Management of medicinal plants in Bangladesh

Medicinal plants (MP) are a vital component of non-timber forest products (NTFP) and play a significant role in the health care of rural people all over the world. Collection of MP is also making an important contribution to poor people’s livelihood, but in countries with high population density, like Bangladesh, the pressure on natural forests is hard. In that case, marginal or small-scale cultivation of MP significantly can contribute to poor people’s livelihood and reduce the pressure on natural forests. A sustainable cultivation of MP can therefore be seen as an act of nature conservation. The present study aims to evaluate the farmer’s perceptions as well as the present research and policy-making processes related to the NTFP sector, especially the MP cultivation. The result of this study points out problems for the sector to develop due to lack of processing technology, reliable transportation of products, capacity building of farmers, micro financing, comprehensive policy-making, coordination between agencies and research institutes, poor extension and research imperatives, market supervision, land use change and fragmentation etc. However, the current forest policy is only briefly addressing the issues of NTFP. Farmers and other stakeholders, e.g. traditional healers, are not involved in the policy-making, thus leading to an impractical management system. It is according to the results of this study of utmost importance to create a harmonization of practitioners’ experiences, research and policy attributes to make the cultivation of MP economically and ecologically sustainable.