Iracambi Medicinal Plants (IMP)

"To offers a holistic approach to deforestation by providing local farmers with a rainforest co-operative for the development of sustainably harvested medicinal plant products."

Holistic herbal medicine uses herbs to treat the causes rather than the symptoms of disease. At the base of deforestation lies the need to clear the land for the planting of cash crops. For the forest itself to be seen as valuable, its biological resources need to be developed and sustainably harvested and then recognized as commercially valuable.

Many of the 10,000 plants of the Atlantic rainforest have medicinal properties. Much indigenous wisdom of the local farming community descends from the Puri, the original inhabitants of the area around Iracambi.

Iracambi Medicinal Plants aims to provide owners of forest lands in the Mata Atlāntica with an alternative income from their forests, by developing commercially viable products based on indigenous medicinal plants sustainably produced under conservation management practices that enhance the biodiversity of the forest.

In the process, the project expects to re-awaken the concept of forest value through the revitalisation of the plants and practices of traditional medicine. By encouraging interest, both cultural and economic, in the use of indigenous medicinal plants, the project is drawing attention back into the heart of the forest, for it is here that sustainability begins.

• Selection of species and products for development
• Emergence of records of optimum sustainable yields and stock capacity for different species
• Documentation and practice of traditional harvesting techniques
• Role in the development of standards for sustainable wild collection
• Collection area management plan
• Development of market strategy
• Creation of pilot project of sustainable forest harvests and recognition with Brazilian NTFP network
• Confirmed ties within local community for development of medicinal plant association ·
• Presence of medicinal plant distribution through forest corridors

The research on sustainable harvesting is part of an international project sponsored by the WorldWide Fund for Nature (Germany), the International Union for the Conservation of Nature (IUCN) and the German Federal Ministry of the Environment. You can read a summary of this project by clicking here, and can download the latest progress report from this link. Iracambi's participation in this project has been financed by the Manfred Hermsen Stiftung of Germany.

To see the Nine Phases of our Medicinal Plant Trail, please click here

To visit our Herbarium, please click here

Want to help? Click here for our Forest Futures Program