Ethnobotany in the Andes and the Amazon in a world of Nagoya Protocol and post SARS-CoV-2 pandemic

Abstract

Plants provide humankind with our most basic resources — food, medicines, fiber, and a whole array of other useful products. Relatives of wild crops and traditional plant varieties have been the foundation of crop domestication, plant breeding, and indeed the whole of modern agriculture. Plants provide the molecular basis of many pharmaceuticals, as direct compounds or as molecular blueprints. Modern science has started to confirm that the distinction between nutrition and medicine is blurred. With economic development empowering a greater percentage of the world’s people, urban areas continuing to expand, and human populations projected to double in the next 50 years, it seems certain that natural resources will face increasing threat. Habitat loss, unsustainable extraction of plants, spread of invasive species, climate change, and other human activities will have tremendous impacts. In this overview, we assess the changes in ethnobotanical research in the Andes and Amazon in the last decades using the Chábobo Ethnobotany Project as an example for modern ethnobotanical research under Convention on Biological Diversity and the attached Nagoya Protocol, and reflect on the possibilities of using this model for future ethnobotanical studies in a post-SARS-CoV-2 world.