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

TY - JOUR

T1 - Sustainability of wild plant use in the Andean Community of South America

AU - Kor, Laura

AU - Homewood, Katherine

AU - Dawson, Terence P.

AU - Diazgranados, Mauricio

N1 - Funding Information: This work directly contributes to the ‘Useful Plants and Fungi of Colombia’ project, supported by a Professional Development & Engagement grant under the Newton-Caldas Fund partnership. The grant is funded by the UK Department for Business, Energy and Industrial Strategy (BEIS) and Minciencias, and delivered by the British Council. This work also contributes to the NERC/AHRC funded Newton-Caldas Colombia BIO project POR EL Páramo [NE/R017999/1]. LK is supported by a studentship awarded by the Natural Environment Research Council [Grant Number NE/S007229/1]. Publisher Copyright: © 2021, Crown. Copyright: Copyright 2021 Elsevier B.V., All rights reserved.

PY - 2021/9

Y1 - 2021/9

N2 - 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.

AB - 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.

KW - Conservation-through-use

KW - Ethnobotany

KW - Natural resource use

KW - NTFP

KW - Plant conservation

KW - Useful plants

UR - http://www.scopus.com/inward/record.url?scp=85104786010&partnerID=8YFLogxK

U2 - 10.1007/s13280-021-01529-7

DO - 10.1007/s13280-021-01529-7

M3 - Review article

AN - SCOPUS:85104786010

SN - 0044-7447

VL - 50

SP - 1681

EP - 1697

JO - AMBIO

JF - AMBIO

IS - 9

ER -