1. Rationale for Having an Environmental Charter
PhytoTrade Africa members are drawn from a wide spectrum of players in the natural products industry. Its primary constituency is poor rural producers, but its members also include NGOs, the private sector, researchers, government departments and interested individuals.
In joining PhytoTrade, each member has to formally sign the Association’s constitution. This binds them to the objectives of PhytoTrade, amongst which the following is paramount:
8.1 To enable poor rural communities in the Southern African region to generate income through the sustainable utilisation of natural products.
In order that members have a common understanding of what ‘sustainable utilisation of natural products’, as described in the constitution, really means, it has been agreed that a separate Environmental Charter should be developed, relating in particular to the principles of sustainable utilisation, but referring also more broadly to principles of good environmental practice. This Charter would then form an addendum to the Constitution, and signature to the Charter would also be pre-requisite for membership of PhytoTrade.
2. Definition of Sustainable Use
The international Convention on Biological Diversity[1] defines sustainable use as follows:
The use of biological resources in a way and at a rate that does not lead to the long-term decline of biological diversity, thereby maintaining its potential to meet the needs and aspirations of present and future generations.
This definition, which is expounded in Article 10 of the Convention, is widely acknowledged and accepted throughout the world.
3. Sustainable Use in Practice
In practice, and relating to natural products, sustainable use means that the use of the natural resource from which a product is derived does not have a negative long term impact on either its availability or on the biodiversity of the ecosystem in which it is found.
This is complex, in that the way in which a resource is used or harvested is often more important than the mere fact of its use. For example, while there may be no theoretical negative long term impacts on availability from using the fruit of a tree for a particular natural product, if the entire tree is being cut down to harvest that fruit, very real negative impacts are likely to be experienced.
Added to this is a further complication, which is that it can be extremely difficult to assess the long term negative impacts on biodiversity from using a particular species. Thus, for example, if a fruit happened to be the primary food source for a particular caterpillar, and if the butterfly from that caterpillar was essential to the pollination of another tree, intensive harvesting of that fruit could have very severe long term impacts on biodiversity. But these would take many years to be felt, and would be extremely difficult to predict in advance.
For practical purposes, therefore, sustainable use related to natural products means:
a) Biological resource selection: using resources that are found in comparative abundance, and are not in areas of rare or endangered biodiversity
b) Harvesting methods: employing low-impact harvesting methods that minimise the threat of long term negative impacts
c) Resource regeneration: harvesting only resources, or parts of those resources, that will regenerate easily (i.e. giving preference to harvesting fruits and leaves over roots and barks)
d) Resource management: encouraging the active use of resource management strategies that promote sustainability
4. PhytoTrade Africa and the Environment
PhytoTrade is not an Eco-Labelling Organisation, and cannot certify any of its members’ products as environmentally friendly or sustainable products. Moreover, since most natural products fall outside the limited range of products for which internationally recognised environmental standards exist (e.g. timber), there are few, if any, other organisations that could provide such certification.
However, PhytoTrade is committed to the principles of sustainable use and sound environmental management, and as such will endeavour to ensure that all its members actively adhere to these principles in the production and trade of natural products. The primary instrument for achieving this is the Environmental Charter, to which all members must be signatory. Any member found to be in breach of the conditions of the Charter is therefore liable to expulsion from the Association.
Thus, while PhytoTrade is not able to guarantee that products supplied by its members have been sustainably produced, it is able to assert that its members are actively committed to the principles of sustainable use and sound environmental management, and have signed a Charter to this effect. Moreover, PhytoTrade is able to facilitate environmental audits on its members and their products if requested to do so, and financed, by a particular client.
[1] Probably the single most important international convention relating to sustainable use, and to which all of PhytoTrade’s member countries are signatory