Forests Sourcebook - HCV Resource Network

Box 1.25
Medicinal Plants as NTFPs in India and
Nepal
The Pangi Valley is a remote, high-altitude area in
the Chamba district, in northwest Himachal
Pradesh. Most of the residents in the region subsist
on single-season cash cropping, animal herding,
road building, and most recently, collection and
sale of medicinal plants and herbs from the
region’s forests.
More than 86 percent of residents surveyed in
the Pangi Valley collected some medicinal plants
and herbs from the forest during the collecting season
of mid-June to mid-October. In most villages,
income from medicinal herbs is between 10 and 20
percent of total cash income per household. Generally,
those who engage in the most medicinal herb
collection are individuals with fewer opportunities
for income, less land available for cultivation, and
fewer local labor opportunities.
This case contrasts with the situation in far
western Nepal, also in the Himalayas, where multidonor
support to a market and technical network
organization, Asia Network for Sustainable Agriculture
and Bioresources, and Nepali forest user
groups led to better markets for essential oils and
medicinals, investment in a NTFP paperprocessing
enterprise, and better resource extraction
and management.
Source: Molnar and others 2006.
LESSONS LEARNED AND RECOMMENDATIONS
FOR PRACTITIONERS
Potential actions that can be taken by international institutions,
such as the World Bank, in partnership with government
and other stakeholders, include the following:
■
of behavior for international companies who partner
with local communities.
Generate the research and information needed to understand
present levels of market participation by different
groups of low-income producers, incomes generated,
business profitability, and actual competitive advantages.
Also develop partnerships with others who will enable
the development of institutions to achieve these goals
(Scherr, White, and Kaimowitz 2004).
Improved commercial markets may not improve the livelihoods
of rural communities and farmers with low-quality
forest resources and poorly developed market infrastructure.
In these situations it remains important to focus on the subsistence
and environmental values of forestry development.
Small-scale producers must be able to compete with lowcost
industrial producers, as well as with producers who clear
land or illegally extract forest products. The marketing strategy
should complement the comparative advantages of the
different forest “zones.” (For example, people in remote areas
may be able to make money from harvesting high-value timber.
which compensates for high transportation costs. Closer
to urban areas where forests are scarce, low-income producers
who plant trees in agroforestry systems can benefit from
the proximity to urban markets when selling their timber.)
Many attempts at NTFP commercialization from natural
forests and agroforestry systems have failed to deliver the
expected benefits because marketing and trading strategies
for NTFPs have been neglected.
It is essential that opportunities are provided for women
to be more involved in strategies to improve the successful
commercialization of NTFPs because women often depend
on NTFP sales as a source of household income. A study in
West Bengal, India, reported that three times as many
women as men were involved in gathering NTFPs, which
accounted for 20 percent of household income (Scherr,
White, and Kaimowitz 2004).
■
■
Organize global and national initiatives to promote market
and institutional reforms to enable greater participation
of low-income producers in international trade and
to protect their interests against trade rules and initiatives
that would create unfair competition against them.
Develop new financial mechanisms to promote forestry
investment for low-income producers, using domestic
investment protocols and export guarantee systems to
favor forest businesses that adopt business models supportive
of low-income producers. Develop global norms
NOTE
1. Low-income forest producers include indigenous and
other community groups who manage collectively owned
forest resources; local individuals or groups who comanage
or harvest products from the forest; smallholder farmers
who manage remnant natural forests or plant trees in or
around their crop fields and pastures; individuals or groups
who engage in small-scale forest product processing; and
employees of forest production and processing enterprises
60 CHAPTER 1: FORESTS FOR POVERTY REDUCTION