Protecting Future Lives

In an oft-repeated story in South America – sad though it is – Amazon indigenous tribes lose their land to make way for oil wells, loggers, cattle ranches and farming settlements, leaving the population vulnerable to violence and poverty.

So it has been with the Cofán tribe. In Ecuador, the roar of oil company helicopters and the racket of chainsaws and trucks plying up and down new roads scared away their game. Many Cofán men turned to drink, while women sold trinkets or their bodies. On the Colombian side of the border, ranchers and oil companies forced many Cofán to survive by harvesting coca leaf, the base ingredient for cocaine.

But the story of the Cofán — there are some 2,600 survivors— has now taken an unexpected turn. Last year, the Colombian government adopted a Cofán idea to protect 25,000 acres of plants near the tribe’s traditional area in southwestern Colombia. It is Latin America’s first medicinal reserve.

“Many, if not most national parks in the Amazon, are designed by urbanites and are often poorly protected,” says Mark Plotkin, director of the Amazon Conservation Team, an Arlington, Va. Group that helped plan the park. “By having local people who live in these forests protecting it themselves in collaboration with local and national governments, there is a much greater likelihood that these forests will be protected in perpetuity.”

The Orito Ingi-Ande Medicinal Plants Sanctuary – which means “Our Territory” in the Cofán language – is an important step not only for native peoples to continue their traditions, but for scientists to study rainforest plants that indigenous groups have long relied on to cure illness.

Prominent Harvard biologist Edwin O. Wilson estimates that the world loses 137 plant, animal and insect species each day due to deforestation. The U.S. National Cancer Institute estimates that more than 3,000 plants can potentially be used against cancer, and 70 percent of these plants are found only in rainforests.

Rainforest products are already a multi-billion dollar industry with some of the top-selling pharmaceuticals derived from natural products. These include quinine, an extract of the cinchona tree used to treat malaria and arthritis; turbocuarine from the curare liana vine, given to patients as a muscle relaxant during surgery; and taxol from the yew tree for treating breast and ovarian cancer.

Cofán traditional healers use more than 100 medicinal plants to treat rheumatism, inflammation, kidney problems and an array of other ailments. Their shamans use a vine called Paullinia yoco to help prevent malaria – a common malady among indigenous groups.

Currently, 121 prescription drugs sold worldwide come from plants. Indigenous groups discovered three-quarters of these plants, according to Raintree Nutrition Inc., a Carson City, Nev.-based company that develops natural products. This indigenous knowledge must be preserved and shared, not exploited to benefit only large pharmaceutical companies, as has shamelessly been the case in the past. As part of its decision to establish the medicinal reserve, the Colombian government should include strict rules on commercialization of the plants.

The creation of this plant sanctuary comes at a time when the Amazon continues to be under siege. The rate of deforestation in the Brazilian Amazon rose by nearly 4 percent between August 2007 and July 2008, according to the nation’s National Institute of Space Research. It is the first increase since 2004.

Colombia has made a landmark decision to protect indigenous culture and rainforest biology. The Cofán sanctuary could become a model for Latin America and the world.