How Biodiversity Fuels Traditional Health Systems Around the World

For thousands of years, long before the first pharmacy opened its doors, people turned to the natural world to heal the sick, manage pain, and prevent disease. That relationship between nature and human health is not a relic of the past – it is very much alive today. According to the World Health Organization, traditional, complementary, and integrative medicine is used in 170 countries, with 67% of surveyed countries reporting that 40 to 99% of their populations rely on it. At the heart of this global health reality lies one foundational resource: biodiversity.

Why biodiversity is essential to traditional health systems
The role of medicinal plants in health and global trade
Economic significance in Asia and beyond
Medicinal plants as community healthcare infrastructure
How biodiversity loss threatens traditional health systems
Overexploitation and wild collection pressures
Loss of traditional knowledge alongside species loss
Ecosystem degradation and quality of medicines
Integrating traditional and modern health systems
From indigenous knowledge to pharmaceutical development
Challenges of integration

Why biodiversity is essential to traditional health systems

Biodiversity – the variety of life on Earth across species, genes, and ecosystems – does far more than make forests look full. It directly supplies the raw ingredients that billions of people depend on for their primary healthcare. The WHO estimates that 60% of the world’s population relies on traditional medicines, with medicinal plants forming the most widely used category across all traditional systems. These include not just well-known herbs but entire ecosystems – forests, wetlands, and grasslands – that provide the environmental conditions in which medicinal species thrive.

The links between biodiversity and traditional health systems go deeper than simply sourcing plants. Ecosystems also regulate climate, purify water, support food security, and control disease vectors – all of which are foundational to community health. Traditional medicine (TM) encompasses systems such as Traditional Chinese Medicine, Indian Ayurveda, Arabic Unani medicine, and various forms of indigenous medicine, each of which relies on a specific relationship with local biodiversity. When that biodiversity is intact, these systems function. When it degrades, the entire framework of community health can begin to unravel.

The Lancet points out that modern extinction rates are approximately 100 to 1,000 times greater than rates recorded in past geological eras. Every species that disappears takes with it not only a biological entity but also a potential medicine, a cultural practice, and a piece of living knowledge accumulated over generations.

The role of medicinal plants in health and global trade

Of the roughly 350,000 known vascular plant species on Earth, approximately 26,000 have documented medicinal use. These plants are embedded in both traditional healthcare systems and modern pharmaceutical supply chains. Around 40% of pharmaceutical products today have a natural product basis – aspirin came from willow bark, the antimalarial artemisinin was derived from Artemisia annua used in ancient Chinese medicine, and cancer treatments for children have been developed from the rosy periwinkle.

Economic significance in Asia and beyond

The economic scale of the medicinal plant sector reflects just how deeply the world depends on botanical biodiversity. Global exports and imports of medicinal and aromatic plants reached $4.18 billion and $4.25 billion respectively in 2023, nearly doubling in value compared to 2010. China and India are the two largest exporters, together holding more than 40% of global medicinal plant biodiversity. India alone achieved 240% growth in export value over this period, driven largely by Ayurvedic plant material and herbal formulations.

In China, Traditional Chinese Medicine (TCM) is both a domestic healthcare pillar and a major export industry. TCM draws on a comprehensive understanding of plant, mineral, and animal substances, with some herbal formulations having been in continuous use for over 2,200 years. Similarly, India’s Ayurveda – which relies heavily on plant-derived alkaloids, polyphenols, and other bioactive compounds – continues to drive both domestic healthcare and a growing international market. India’s herbal medicine market was valued at approximately USD 7.55 billion in 2026, while China’s stood at around USD 19.5 billion in 2025.

The global herbal medicine market reflects a powerful consumer shift toward nature-based health solutions. According to WHO projections, the worldwide herbal industry could reach $5 trillion by 2050 – a figure that underscores the massive and growing stakes of conserving the biodiversity on which this entire sector depends.

Medicinal plants as community healthcare infrastructure

In rural and remote communities across Asia, Africa, and Latin America, medicinal plants are not a lifestyle choice – they are the healthcare system. For millions of marginalized communities, traditional medicine is the only available recourse for primary healthcare needs, especially in areas that lack access to formal health systems. Over one and a half million practitioners of India’s traditional medicine systems – Ayurveda, Unani, and Siddha – use medicinal plants in preventive, promotive, and curative applications. This is a vast public health infrastructure rooted entirely in botanical biodiversity.

How biodiversity loss threatens traditional health systems

The same forces degrading global biodiversity – deforestation, land-use change, climate change, pollution, and overexploitation – directly undermine the plant resources that traditional health systems depend on. Biodiversity loss can have significant direct health impacts when ecosystem services are no longer sufficient to meet community needs. When forests disappear, so do the plants gathered from them. When soil quality declines, so does the potency of the plants grown in it.

Overexploitation and wild collection pressures

Global demand for medicinal plants has threatened certain species, contributing to biodiversity loss and depletion of natural resources critical to human health. The problem is compounded by the fact that between 70 and 90% of medicinal plant raw materials in global markets still come from wild collection rather than cultivation. Increased commercial demand, driven partly by the booming global herbal products market, is accelerating overharvesting of wild plant populations faster than they can regenerate.

