| European
Tropical Forest Research Network |
Table
of contents
News 47/48 homepage
TROPICAL FORESTS AND HUMAN HEALTH
By Carol J. Pierce Colfer, Douglas Sheil and Misa Kishi
Between June 2003 and April 2005, CIFOR researchers conducted a survey of the literature on human health and tropical forests. Our purpose was to assess what was available on forests and human health, given the increasing recognition – through such modalities as the Millennium Development Goals – that human health is important in maintaining forests as well as human well being. We hoped to find systematic, replicable, longitudinal and cross-cultural studies demonstrating elements of causality in the tropical forestpeople link. This hope was not realized. There do not appear to be such studies, or at best, very few.
We did, however, find a huge amount of literature on specific and relevant topics. That literature was scattered across a vast range of disciplines: agriculture, anthropology, botany, conservation, development studies, ecology, entomology, epidemiology, ethnobotany, forestry, geography, medicine, nutrition, political science, public health, sociology, soil science, zoology, and more. Although we examined over 650 studies and analyses, we will certainly have missed some relevant studies.
However, within that body of material, most of which came from the last decade or so, we identified and focused on four main topics: food and nutrition, diseases, health care (including medicines), and forestbased cultures.
We found that although tropical forests are often characterized by poor soils, and plants with defenses that render them inedible, forests are important genetic reservoirs. Foods that do come from such forests are extremely important in many contexts, often supplying vital nutrients to forest communities and serving as sometimes life-saving safety nets during seasonal shortfalls and crises (wars, severe droughts, floods etc.). Landscape modification, logging, hunting and invasive species, as well as different stages of forest regrowth (and probably climate change) result in variations in food availability, with varying impacts on local people. Commercialization of edible (and other) forest products has led to problems of unsustainability. Disease and inequity of food distribution within households result in varying effects on household members' nutritional status. We also found 'development' (infrastructure, forest clearing) to have both positive and negative efforts on people's health.
In terms of disease, forest people are badly affected – partly because their remote locations make public health facilities inaccessible. But also because national health systems tend not to prioritize them, due to the higher costs for fewer people. We found considerable information on HIV/ AIDS, malaria, and mercury poisoning as diseases/illnesses that commonly affect forest populations. We also looked at about 20 other diseases, the most notable of which are vector-borne. As with nutrition, local context and specificity ruled (in the absence of large scale, longitudinal and comparative studies), in terms of the causal relationships between forests and disease. In some cases, forest clearing resulted in improvements in health; but more often the reverse seemed to be true. The development of new habitats in which diseases and vectors flourish and the introduction of new animals, as well as the mixing of indigenous people with migrants, all make a potent mixture for exacerbating diseases.
Many forest plants and animals use toxins as defense mechanisms, and these compounds sometimes have a medicinal value. Cola, caffeine, chocolate, and chili pepper, as well as cocaine are popular forest compounds. We found extensive evidence of indigenous knowledge of forest plants and animals, that is applied for medicinal purposes by both women and men. In the absence of ‘modern' alternatives systems of traditional healing are thriving. In many areas, however, medicinal plants are threatened by commercialization and global markets, loss of traditional mechanisms that previously contributed to sustainable use, and competing uses of the same species. One of the most controversial issues is the use of indigenous knowledge by the pharmaceutical industry and the distribution of benefits. Attempts to work together with local communities have had mixed results.
Human cultures that evolve in forested areas tend to be intimately linked to the forest environment. This means that changes in forest cover can have serious implications for local people's way of life, and hence their mental health. This is particularly true of groups that live by hunting and gathering and by swidden agriculture, but can also be true, to a lesser extent, for more purely agricultural communities on the fringes of forested areas. The variety in the world views of different cultural groups came out clearly in our literature review – people from different cultural groups can have totally different assumptions about life, death, health and their natural and human environments. We concluded that improved health in these contexts will require a better understanding of the different ways people perceive health and illness, and how these perceptions relate to the forest and the rest of their way of life. Like biodiversity, such cultural diversity has an intrinsic value of its own, which may serve as an ‘insurance policy' should the ways of the West fail.
Improved communication in three areas would go a long way to advancing the health of forest people:
We call for three types of large-scale research to fill the gaps we have discovered:
Improving communication and filling the research gaps in this way will help highlight, and more importantly build upon, the significant role of forests in meeting human health needs and contributing to the health related Millennium Development Goals.
Contact information:
Carol J. Pierce Colfer
Center for International Forestry Research
CIFOR
Email: c.colfer@cgiar.org
Further reading
Forest and health initiative at CIFOR: http://www.cifor.cgiar.org/docs/_ref/research/livelihoods/forests_health/index.htm
Ali, R. (ed) 2004. Worlds Transformed: Indigenous Peoples' Health in Changing Rainforests. Cultural Survival Quarterly 28(2) http://209.200.101.189/publications/csq/index.cfm?id=28.2
Colfer, C.J.P., Dudley R.G., Gardner R. 2004. Forest women, health, and child bearing. 2 nd Worldwide Symposium on Gender and forestry, Arusha , Tanzania . http://www.cifor.cgiar.org/publications/pdf_files/research/forests_health/18.pdf
Colfer C.J.P., Sheil D., Kishi M. 2006. Forests and Human Health: Assessing the Evidence. CIFOR Occasional Paper 45, Dounias E., Selzner A., Kurniawan I., Levang P. 2005. Forest-to-town , sago-to-rice: the changing diets of Borneo 's huntergatherers. GeneFlow 05 p. 24. http://ipgri-pa.grinfo.net/index.php?itemid=1174&catid=28
Shanley P., Luz D. The impacts of forest degradation on medicinal plant use and implications for health care in Eastern Amazonia. Bioscience 53(6): 573-584. http://www.cifor.cgiar.org/publications/pdf_files/research/forests_health/22.pdf