Plants for life: - Sacred Seeds Sanctuary

2. BackgroundTo begin simply, plants equal life. They arethe primary producers that sustain all otherlife forms. They regulate air and waterquality, shape ecosystems and control theclimate. They provide food, medicine,clothes, shelter and the raw materials fromwhich innumerable other products aremade. These benefits are widelyrecognised but poorly understood. Thusplants are both a vital part of the world’sbiological diversity and an essentialeconomic resource for human existence.Yet plant extinctions are occurring at a rateunmatched in geological history, leavingecosystems incomplete and impoverished.Current extinction rates are at least 100 to1,000 times higher than naturalbackground rates, with a quarter of theworld’s coniferous trees known to be injeopardy (IUCN, 2006) and as many as15,000 medicinal plants under threat(IUCN/SSC MPSG, 2007). Over 50% ofcycads, used medicinally and the oldestseed plants on earth, are threatened withextinction. This makes them one of themost threatened groups of speciescurrently on the IUCN Red List ofThreatened Species. Whilst the extinctionof a species is the ultimate loss, theprocess of extinction itself has seriousconsequences for local ecosystems.Plant to plant interactions effect bothresource availability and habitat structure,and play an important role in mediating theresponses of natural systems (Brooker,2006). Thus the loss of any one speciesweakens an ecosystem’s ability to adapt ina rapidly changing world.“Exploitation pressures have increasedwith growing human population.Although sustainable exploitation ofmany species is theoreticallyachievable, many factors conspire tomake it hard to achieve in practice,and overexploitation remains a seriousthreat to many species andpopulations. Among the mostcommonly exploited species or groupsof species are plants and animalsharvested for the medicinal trade”(Millennium Ecosystem Assessment, 2005).Destructive harvesting practices coupledwith the degradation of forests,agricultural expansion, grazing pressureand urbanisation all threaten the survivalof medicinal plants. In short, we areasking more and more from naturalecosystems even as we reduce theircapacity to meet our needs (Kazoora,2002).Ginkgo biloba, a ‘living fossil’ with a longhistory of use in China for improving thememory.As we lose species, we lose vitalcomponents necessary to our ownsurvival. Humans, with all their culturaldiversity, are an integral part ofecosystems; ultimately one is entirelydependent on the other. Whilst we driveecosystem change both directly andindirectly, changes in ecosystems causechanges in human well-being also.Adverse impacts on ecosystems haveadverse impacts on cultures andcommunities, often affecting the world’spoorest people with disproportionateseverity. The ecosystem approach toconservation, which puts people at thecentre of ecosystem management, isstrikingly relevant to medicinal plants.Surely, we should save the plants thatsave us?Plants for life: Medicinal plant conservation and botanic gardens 5