Using Plant Diversity Sustainably

Achievements

Botanic gardens around the world are focusing research efforts towards the development and sustainable utilisation of local plants. This includes research to produce improved varieties with commercial potential and developing propagation and production protocols for a wide range of useful plants.

Botanic gardens are involved in projects, often involving their local communities, which use plant diversity in a sustainable manner, to improve human well-being. This includes work on medicinal and nutritional plants, as well as projects that aim to alleviate poverty as well as addressing social and community problems.

Many botanic gardens are working with CITES to protect wild plants from being threatened by international trade, in a variety of ways. These include: providing comprehensive conservation models; training CITES officials on identification; and providing alternatives (e.g. hybrids) for sustainable trade.

Among the many other contributions botanic gardens make to society, botanic gardens provide a range of health benefits and in an increasingly urbanised world, botanic gardens are playing an important role in providing green spaces in urban centres.

Botanic gardens have begun to respond to the access and benefit-sharing requirements of the CBD by developing implementation tools such as the Principles on Access to Genetic Resources and Benefit Sharing and the International Plant Exchange Network. In addition, new innovative models to generate and share benefits derived from the use of plant genetic resources are being developed.

The need to develop botanic gardens as models for sustainability has made good progress and technology and innovation are being used to support innovation. These models now need to be more widely applied.

Challenges

A huge number of plant species are used for their medicinal properties (50-70,000). However, there is a great lack of information, for example on the extent of trade in medicinal plants and baseline population data for plants that are being exploited.

While collecting plants from the wild is often the only option available, information on what constitutes a sustainable level of harvesting is often not available.

The role of CITES in protecting wild plants, whilst not discouraging trade or damaging livelihoods, is not always well understood.

Local plant resources are insufficiently used by urban planners in the development of green spaces in cities – botanic gardens have an important role to play in addressing this gap.

Policy and decision makers at many levels are not aware of the work of botanic gardens in the conservation and sustainable use of plant resources.

Recommendations

Many wild plants are under threat due to unsustainable harvesting techniques. Bringing these plants into cultivation is not always the answer - although it often has an important role to play). Botanic gardens should also focus on supporting sustainable harvesting initiatives – using the guidelines recently developed – and especially working with local communities.

Botanic gardens should ensure that conservation efforts include intraspecific diversity and crop wild relatives as these provide important resources for developing new varieties.

Botanic gardens and BGCI should work with CITES to support the new livelihood initiatives within CITES, providing botanical information and expertise.

Botanic gardens need to constantly renew their relevance to society. They can contribute to global as well as local benefits, but cannot flourish without the support of their local community.

In line with the access and benefit sharing provisions of the CBD, botanic gardens should continue to seek more opportunities for collaboration and innovative ways to generate and share benefits and build local capacity for conservation and sustainable use of plant resources.

Botanic gardens should inform policy and decision makers about the importance and relevance of their work in conservation and sustainable use, so that new national and international laws create and enabling environment for their work.

There is a need to mainstream sustainability into botanic garden operations. Sustainability should be built into new designs, structure and garden landscapes, rather than being retrospectively applied. Protocols for sustainability need to be developed and shared to guide botanic gardens.

Safety Nets for Medicinal Plants

The Safety Nets project is about the protection of medicinal plants around the world. Huge pressure on medicinal plant resources, largely from habitat destruction and over-harvesting, is straining nature's ability to cope and we are putting human health at risk as a result.

BGCI Projects in Jordan - Current

BGCI is working in Jordan on a variety of projects to conserve and protect plant resources and diversity in this unique region.

Unsustainable Use of Plant Species

The over-exploitation of species by human kind has been the most significant cause of species extinction for the past few thousand years.