(De Ware Tijd) PARAMARIBO – Medicinal plants could yield Suriname an estimated US$ 2.4 billion a year. Much research is still needed before Suriname can profit from this source of revenues, however. This is said by Dennis Mans at the 13th RedLAC General Assembly, where several environmental funds from the region are meeting and exchanging information. Some 33,000 plants occur in the Amazon region. Only 10% of those are known and of those, only 1% is exploited. “There is a reasonable chance that there are a great number of undiscovered plants with medicinal properties.” Mans, lecturer at the University of Suriname’s Faculty of Medical Sciences, states that medicinal plants have been an important source of revenues for centuries. “Since antiquity, plants have been used by people for food, clothing, shelter, hunting, and as cosmetics and medicine. So the conclusion is: Plants have economic value.” There is a growing interest in the economic value of bio-diversity, including medicinal plants. According to Mans, the reason for this interest is concern about the serious threats facing nature such as global warming and deforestation. The worldwide economic value of medicinal plants has only grown throughout the years. In 1997, medicinal plants had a value of US$ 20 billion, and this increased to US$ 80 billion in 2004.