The World Economic Forum’s Global Risks Report 2023 ranked biodiversity loss and ecosystem collapse among the top five global risks over the next decade. With almost half of the world’s flowering plants now facing extinction due to climate change and land degradation, the pipeline of both traditional remedies and future pharmaceuticals is under threat simultaneously.

Loss of traditional knowledge alongside species loss

Biodiversity loss does not only remove plants – it also accelerates the disappearance of the knowledge systems built around them. Bodies of folk knowledge, accumulated and refined over thousands of years, are disappearing at an alarming rate. In Latin America, indigenous medicinal knowledge is eroding alongside the ecosystems that gave rise to it, driven by urbanization, language loss, and economic pressures that pull younger generations away from traditional practices. Once this knowledge is gone, no amount of biodiversity restoration will fully recover it.

Globalization, urbanization, and the erosion of native languages present major challenges to indigenous knowledge systems. As younger community members relocate to cities and adopt modern lifestyles, the transmission of medicinal plant knowledge becomes increasingly fragile. The oral nature of much of this knowledge makes it particularly vulnerable – it is not written down, peer-reviewed, or archived in any conventional sense.

Ecosystem degradation and quality of medicines

Biodiversity loss also affects the quality and safety of medicinal plants that do remain available. When ecosystems are degraded through pollution or heavy metal contamination of soils, plants growing in those environments absorb these contaminants. The cascading effects of ecosystem disruption – from soil nutrient depletion to altered rainfall patterns – affect the chemical composition of medicinal plants, reducing their therapeutic efficacy and sometimes making them unsafe.

Integrating traditional and modern health systems

Rather than treating traditional and modern medicine as competing systems, there is growing recognition globally that integration is both possible and necessary. Integrating traditional medicine with modern healthcare can enhance access to holistic and culturally appropriate services while also promoting the conservation and sustainable use of biodiversity. The WHO has made this integration a strategic priority through its Global Traditional Medicine Strategy 2025-2034, which focuses on strengthening quality, safety, and appropriate use of traditional and complementary medicine based on evidence and respect for cultural and biological diversity.

From indigenous knowledge to pharmaceutical development

Scientific standardization of medicinal plants typically begins with ethnopharmacological surveys that document traditional practices and help researchers identify specific compounds with pharmacological properties. The development of artemisinin – a Nobel Prize-winning antimalarial – began with a review of ancient Chinese texts. Vincristine, used in cancer treatment, was derived from a plant used in traditional Caribbean medicine. These are not historical coincidences; they reflect a systematic pattern in which traditional knowledge serves as a validated roadmap for pharmaceutical discovery.

Today, around 170 of WHO’s 194 member states have reported on the use of herbal medicines, acupuncture, yoga, indigenous therapies, and other traditional systems. Many countries have moved toward formal integration – establishing regulatory frameworks, training traditional practitioners, and incorporating herbal medicines into national formularies. In November 2024, traditional medicine was featured as a central theme at the UN Convention on Biological Diversity COP16, where participants focused on linking biodiversity conservation directly to human health through One Health strategies.

Challenges of integration

Integration does not happen without friction. Standardizing traditional medicines – establishing consistent dosages, quality controls, and safety profiles – is challenging when plant composition varies by region, season, and collection method. There are also legitimate concerns about biopiracy: the appropriation of indigenous knowledge by corporations without fair compensation or consent from the communities that developed and maintained that knowledge over generations. Recent research highlights persistent issues of biopiracy and questions about the equitable use of indigenous knowledge in the pharmaceutical development of medicinal plants.

Despite these challenges, the trajectory is clear. Patients globally are increasingly seeking healthcare that is holistic, culturally resonant, and grounded in natural systems. The growing global demand for herbal and traditional products is pushing both governments and health institutions to take traditional medicine seriously – not as an alternative curiosity, but as a substantive component of healthcare delivery. The key condition for this to work sustainably is the one that started this entire conversation: protecting the biodiversity that makes it all possible.

The connection between a thriving ecosystem and a functioning traditional health system is direct, not abstract. When species vanish, medicines vanish. When forests fall, entire bodies of healing knowledge can disappear with them. Protecting biodiversity is, in a very real sense, a public health intervention – one that benefits billions of people who may never set foot in a hospital.

What do you think? As global demand for herbal medicines continues to grow, how can healthcare systems ensure that this demand supports biodiversity conservation rather than threatening it? And when traditional knowledge is used to develop new pharmaceutical drugs, what obligations – if any – do companies have toward the indigenous communities that preserved that knowledge for generations?

References

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Table of Contents

Why biodiversity is essential to traditional health systems 🔗

The role of medicinal plants in health and global trade 🔗

Economic significance in Asia and beyond 🔗

Medicinal plants as community healthcare infrastructure 🔗

How biodiversity loss threatens traditional health systems 🔗

Overexploitation and wild collection pressures 🔗

Loss of traditional knowledge alongside species loss 🔗

Ecosystem degradation and quality of medicines 🔗

Integrating traditional and modern health systems 🔗

From indigenous knowledge to pharmaceutical development 🔗

Challenges of integration 🔗