The
people-plant link to survival
Tuesday, August 11,
1998
By Jaswinder Kaur
For centuries, people in many parts of the world have
been relying on the forest for survival.
It is the source of food, medicine and income in many
communities. People who depend on the forest take it for
granted that they can continue to walk into forest and
collect or cut what they need when they are hungry or
when they fall ill.
The need to sustainably utilise forest resources,
however, is becoming an important concern for the
world.
Some plant species are becoming scarce while some
medicinal plants have been overharvested.
Such a realisation has result in the initiation of
programmes like "People and Plants" created in
1992 by the World Wide Fund for Nature, Unesco and the
Royal Botanic Gardens in Kew, Britain.
Recently, about 30 participants from various
disciplines gathered in Kinabalu Park in Sabah for the
third leg of "People and Plants in Southeast Asia -
Certificate Training Course in Ethnobotany", a
programme which forms part of the People and Plants
initiative.
According to the WWF, ethnobotany is the study of
plants used by people for medicine, food, supplements,
shelter, fuel, craft material and other products.
Participant Jane Mogina from Papua New Guinea says
there used to be a dependency on traditional medicine 20
to 30 years ago.
"But with modernisation, men has begun to depend
on modern medicine," she says.
Mogina, who is doing her Ph.D on the transmission of
traditional knowledge and resource use at the Australian
National University, feels that scientists tend to forget
about the language aspect.
"Traditional names of plants within communities
do carry meaning. There are about 700 oral languages in
Papua New Guinea and together with West Irian we have
about one-third of the world's languages.
"However these languages are fast disappearing so
we are also losing plant names," she says.
Vietnamese On Tran Van, who is working with the Dao
people in Bavi National Park, about 60km from Hanoi,
Vietnam, says new ideas like stem cutting are being
introduced to grow and conserve certain plants.
Locals are co-operating, On says, because they realise
that their plant resources are depleting.
"Medicinal plants have for long been associated
with the Dao people. They have no jobs or proper health
care system but they are still alive and strong,"
says On, a lecturer with the Department of Botany at the
Hanoi College of Pharmacy.
"They have a good prescription for post-natal
care. Womenfolk can go back to work three days after
delivering, but more than 20 plants species are needed
for that purpose," On says.
Attjala Roongwong, a research assistant with the
Regional Community Forestry Training Centre at Kasetsart
University in Bangkok, Thailand, says local communities
will always need to utilise forests.
"Currently there are no laws on managing forests.
Our aim is to build the capacity of the people so that
they can sustainably manage their forests," she
says.
The experience in India shows that there has been
overharvesting such as in the wildlife sanctuary near
Karnataka in South India.
Siddappa Setty, a research associate with the Ashoka
Trust for Research in Ecology and Environment in
Bangalore, India, says if local communities continue to
overharvest the forest, they will lose all the
trees.
"According to preliminary surveys, 60 per cent of
their income comes from the forests. They usually harvest
fruits and honey."
To sustain what the wildlife sanctuary has to offer,
Setty says that currently a biodiversity conservation
project is being carried out.
"We are assessing the richness of species,
carrying out household surveys and we are ensuring that
locals can process and sell their harvest at a
value-added price," he says.
Forester Tamano Bugtong, who is with the Kalahan
Educational Foundation in Quezon City, the Philippines,
says locals in the Kalahan area in Northern Luzon have
free access to harvest what they like but are at the same
time taught to harvest sustainably.
"In 1995, we started on a biodiversity
conservation research project to focus on valuable fruits
which we need in order to process food."
The foundation processes its own food and this is for
the benefit of locals, says Bugtong.
Indonesian anthropologist Herry Yogaswara, who is with
the Indonesian Institute of Sciences, says some
indigenous people in West Irian depend on plants like
sweet potato for food, medicine and to feed pigs.
"Sweet potatoes are multifunctional. However, the
Government introduced padi in some parts but padi is only
functional as food.
"Rice has become a status symbol. They equate
money with rice," says Yogaswara.
What is it like in Malaysia?
Sabah Foundation Forestry upstream division
conservation officer Barnabas Gait says the Agriculture
Department can assist by introducing high-yield fruits
and trees like rubber, adding that such initiatives can
help in generating income for locals, apart from slowing
down overharvesting.
"Recently we introduced ethnobotany to locals. We
need to document plants especially non-timber forest
products.
"We are also documenting traditional knowledge on
medicinal plants among the Orang Sungei community. An
Orang Sungei elder told me that once, traditional
medicine knowledge was a must for everyone in the
community, but this tradition is fading," says
Gait.
And in neighbouring Sarawak, Universiti Malaysia
Sarawak master's student Rambli Ahmad says that
communities living near totally protected areas have a
wide knowledge on using forest resources.
"Now with an increase in population and change in
lifestyle and religion, many have forgotten what nature
can provide them with," says Rambli.
Universiti Kebangsaan Malaysia Ph.D candidate Jenne
Lajuni says agroforestry is something that should be
looked into.
"Agroforestry refers to agriculture within
forests. Such a concept is underdeveloped in Malaysia but
is already in practice in Indonesia, the Philippines and
Thailand," says Lajuni.
Academics and locals are aware that forests hold great
importance in daily life. Although some may be working
hard to take care of such resources, more needs to be
done to ensure that future generations who continue to
live in remote areas can make use of the forests.
And, man should not forget that the forest contains
plants, many of which have not been discovered yet, which
hold the cure for many diseases. If the forest is not
managed well, all will be lost for future
generations.
 Ethnobotany initiative rests
with community
The initiative to care for and conserve plants must
come from the community, but the people need assistance,
says People and Plants in Southeast Asia regional
co-ordinator Gary Martin.
"We can help and encourage them. For instance, we
can get the Agriculture Department to help us by
providing fruit trees. Then organisations like Sabah
Parks can give medicinal plant seeds from their botanical
garden to nearby villages," he says, citing
communities around Kinabalu Park as an example.
Interaction between Government agencies and
communities is critical, he adds.
"Such interaction must continue even if People
and Plants is not around anymore," says
Martin.
He says interaction between people and plants in the
field of ethnobotany began in the mid-1800s.
"People from the United States and Europe studied
tropical areas which formed part of their colonies. They
were interested in tapping not just into new plants but
also what people could do with these plants," he
says.
According to Martin, it is the mission of People and
Plants to work on what is known as the triangle of crisis
in ethnobotany.
"In one corner of the triangle, we are losing
indigenous knowledge. People move out of communities or
stop using plants in the way that they used to.
"Most knowledge is not written down but passed on
orally. There is also a problem with losing languages.
Now we have about 6,000 languages but by the middle of
the next century, there might only be about 600 languages
left," he says.
The second crisis, says Martin, is the loss of
biodiversity from overharvesting. "We do not know
how many plants we are losing but about 12 to 20 per cent
of plants are in danger."
The third crisis is that the world is losing its
linguists, botanists, environmentalists and
anthropologists who record descriptive knowledge of
plants, says Martin.
|
