Sustainability of wild plant use in the Andean Community of South America

Abstract

Overexploitation is the second biggest driver of global plant extinction. Meanwhile, useful plant species are vital to livelihoods across the world, with global conservation efforts increasingly applying the concept of ‘conservation-through-use.’ However, successfully balancing conservation and biodiversity use remains challenging. We reviewed literature on the sustainability of wild-collected plant use across the countries of Colombia, Ecuador, Peru, and Bolivia—a region of global importance for its biological and cultural richness. After applying defined search terms and a two-stage screening process, 68 articles were reviewed. The numbers which reported sustainable, unsustainable, or context-dependent outcomes were relatively even, but national differences emerged. Through narrative synthesis, we identified five key, reoccurring themes: plant biology; land tenure; knowledge, resource, and capacity; economics and market pressures; and institutional structures, policy, and legislation. Our results show the need for flexible, context-specific approaches and the importance of collaboration, with bottom-up management and conservation methods involving local communities and traditional ecological knowledge often proving most effective.

Bridging local and scientific knowledge for area-based conservation of useful plants in Colombia

“…This was reflected in local perceptions of how and by whom plant conservation areas should be managed. Participants’ strong preference for allowing sustainable use mirrors the “conservation-through-use” concept, while the overriding response that conservation areas should be locally managed matches findings that sustainable outcomes are more likely through actively working with local communities (Kor et al 2021 ). This was coupled with numerous participants’ calls for training and support from authorities and “experts”, supporting findings that pathways for sharing education and knowledge are crucial in achieving successful community conservation (Charles 2021 ).…”

“…Following the 2016 Peace Agreement in Colombia, national post-conflict plans were strongly linked to conservation and bioeconomic development (DNP 2018 ). However, deforestation rates have since increased and a high proportion of initiatives involving wild plant use are unsustainable (Kor et al 2021 ; World Resources Institute 2021 ).…”

How Can India Leverage Its Botanic Gardens for the Conservation and Sustainable Utilization of Wild Food Plant Resources through the Implementation of a Global Strategy for Plant Conservation?

“…WFPs may not be able to completely diminish supply-demand food gap, but they can significantly reduce it and restrict it from widening further [47]. On the other hand, direct harvesting of WFPs from the wild might foster unsustainable practices which, in turn, might lead to issues of species extinction or endangerment [2,48]. This highlights the importance of identifying destructive and harmful practices associated with the harvesting of WFPs and devising strategies that are sustainable.…”

Molecular and morphological analyses of plants with ethnomedicinal uses in northeastern Peru

“…Around 17000 taxa of spermatophytes have been described in the Andean forests of Peru (Brako & Zarucchi 1993, WCVP 2022, of which only 60% were studied and at least 1 400 species were confirmed with medicinal properties (Brack Egg 2004, Bussmann 2013, WCVP 2022. However, many of these are poorly known species, and their ancestral knowledge of traditional medicine is undervalued (Kor et al 2021).…”