Medicinal Plants: Conservation and Sustainable Use in Sri Lanka NotesKI I n Sri Lanka, ayurveda (a holistic communities and such practitioners. In system of medicine and health care the rural areas, people collect their re- which originated in India--in San- quirements of medicinal plants from skrit, "Ayu" means " life' and "veda" forests and communities practiced sus- means " the knowledge of ") and the tainable use concepts, with minimal traditional system of health care damage to the habitats in which these have been systematically used for precious plants are found. The in- over two thousand years to treat ill- creased demand both for local medici- http://www.worldbank.org/afr/ik/default.htm nesses. When last listed, 1,414 plant nal use as well as for export has placed species have been used for this pur- a great strain on the natural popula- pose. These species include several tions of plants. Collectors of medicinal endemic species which are becoming plants are now resorting to unsustain- increasingly rare and under threat of able exploitation causing serious extinction. Approximately 200 spe- threat to the survival of some species. cies of medicinal plants are in com- Dwindling supplies are exacerbated by mon use, and of these 50 are heavily the rapid depletion of natural habitats. used in ayurvedic and traditional Indeed, habitats too are threatened. No. 66 health care systems. Nearly 80 me- March 2004 dicinal plant species are now consid- ered threatened. In addition to rec- IK Notes reports periodically on Indigenous Knowledge (IK) initiatives ognizing their curative and thera- in Sub-Saharan Africa and occasionally peutic value, Sri Lankans uses me- on such initiatives outside the Region. It is published by the Africa Region's dicinal plants in rituals, cultural ac- Knowledge and Learning Center as tivities and in religious functions. part of an evolving IK partnership It is estimated that about 30­35 between the World Bank, communi- ties, NGOs, development institutions percent of the people use ayurveda and multilateral organizations. The and traditional systems of health views expressed in this article are World Bank those of the authors and should not be care. Ayurvedic physicians and tradi- attributed to the World Bank Group tional practitioners of medicine are a or its partners in this initiative. A part of the society, and there is an webpage on IK is available at // www.worldbank.org/afr/ik/ interwoven relationship between the default.htm 2 Equally threatened is the knowledge base on which the The Conservation and Sustainable Use traditional medicinal systems is based, as only a small propor- of Medicinal Plants Project tion of the traditional knowledge and the ethnobotanical in- formation is documented; the majority remains recorded in The conservation and sustainable use of medicinal plants ancient, obscure ola (palm leaf) manuscripts scattered project began to be implemented by the Government of Sri around the country or in the memory of elderly practitio- Lanka in 1998, with a US$4.6 million grant from the Global ners. This gurukula system of ancient teaching of traditional Environment Facility (GEF). The project seeks to secure knowledge is fast disappearing. This knowledge not only ad- conservation of globally and nationally significant medicinal dresses the health care of individuals; it also addresses the plant species and their habitats. The project has achieved traditional care and management of the natural resources in these objectives through (a) in situ conservation by estab- which the rural communities are situated. lishing five medicinal plant conservation areas (MPCAs) in It is obvious that medicinal plants are a world treasure to different ecological zones of Sri Lanka, as a part of, or adja- be nurtured for the benefit of mankind. The need to con- cent to existing natural forests which are the home for some serve medicinal plants, and use them sustainably, is facili- of the threatened species of medicinal plants; (b) ex-situ cul- tated by the Convention on Biological Diversity (CBD), rati- tivation by promoting nurseries, home garden and plantation fied by over 175 countries. CBD provides the background for cultivation and supporting propagation and agronomic re- sustainable use and for equitable sharing of benefits arising search; and (c) by providing information and institutional from the exploitation of medicinal plants. support, including promotion of an appropriate legal and policy environment. An important element of the strategic approach adopted is to define and demarcate medicinal plant reserves in IK Notes biogeographically representative areas and use these as cen- ters for a wide range of activities. would be of interest to: For this purpose, five Medicinal Plant Conservation Areas (MCPAs) have been established in Bibile and Ritigala (dry Name zone), Rajawake and Naula (intermediate zone), and Kanneliya (wet zone), adjacent to natural forests which har- Institution bor medicinal plant species. Each MCPA consists of about ten Grama Niladhari Divi- Address sions (GND)1 abutting the core conservation forest. The project tries to actively involve the communities living in the MPCAs for promoting conservation and sustainable use of medicinal plants. Each MPCA has a site consisting of a medicinal plant garden, which will serve as a demonstration site, a medicinal plant-processing center for the use of com- Letters, comments, and requests for publications munities, an ayurvedic dispensary, which is expected to should be addressed to: mainly depend on preparations made by the communities, Editor: IK Notes and an information center. Knowledge and Learning Center Africa Region, World Bank 1818 H Street, N.W., Mailstop J8-811 Washington, D.C. 20433 E-mail: pmohan@worldbank.org 3 Overview of activities plants and other forest products in the livelihoods and econo- mies of all stakeholder groups in each target community. In In situ conservation general, Phase 1 of the ethnobotanical survey has generated IDENTIFICATION OF GRAMA NILADHARI DIVISIONS IN MPCAS a great deal of information relating to the medicinal species, AND SOCIAL MOBILIZATION. The `villages' (Grama Niladhari ranked according to the cumulative score of domestic impor- Divisions) for the MPCAs were identified after extensive dis- tance, commercial interest, threatened status etc. Phase II cussions with communities, their organizations and other of the ethnobotanical survey