Biodiversity gains await
Thailand’s rich biodiversity has been largely untapped. To blame is a consistent lack of policy support for research and development into Thai plants and herbs for their medicinal values. Such R&D could yield huge economic benefits for the country. It is good news that Prime Minister Gen Prayut Chan-ocha recognises the economic potential of local biodiversity and the importance of investing more in the research of medicinal herbs. Unfortunately, his comment was treated as a joke; he was partially to blame.
On Wednesday, the prime minister told a group of youths at Government House that Thailand needed to help rice farmers diversify into more lucrative crops such as herbal plants.
He specifically mentioned mah mui or cowage, which evokes a funny image of people scratching themselves like mad when exposed to mah mui’s power to trigger extreme itchiness. Mah mui is widely believed to have medicinal value to help cure impotency in men and menopause in women.
The PM said a kilogramme of mah mui now fetches 800 baht. When turned into medicinal products, the same amount fetches as much as 80,000 baht, he said. Why are we still being stupid and growing a product that gives so little return, he asked, referring to rice farmers who get only a few thousand baht per tonne of grain. Rice farmers are struggling with high investment costs, price fluctuations, debts, and now one of the most severe droughts in decades. They need assistance — not to be called stupid. The outrage on the ground overwhelmed the PM’s herbal plant message. And it is understandable.
Protecting the country’s biodiversity and medicinal plants to serve the local economy is no laughing matter, however. The government needs to do more than give mere lip service to biodiversity and herbal plants. Putting more hard cash into R&D is the easy part. The government’s bigger challenge is to stop deforestation, preserve indigenous knowledge on medicinal herbs by protecting forest dwellers, and prevent biopiracy from Big Pharma.
At present, state authorities are doing just the opposite. They allow forests in the North to be destroyed by corn plantations which supply cheap materials to agro giants’ animal feed industry. When the forests are destroyed, so is the country’s biodiversity and opportunities for future uses.
Meanwhile, forest dwellers who have first-hand knowledge of the medicinal values of forest plants are turned into criminals by forest laws, sent to jail, or face violent forest evictions.
Researchers often get the credit for finding medicinal properties in local plants. In truth, these researchers usually start with learning from locals. Forest eviction means destroying the primary source of knowledge of local herbs and plants.
Thailand has a law to protect local plant varieties and ensure benefit-sharing when local plants and herbs have been commercially developed by private companies. However, this law is under serious threat.
To serve Big Pharma, both the European Union and the United States have been pushing Thailand to accept new foreign trade agreements which, among other things, will override this law and allow free access for foreign entities to local herbs and plants without having to share economic benefits from products based on their medicinal properties. What’s worse, locals will no longer be able to develop their own products from the same herbs and plants.
Interestingly, there have also been efforts within the Agriculture Ministry to change the definition of local plants to allow more access by foreign companies.
These moves will rob the country of huge economic benefits deriving from its rich biodiversity. The prime minister must make sure this does not happen.