By Graeme Wild, Chief Executive Officer, Sappi Southern Africa
Every National Arbor Week, we quite rightly talk about the importance of planting trees.
We talk about their role in absorbing carbon, protecting biodiversity and supporting healthy landscapes. These are important conversations, but after many years working in forestry and the bioeconomy, I have come to believe that we sometimes make the relationship between people and trees sound shallower than it really is.
A tree does not exist in isolation. It is part of an ecosystem that depends on healthy soil, available water, biodiversity and the people living within that landscape. In many rural communities, indigenous trees and plants also have a far more immediate value. They are used as medicine, they are used for cooking and heating, they provide income and they form part of cultural practices and knowledge that have been passed between generations.
Traditional medicine provides a powerful example. According to our research it is estimated that 27 million South Africans use traditional medicine, while the trade supports at least 133,000 income-earning opportunities, many involving rural women. Around 771 plant species supply the traditional medicine market, which has been estimated to be worth R2.9 billion annually.
This is not a small or peripheral part of South African life, particularly in rural areas. Yet many of the plants on which the trade depends have historically been collected from the wild through potentially unsustainable harvesting practices.
As demand grows, that pressure becomes more difficult to manage. Bark and roots may be removed faster than plants can recover, while some plants are taken entirely. Supply falls, prices increase and the people who depend on these species eventually face the consequences of their scarcity.
If somebody derives an income from a plant, or a traditional healer requires it for their practice, telling them that the species is threatened does not make that need disappear. This is where our experience with Sappi’s Rare, Threatened and Endangered Species Programme has been particularly interesting.
The programme began in 2013 with seed funding from Sappi and an initial focus on Warburgia salutaris, commonly known as the Pepper-bark tree. At the time, demand for the species for traditional medicine had placed considerable pressure on wild populations. The programme started with just 40 trees and a practical question: if people were going to continue using Pepper-bark, could we find a way for them to do so without steadily destroying the resource?
That meant understanding how the plant was being used, learning how to propagate it successfully, and working with traditional healers and communities on alternative harvesting practices. Where removing bark and roots can damage or kill a plant, for example, leaves and stalks may provide a more sustainable source of medicinal material. Using plant propagation techniques developed by Sappi to multiply commercial tree species, the initial 40 trees were successfully multiplied into hundreds of thousands of new young plants, which were then made available for distribution through mandated organs of state.
This enabled an increasing supply rather than simply trying to suppress demand. More than 105,000 Pepper-bark trees have now been distributed through Kruger National Park and its partners, with a further 73,000 distributed through Ezemvelo KZN Wildlife since 2019. Monitoring by distribution agencies has recorded a survival rate of approximately 85%.
For me, however, one of the most interesting figures in the programme is not the number of trees distributed. It is the economic value that can begin to emerge once those trees are established within communities.
In Hazyview, a participating community can earn approximately R1,000 per tree annually from sustainably harvested leaves and stalks. They have developed a target of 2,500 medicinal trees to be planted in their community, that represents potential income of R2.5 million a year. The programme estimates considerably greater potential as the model expands across communities in KwaZulu-Natal, Mpumalanga, Limpopo and around the borders of the Kruger National Park.
The tree is no longer something that an environmental organisation is asking a community not to touch – It is a renewable resource which can provide medicinal material and generate an income.
There is an important distinction here. We should not be asking traditional healers to save threatened trees on our behalf. If the plants on which their practices depend disappear, they have as much to lose as anybody else. The challenge is to make sure they have access to a sustainable alternative before that happens.
This thinking has shaped the way the programme works. Rather than relying primarily on enforcement, it uses social ecologists who already work within communities and understand local needs. Traditional healers are involved in identifying plants of concern, and healers who have changed their own harvesting practices participate in workshops with other plant users. These workshops deal with practical issues such as propagation, seed collection, sustainable harvesting and water management.
There is good reason for approaching it this way. When a medicinal plant becomes scarce, its price rises. At some point, communities struggle to afford the services in which it is used, while traditional healers themselves face an increasingly expensive and unreliable supply of the material they need. Overharvesting is therefore not only a biodiversity problem. It eventually becomes a business, healthcare and community problem as well.
Perhaps this is also where some of our wider environmental messaging misses its audience. Those of us working in business and sustainability spend a great deal of time discussing biodiversity, natural capital, climate resilience and the bioeconomy. Much of that conversation takes place in boardrooms, at conferences and, increasingly, on platforms such as LinkedIn. There is always a danger that we end up talking primarily to people who already agree with us.
The conversation becomes more meaningful when conservation can be connected to something that matters in people’s everyday lives. Protecting a medicinal plant makes sense if it protects the supply on which a traditional healer depends. Sustainable harvesting makes sense if a tree can continue generating an income instead of being destroyed for a once-off harvest. Propagation makes sense if a community can grow a resource that would otherwise become increasingly expensive to buy.
This does not mean reducing biodiversity to its financial value – but it shows the importance of recognising the financial value when it is present and taking into account the realities of the people who live alongside and depend on these resources.
The approach is now being extended beyond Pepper-bark. The programme is working with or researching species including African Cherry, Black Stinkwood, Broad-leaved Wild Quince, Fever Tree and Assegai Tree, while many more species have been identified through community workshops. Forestry exists within landscapes shared by communities, indigenous vegetation, wildlife and other industries. It depends on functioning water systems, healthy soils and biodiversity. As new demands are placed on land, water and other natural resources, the inter-related dependencies will become more important.
National Arbor Week is a useful opportunity to remind South Africans to plant trees, and I hope we continue doing so, although not only for ornamental or vague biodiversity purposes. We should be having a deeper conversation about the trees and plants we are already losing, why they are under pressure and what would make their protection sustainable long after Arbor Week has passed.
Notes to editors
For completeness, we include the botanical names of the following trees:
African Cherry (Prunus Africana)
Black Stinkwood (Ocotea bullata)
Broad-leaved Wild Quince (Cryptocarya latifolia)
Fever Tree (Vachellia xanthophloea)
Assegai Tree (Curtisia dentata)
