On Top of the World: Harvest and Trade of Medicinal Plants in Northwest Nepal
The harvest and trade of medicinal plants in Nepal can constitute a valuable component of rural livelihoods, especially in the remote and relatively poor areas of northwest Nepal. The main medicinal plants harvested in this region include one of the world’s most expensive biological resources, yarsagumba (Ophiocordyceps sinensis), as well as species like jatamansi (Nardostachys jatamansi), kutki (Neopicrorhiza scrophulariiflora), and bon lasun (Fritillaria cirrhosa). Usually, these species are harvested under the governance of Community Forest User Groups (CFUGs) – a form of local community natural resource governance for which Nepal has been praised. However, the abundances of these species are reportedly declining in many areas of northwest Nepal due to excessive offtakes. Such overharvesting is largely driven by increasing and diversifying international trade to India, China, and beyond. Furthermore, future offtakes of these species risk being even more unsustainable due to processes like China’s Belt and Road Initiative, which aims to rapidly increase demand for Traditional Chinese Medicine. This places an emphasis on developing and implementing strategies to improve the sustainability of harvests.
Medicinal plants that are harvested in northwest Nepal. From left to right: caterpillar fungus (Ophiocordyceps sinensis); jatamansi (Nardostachys jatamansi); kutki (Neopicrorhiza scrophulariiflora); bon lasun (Fritillaria cirrhosa).
In early 2022, I embarked on a scoping trip to northwest Nepal in collaboration with the Himalayan Plants for People (HPfP) project (funded by the Darwin Initiative; led by TRAFFIC and ANSAB). The aim of the scoping trip was to develop a more in-depth understanding of the harvest and trade of medicinal plants in the region to inform future research on how to improve the sustainability of harvests under current and potential future conditions.
Over the following few weeks, me and Sunar, my guide, trekked from village to village across Jumla district and informally interviewed an array of key stakeholders, usually in the heat of the Himalayan sun against a backdrop of mountains or by the fireside. At night, people were wonderfully hospitable and welcomed us into their homes to feast on dal bhat and sleep. In total, informal interviews were conducted with almost 50 harvesters from across 10 CFUGs; 11 traders who, together, operate across many CFUGs in Jumla and other districts; seven CFUG presidents; and various other key stakeholders from relevant nongovernmental organisations and the Government of Nepal. With each interview, I developed an increasingly comprehensive understanding of the processes involved in the harvest and trade of medicinal plants in the region.
Map showing the location of Jumla district in northwest Nepal.
According to our interviews, the process of the harvest and trade of medicinal plants in the Jumla district consists of the following:
1. Traders, who should already have obtained a trade permit from the respective District Forest Office, visit villages around a month before they want harvesters to collect the medicinal plants. At this point, traders part-pay harvesters and usually instruct the harvesters to collect as many medicinal plants as they can and deliver them all to the given trader.
2. Traders might visit villagers associated with multiple CFUGs, and, as traders are driven by profit, they decide which CFUGS to target based on the availability of medicinal plants in the collection areas of each CFUG. Whilst CFUGs differ in their specific rules and regulations for medicinal plant collection, they share several commonalities; for instance, harvesters are typically allowed to enter the collection area for a certain period (e.g., one week) and during that time they are allowed to collect as many medicinal plants as they can.
3. Once collected, the dominant flow of medicinal plants harvested in the CFUGS of Jumla, and, in fact, the CFUGs of many of the other districts across northwest Nepal, is via Jumla bazaar to Nepalgunj and then onto markets in India and China.
Importantly, talking with harvesters and traders emphasised the value of cash income from the harvest and trade of the various high-income medicinal plant species in the region (incl., jatamansi, kutki, bon lasun, yarsagumba). However, in the vast majority of CFUGs that were visited, all respondents perceived that over the past decade the availabilities of key medicinal plant species in their collection area had declined but that per unit values had increased.
Reflecting on the interviews suggests a few key interconnected factors that could contribute to the reportedly unsustainable offtakes of medicinal plants in the region:
· The increasing numbers of people involved in the harvest and trade of medicinal plants.
· Inadequacies in the appropriateness of existing rules and regulations for the harvest and trade of medicinal plants and the effectiveness of their enforcement. For instance, examples of non-compliance that were reported in the interviews include traders often trading more than is dictated by their permit and harvesters collecting before the set harvest period.
· The overwhelmingly dominant incentive for harvesting and trading medicinal plants in the region is the short-term acquisition of money, which, given the inadequacies of existing governance, fuels the excessive offtakes. This driver could well be particularly acute when there is a lack of other opportunities for income; however, a potential counterargument to this point would be that even the people who currently have other sources of income usually collect as many medicinal plants as they can during the harvest period.
Reflecting upon the interviews indicates the value of more nuanced research into the motivations of harvesters and traders. To explain: it was common for respondents to suggest that the best way to improve the sustainability of medicinal plant harvests would be to increase the available income from other sources, like farming. However, a key uncertainty with this strategy is how the receipt of more income from other sources would affect medicinal plant collection, given that people who currently receive a reasonable level of income from other sources still harvest as many medicinal plants as they can during the harvest period. Thus, a potentially valuable avenue of research would be the examination of harvest and trade motivations under different conditions; for instance, through the use of choice experiments. Such research could indicate, firstly, to what extent facilitating other income sources would affect inclination to harvest medicinal plants, and, secondly, whether a behavioural change intervention might be useful for incentivising the adoption of behaviours that would promote the sustainability of medicinal plant harvests.