People and Plants Meeting, March 2003
The Annual Meeting of People and Plants took place in the delightful surroundings of the bamboo forests of Anji County, Zhejiang Province, China, at the kind invitation of Prof Pei Shengji. Our thanks are also due to Prof Pei's highly efficient assistant Mr Yang Zhiwei, to Mr Shen Wen, President of the Chinese Journal of Applied Biomedical Technology, and also to Mr Huang Migen, Head of the Forest Resource Division, Anji Bureau of Forestry.
This venue was particularly appropriate as China is involved in several aspects of People and Plants work, notably in curriculum development, publications, and also in medicinal plants, as well as in field projects in Pakistan. The meeting did much to strengthen the ties between our Chinese ethnobotanist friends and those of us working in many other parts of the world.
In particular we greatly valued the chance to see the way in which the extensive bamboo forests of the foothills of the Tianmu Shan range are maintained and harvested for a huge variety of products -- a true harmonious combination of people and plants. A short report of our visit to the forests of Anji may be found in the PhotoPages section.

New issue of "Chonga" published
Issue 3 of "Chonga", Good Wood News, is issued this month, and is also published in pdf format on this website. This is the newsletter of WWF East Africa Regional Programme Office, People and Plants campaign. The campaign aims to promote sustainable woodcarving in Kenya by developing sustainable supplies from sources outside the natural forests, and to encourage buyers to choose Good Wood carvings, such as those made from neem. The current phase of the project, which runs until March 2005, and is funded by the UK Darwin Initiative, with some support also from UK Department for International Development (DFID), seeks to put in place incentives to enable carvers to shift from forest hardwoods to farm- or plantation-grown species. This attractively illustrated newsletter sets out all the latest developments in this highly worthwhile endeavour.

Other New Publications
The book series continues to be active, and must now be one of the best libraries of ethnobotany available. A number of new titles are planned, the first two of which are the following, both scheduled to appear from our publishers, Earthscan, in 2004:

Forests, Livelihoods and the International Woodcarving Trade: carving out a future
Edited by: Anthony B. Cunningham, Brian Belcher and Bruce M. Campbell
Woodcarving is a major activity affecting tropical woodlands and forests throughout the world. In many areas there has been a shift from traditional (usually sustainable) towards commercial (often unsustainable) carving, and in the latter cases the pressures on local resources are considerable, with threats to trees and forests, even to those which, on paper at least, are protected as reserves. Nevertheless, there are some success stories and lessons which can be learned to improve the conflict between local livelihood and the needs (both local and international) for conservation. The scale of the woodcarving industry gives some idea of its importance: $99million/year in Bali; $65 million/year in India, and $20 million/year in Kenya.
This book will appeal to economists and those involved in rural development, as it deals with a central topic of sustaining an important rural industry so that it continues to benefit local people. It also links to the concept of certification. This has been largely applied to timber production, but the use of timber for carving is having a huge impact, and is equally in need of certification.

Plant identification: user-friendly guides for biodiversity management (provisional title)
Edited by: Anna Lawrence and William Hawthorne
This manual will provide potential authors of field guides with an understanding of the issues and methods suitable for producing user-friendly guides which help to identify plants, for the purposes of conservation, sustainable use, participatory monitoring, or greater appreciation of biodiversity. It draws on both scientific and participatory processes, supported by the experience of contributors from across the tropics. It presents a core process for producing a field guide, based on definition of users, users' needs and objectives (in conjunction with the users), before collecting both botanical and social information, and presenting it in a usable way. The book sets out key steps, options and techniques available to the authors of a guide, and through illustration helps authors choose methods and media appropriate to their context.

Curriculum Working Paper
Working Paper 11 The Purposes and Teaching of Applied Ethnobotany
A. Hamilton, Pei Shengji, J. Kessy, A.A. Khan, S. Lagos-Witte and Z. K. Shinwari, 2003
This Working Paper is now available, and may be accessed on this website.

Tree Skin: methods for studying people's use of bark
Camera, script and direction: Tony Cunningham
Editing: Nic Zimmermann and Pippa Hetherington
The latest video is an introduction to methods of studying bark use, with an emphasis on practical field methods. Bark is used by people all over the world, for many different things: cork, tanning of leather, spices, anti-malaria tablets (from Cinchona), fibre for matting, cloth, and paper, to name but a selection.

Medicinal plants and conservation: issues and approaches
This important paper has recently been produced. It is an overview article by Dr Alan Hamilton, Head of the International Plants Conservation Unit at WWF-UK, and it deals with central issues related to the conservation of medicinal and aromatic plants. The main topics discussed are:
roles for medicinal plants in conservation;
the values of medicinal plants;
some concerns surrounding medicinal plants;
approaches to medicinal plant conservation knowledge systems, learning and information related to medicinal plants.
It can be seen on the WWF research centre site.

WHO Good Agricultural and Collection Practice (GACP) Guidelines
People & Plants have been involved in the consultation process for the development of these guidelines, and WWF is very grateful to WHO for being invited to participate in this global consultation exercise. We delivered comments on the first draft of the guidelines in July 2002, and participated in the first consultation in Geneva in October 2002. Our comments focused on GACP's deficiencies in addressing the ecological and social sustainability of MAPs collected from the wild, despite the fact that one of the objectives of GACP is to "promote environmental protection and conservation of medicinal plants".
Before the final GACP consultation on the 7-9th of July 2003 in Geneva, WWF, together with TRAFFIC and IUCN, have the opportunity to develop separate guidelines that focus on ecological and social sustainability, which could be seen as an update to the WHO/IUCN/WWF (1993) "Guidelines on the conservation of medicinal plants". WHO has expressed some interest in such an updated document that could then be cross-referenced in the final WHO GACP guidelines. As a result, representatives of WWF, TRAFFIC and IUCN, and a small group of specialists in medicinal and aromatic plant sustainability, will meet on the 8-10th of May 2003 in the UK to start revising these guidelines. In addition, the group will start to draft a set of sustainability standards and criteria for the wild collection of medicinal and aromatic plants. After extensive consultation in major source and use countries, the latter can be developed into a set of global ecological and social sustainability standards and criteria, in the near future. This is urgently needed to harmonise the many guidelines and standards produced by a variety of organisations, ranging from independent certifiers to companies -- see Pierce et. al. (2002).

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The newsletter, reflecting the activities of People and Plants, is compiled by:
Martin Walters
People & Plants Editor and Web-manager