Ethnobotany as a discipline – Ethnobotany has developed in the recent past into an important scientific discipline. The central issues in ethnobotanical studies involve the interaction between plants and people and foremost among these are the management of plant diversity by indigenous communities and the traditional use of medicinal plants. The vast body of indigenous knowledge concerning biodiversity is vanishing with the destruction of ecosystems and traditional cultures throughout the world. This destruction has led to an increased awareness of the necessity of ethnobotanical research.

Ethnobotanical projects – As a consequence several comprehensive ethnobotanical projects have been funded, e.g., PROSEA (Plant Resources of South East Asia), PROTA (Plant Resources of Tropical Africa), TRAMIL (Programa de investigación aplicada a la medicina popular del Caribe), People and Plants Initiative (a joint project of WWF, UNESCO, and the Royal Botanic Gardens at Kew). Indigenous knowledge of plant use and ecosystem management is considered an important component of the world’s cultural heritage. However, it also plays a crucial role in various applied fields such as biodiversity conservation and primary health care. Since conservation is directly linked to social values and behaviour, local knowledge on plant resource management has played an increasingly important role in biodiversity conservation projects. According to the World Health Organisation (WHO), 60 - 90% of the developing countries’ population still relies on traditional herbal medicine for primary health care. Additionally, for many people in developing countries wild collected “greens” are an essential source of vitamin and mineral additives for healthy nutrition. Furthermore, effective allopathic drugs (e.g., artemisinin for treatment of malaria, vincristin against leukaemia) have been developed on the basis of indigenous plant knowledge. These successful ethnobotanical studies confirm that important sources of knowledge are hidden in highly endangered traditions of indigenous societies.

Multidisciplinarity – Ethnobotany stands at the interface of several disciplines and relies on knowledge and research methods of botany, ecology and anthropology. It deals with investigations on indigenous people’s plant use and management of natural resources as well as their perception and classification of nature. Methodologies applied in ethnobotany have enhanced greatly over the past decades. Various analytical tools and statistical analyses derived from ecology, linguistics and cognitive psychology have augmented traditional qualitative approaches, leading to more sophisticated ways of collecting data and more profound interpretations of research results.

Used Literature

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Prance G.T., Balée W., Boom B.M., and Carneiro R.L. 1995. Quantitative ethnobotany and the case for conservation in Amazonia. In Schultes R.E. and Von Reis S. (eds), Ethnobotany, evolution of a discipline. Chapman and Hall, London: 157-174.

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