collected information on the stakeholders at the village level. The identification of GNDs use of medicinal plants and the collection of voucher speci- was based on close proximity to the core forest area, levels of mens. dependency on the forest resources, in particular medicinal (c) Resource inventory. MPCA base maps at the scale of plants, and the readiness of community members to accept 1:20000 were prepared using aerial maps and survey maps, participatory approaches to ensure conservation and the sus- and were digitized. The major forest types / natural vegeta- tainable use of medicinal plants. tion structural types [dense ( >75% canopy cover); sparse In order to facilitate the efficient participation of commu- (50­75 percent canopy cover); scrub / grassland (< 50 per- nities in the conservation efforts, community management cent canopy cover)] were interpreted to the maps from air structures have been established at the GND level. These are photos. Resource verification in these maps was carried out the Village Project Management Committees (VPMCs) con- using the Global Positioning System (GPS). sisting exclusively of the community members. The main objectives of the resource inventory are (a) to BASELINE DATA COLLECTION. Baseline data consist of data provide a baseline assessment of the distribution, associated from three separate yet inter-related areas, viz., a socio-eco- population structures and densities, and ecological require- nomic survey; an ethnobotanical survey, and the Resource ments of medicinal plant species in MPCAs; and (b) to pro- Inventory. vide an informed basis for ongoing in situ conservation of (a) Socio-economic survey.The socio-economic survey pro- medicinal plant species and ex situ cultivation in home gar- vided a benchmark of the socio-economic status of communi- dens and nurseries. ties living around the medicinal plants conservation areas. Analysis of data would provide the following information: The data required to plan conservation strategies and related · A detailed assessment of the distribution and abundance of development activities were also collected under the survey. individual species (e.g. priority medicinal plant species) This survey, completed in the latter part of 1999 in all based on plot information MPCAs, has revealed that more than 68 percent of the popu- · A basis for predicting the likely distribution and abundance lation in the GNDs surveyed belong to low-income groups. of individual species (including priority species) elsewhere The majority of the people are engaged in farming and agri- in the MPCA. culture-related activities. There has been gradual environ- · A basis for future sustainability and resource assessment mental degradation in the MPCAs due to adverse human ac- studies and conservation planning tivities. The major threats to forests include illegal en- · Solid criteria for zoning habitats for user categories. croachments, forest fire and uncontrolled extraction of non- timber forest products, including medicinal plants. Over the PREPARATION OF VILLAGE PLANS (MICRO PLANS). The years, farming practices of people have been converted from baseline data, ethnobotanical and resource inventory data subsistence agriculture to cultivation of commercial crops. collected during the first two years of the project were used The socio-economic survey has also underlined the need for in preparing village plans with emphasis on in situ conserva- introducing joint forest management with people living tion. Village planning has been undertaken in GNDs using around MPCAs. participatory ( PRA/PID ) techniques with the active involve- (b) Ethnobotanical survey. The ethnobotanical survey was ment of the community members and the office bearers of designed to be carried out in two phases. The preliminary the VPMCs. phase is to develop a clear picture of the roles of medicinal 4 Ex situ conservation INSTITUTION AND CAPACITY BUILDING. The project lays Several approaches have been prepared for ex situ conserva- special emphasis on the capacity building of communities tion of medicinal plants, and these activities will comple- particularly in the skills required for project activities and ment the in situ conservation efforts described earlier. As a management of community organizations. major activity in this component, cultivation of medicinal There is special emphasis on safeguarding intellectual plants in homesteads in the MPCA is being encouraged and property rights relating to project activities. In this regard a supported. Additionally, agriculturally-oriented members of legal framework to safeguard traditional knowledge associ- the communities have been trained in nursery practices, ated with the use of medicinal plants has been prepared. simple agronomic practices and in related areas. Also, me- In regard to traditional knowledge, the project has taken dicinal plant nurseries have been established mainly for hold- several noteworthy initiatives. These include the transcrip- ing collections of germplasm of important medicinal plant tion of ancient palm leaf writings (Ola leaves) referred to species and for providing mother plants to prospective nurs- earlier into Sinhalese. The old palm leaves are several hun- erymen. Concomitant with the expansion of homestead cul- dred years old, and contain information on diseases and their tivation and commercial cultivation, arrangements have diagnosis, as well as prescriptions. been made for providing marketing information and market- The project has also launched a program in the MPCA ar- ing outlets to enable the communities to obtain the best eas to preserve traditional knowledge available with elderly prices for their produce. traditional practitioners. In this program, traditional practi- As a complementary activity, research on the propagation tioners with specialized knowledge on certain diseases (and and cultivation of selected medicinal plant species is being on the use of medicinal plants) have been selected, and aco- supported. lytes have been attached to them for learning. This system of apprenticeship is as old as the traditional healing systems, and the acolytes will remain attached to the physicians for a period of nearly two years. 1 GND is an administrative unit and contains several villages. This note was written by Dr. Ranjith Mahindapala, Director Programme, IUCN­The World Conservation Union, No. 53, Horton Place, Colombo 7, SRI LANKA; Email: rma@iucnsl.org)