge
between communities. It is hoped that the
registers will be useful tools to help
protect traditional community rights and
to protect their knowledge from
exploitation by commercial users. The
registers could prove useful for the
latter by providing proof of prior use,
and giving the possibility of enforcing
the prior informed consent of the
concerned community. A final goal is to
help set priorities for conserving
resources under threat.
A draft register is being
tested in a few hundred villages in seven
Indian states, with the help of
community-based organizations. Once a
format has been finalized, it is hoped
that the Indian Ministry of Environment
and Forests will give the Community
Registers appropriate legal status. This
initiative is being coordinated by the
Centre for Participatory Management of
Biodiversity, based at FRLHT. The Centre
for Ecological Sciences (CES) of the
Indian Institute of Science is also
working with FRLHT in this initiative.
‘In an
exclusive interview for AMRUTH, Mr
Yellappa Reddy, former environment
secretary to the Karnataka government
who resigned recently protesting the
setting up of the Cogentrix power
project fearing large-scale damage to
the ecology of the Western Ghats,
called upon the government to
document the nation’s herbal
wealth and knowledge ...Mr Reddy
speaks passionately about how the
forest wealth of medicinal plants
started to decline.“Though the
indiscriminate exploitation of Nature
has been going on for ages, the
Halaki Vokalligas were one tribe
which had the knowledge of tapping
resources, like collecting rich wild
foods, flavours or essences. This
tribe had perfected the art of
harvest as well as post-harvest
procedures and used to propagate
plant species in their own way”,
says Mr Reddy. “But with
degradation of forests and scarcity
of herbs this is no longer the
case.”’
Deepak
D’Silva, J. 1996. The decline of
herbal wealth. Who is to blame?
AMRUTH 1:12-13.
CONTACTS
Darshan
Shankar, Director, FRLHT, 50, 2nd
Stage, 3rd Main, MSH Layout,
Anand Nagar, Bangalore - 560 024,
India; Tel. +91.80.3336909, Fax
+91.80.3334167, e-mail
root@FRLHT.ernet.in Internet http://ece.iisc.ernet.in/ernet-members/frlht.html
 Traditional
medicine practitioners in India
use more than 7000 plant species,
a significant proportion of the
country’s total flora of
some 16,000 higher plants. |
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Institute
of Popular Cultures
For its popular
publications, INCUPO has chosen a format
with the look and feel of a newspaper,
ensuring that useful plants are always in
the headlines./GJM
The Institute of Popular
Cultures (Instituto de Cultura Popular,
INCUPO) has been working since 1970 with
the rural poor in northern Argentina.
This NGO works specifically on wild food
plants and the management of the
region’s native forests. Research
has been undertaken to investigate the
knowledge and use of food plants by the
local communities, and this is being
complemented by research into their
nutritional values. These findings are
reported back to the communities through
a variety of publications. A number of
booklets have been produced which offer
practical advice on how to use food
plants. For example, El Monte Nos Da
Comida includes recipes, preparation
methods and plant descriptions,
accompanied by photos and illustrations.
Another booklet gives advice on how to
preserve food, using both traditional and
new methods. A newsletter, Acción, comes
out monthly and is circulated throughout
the region. This reports not only on the
work of the Institute, but also on other
events and projects in the region.
The Institute’s work
on the use of wild food plants is also
the basis for a broader program to
promote sustainable management of the
region’s native forests. Foresters,
agriculturists, nutritionists and
veterinarians have been working with the
local communities to develop sound
methods of utilizing the forest for both
animal and human nutrition.
‘Don Ramón,
a fisherman, tells us with that
wisdom that comes from living:
“La totora [cattails]! It’s
good for whatever you’re looking
for; its roots are as rich as cassava
... How many seats I have woven in my
life with totora ... ! If you lack
firewood, and there is totora, there
is no reason to worry ... ! A braid
of three leaves is enough to heat
water ...”’
Anonymous.
1991. La Totora. Pages 32-34 in El
Monte Nos Da Comida. Santa Fe,
INCUPO.
CONTACTS
Magui
Charpentier, Instituto de Cultura
Popular (INCUPO), Rivadavia 1275,
3560 Reconquista, Santa Fe,
Argentina; Tel. +54.48229367 or
48221325, Fax +54.48220409
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ECOAR
Institute for Citizenship
Elaine Elisabetsky,
whose work on the ethnopharmacology of
Amazonian plants is widely known, has
turned her attention to helping
communities collect their own data,
improve their health care and
commercialize non-timber forest products.
The manuals she has produced with other
members of ECOAR are models to be
consulted by people with similar goals.
/GJM
The ECOAR Institute for
Citizenship (Instituto ECOAR para a
Cidadania) is a Brazilian NGO which was
set up following the United Nations
Conference on Environment and Development
by a group of professionals and
environmental activists. ECOAR has two
main purposes: to promote and advance
civic responsibility through
environmental education, and to encourage
sustainable forestry development. Within
the environmental education program,
ECOAR is evaluating and creating a
database of printed materials used in
environmental education in Brazil. In
addition, ECOAR is organizing workshops
on how to design projects, and is active
in the Brazilian Environmental Education
Network.
ECOAR publishes a range
of books, reports and guidelines. Among
the most recent of these has been a
handbook Doenças de médico, remédios
de farmácia (Physicians’
conditions, pharmacy remedies by
Elisabetsky,E. and R. Trajber, 1995),
giving advice on how to treat some of the
most common diseases in the Amazon with
traditional remedies. This publication,
funded by the Centro Orientamento
Educativo, Italy and the European Union,
has numerous diagrams and illustrations
that make it accessible to the forest
people of the Amazon. Another handbook,
on plant collecting in extractive
reserves, has been created for use by
rubber tappers to enable them to gather
and record data both for their own
benefit and to help protect their
intellectual property rights. Called
Manual de Coleta de Plantas em Reservas
Extrativistas (Manual of Plant Collecting
in Extractive Reserves by Elisabetsky,
E., L.C. Ming & R. Trajber, 1995), it
was funded by the Rainforest Alliance and
Tom’s of Maine.
The Forests and
Sustainable Rural Development Program is
planting thousands of trees, mainly on
small properties, of both native and
exotic species. ECOAR also runs a
Citizenship Program for the municipality
of São Paulo. The program is working in
the east and north of the city, an area
with a population of some three million,
to develop ecological awareness among
people and to strengthen community
initiatives dealing with social and
environmental issues.
‘Recently,
there have been many researchers and
scientists writing notes in
fieldbooks, measuring, taking
photographs, recording conversations,
filming, collecting plants, asking
how they are used ... A part of the
work of these researchers focuses on
the search for local plants that
could be used as remedies, perfumes,
food and fiber that industrial
interests might wish to buy ...Much
of this research could be done by the
community itself. This manual teaches
how to collect ethnobotanical
information, because a person who has
well-organized data is in a position
to commercialize it.’
Elisabetsky,
E., L.C. Ming and R. Trajber. 1995.
Manual de Coleta de Plantas em
Reservas Extrativistas. São Paulo,
ECOAR.
CONTACTS
Rachel
Trajber, Instituto ECOAR para a
Cidadania, Rua Maestro Elias Lobo
378, 01433-000, São Paulo, SP,
Brazil; Tel./Fax +55.11. 8858687,
e-mail rachel@utopia.ansp.br
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