Richness of non-timber forest products in Himalayan communities-diversity, distribution, use pattern and conservation status

Contribution of Nontimber Forest Products Earn to Livelihood in Rural Households and the Type of Use: A Systematic Review

The researcher conducted a review of 83 articles published between 2011 and 2021 to determine the nontimber forest products (NTFPs) income contribution and usage types based on spatial and temporal patterns. The study used a search, synthesis, appraisal, and analysis framework for review. The review included articles that only focused on the contributions of NTFPs for livelihood income and NTFPs usage type, while others not related to these two topics were excluded. For its literature search, more than half of the articles used Google Scholar, followed by Research4life, Scopus/Elsevier, EMBASE, and PubMed, respectively. In this study, excluding papers that (i) did not provide evidence on the income contribution of NTFPs, (ii) did not include articles that did not clearly explain the NTFPs use types, and (iii) were published before 2011, the reviewer was able to reduce the number of included articles (eligibility criteria or inclusion and exclusion criteria). 83 article papers were reviewed for the current review. The majority of the research for this review was carried out in India (19%), Ethiopia (13%), and Nigeria (11%). India was the first of the 17 both Asian and African countries to do research on the NTFPs’ contribution to rural household income and type of use. NTFPs contribute significantly to rural household revenue in 17 countries, ranging from a minimum of 9.5% in Zambia to a maximum of 40.19% in Myanmar. The average percentage of revenue from NTFPs across the 17 nations was 23.56%. Wild fruit, wild vegetables, medicinal plants, firewood, and crafts were the five NTFP usage types that were used by people in every country studied. Despite the fact that different countries utilize different types of NTFPs, the most commonly used types of NTFPs do not differ statistically ( $P>0.05$ ). To prevent overexploitation, those top five NTFPs must be conserved as they gather across the regions. NTFP collection is a significant source of revenue for rural poor and people who live in and around the forest. There are many types of NTFPs in both Asian and African countries. So, this study shows that the rural people depend on the forest product and get many benefits from the forest especially in the NTFP usage type. In order to secure livelihood stability in this global biodiversity hotspot and to preserve plant and animal diversity, the cultivation and scientific harvesting of NTFPs are urgently required. It is necessary to increase capacity by teaching NTFP users how, when, and how much to harvest.

Himalayan ecosystem services and climate change driven agricultural frontiers: a scoping review

Climate change, rising temperatures, snow melts and more frequent droughts and floods are disproportionately affecting food and water security, habitat health, and agricultural productivity in the Himalayan region. These climatic changes are negatively impacting productivity of staple crops including wheat, maize, and rice at lower altitudes, but may provide opportunities to utilize Climate Change Driven Agricultural Frontiers [CCDAFs] at higher altitudes. Agricultural expansion into CCDAFs paired with behavioural shifts such as replacing traditional crop systems with commercial crops will predominantly affect forests, water resources, and soil health, which are already negatively affected by climate change unless adaptation options are directed to just and sustainable agroecological transitions. By trading regulating, supporting, and cultural services for food and water provisioning services, as are evident in land sparing strategy, the utilization of CCDAFs will have long-term implications for the sustainability of mountain farming systems. Climate change is affecting Himalayan agriculture, food security, and ecosystem services, and scientific literature predominantly focus on one of these topics in isolation, occasionally connecting results to another topic. By classifying literature as predominantly agriculture, food security, or ecosystem service themed, this scoping review identifies sources with multiple dominant themes and explores how the relationships between these topics are represented in literature to provide research based evidence to promote the future expansion of agriculture that is low-carbon, just and sustainable. Gaps in the literature reveal that research is needed on the extent of CCDAFs in the Himalayas and the potential trade-offs on utilizing the frontier areas.

SUPPLEMENTARY INFORMATION

The online version contains supplementary material available at 10.1007/s43621-022-00103-9.

Phytochemical and pharmacological uses of medicinal plants to treat cancer: A case study from Khyber Pakhtunkhwa, North Pakistan

ETHNOPHARMACOLOGICAL RELEVANCE

Cancer is the top death causing disease in the world, due to its occurrence through various mechanism and form. Medicinal plants have been extensively used for the purifications and isolations of phytochemicals for the treatment and prevention of cancer.

OBJECTIVES

Consequently, this research was designed to document the traditional practices of anti-cancer plants and its phytochemical essay across the districts of KP, Pakistan.

MATERIALS AND METHODS

Semi-structured interviews were conducted in 24 districts from the informants mostly the traditional herbalists (key informants). The information were compared with the publish data using various authentic search engines including, google, researchgate, google scholar and NCBI.

RESULTS

One hundred and fifty-four (154) anti-cancer plants were recognized belonging to 69 families among all, Lamiaceae (13 sp.), Asteraceae (12 sp.) and Solanaceae (9 sp.) were the preferred families. The local inhabitants in the area typically prepare ethnomedicinal recipes from leaves (33.70%) and whole plants (23.37%) in the form of decoction and powder (24.67%), respectively. Herbs stayed the most preferred life form (61.68%) followed by shrub (21.4%). Similarly, breast (29.22%) and lung cancer (14.83%) was the common disease type. Literature study also authorize that, the medicinal plants of the research area were rich in phytochemical like quercetin, coumarine, kaempferol, apigenin, colchicine, alliin, rutin, lupeol, allicin, berbarine, lutolin, vanilic acid, urocilic acid and solamargine have revealed significant activates concerning the cancer diseases, that replicating the efficacy of these plants as medicines.

CONCLUSION

The Khyber Pakhtunkhwa is rural area and the local inhabitants have very strong traditional knowledge about the medicinal plants for different diseases like cancer. The medicinal plants for significant ranked disorder might be pharmacologically and phtyochemicaly explored to demonstrate their efficacy. Moreover, the local flora especially medicinal plants facing overgrazing, overexploitation and inappropriate way of collection, however, proper management strategies like reforestation, controlled grazing, proper permission from concerned department and rangeland strategies among others may be assumed to enhance the proper usage of medicinal plants.