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Hoodia is a southern African plant used by the San for thousands of years as an appetite suppressant and thirst quencher. It is now under threat after being hammered so hard by people trying to make a quick buck that it may become extinct within two years.
In 2006, about 500 tons of the succulent were cut from the wild for export.
There are calls for a ban on hoodia exports until the authorities are able to control what appears to be extensive illegal harvesting.
Rachel Wynberg, of UCT's Environmental Evaluation Unit, said yesterday: "The resource in the wild is being devastated. We really need to act on the illegal exports."
Wynberg, who spoke at an international workshop in Cape Town dealing with the exploitation of biological resources and indigenous knowledge, said the Northern Cape, Namibia and Botswana were not allowing any of their hoodia to be exported.
"The threats to hoodia are severe enough to warrant the Western Cape introducing a moratorium on exports," Wynberg said.
The trade in hoodia is controlled by the Convention on International Trade in Endangered Species (Cites).
Only the Western Cape's nature conservation department, CapeNature, has issued permits for the export of hoodia, which must comply with Cites regulations.
Robby Gass, chairperson of the Cape Ethno-botanical Growers' Association, said at the workshop that Cape Nature had given permits for 25 tons of dried hoodia to be exported in 2005 and 49 tons in 2006.
Gass said the 49 tons of dried hoodia translated into 500 tons of the plant in the wild.
"I know there are not 500 tons available in the Western Cape, so where did this hoodia come from?" Gass asked.
Gass said that as no other region had issued export permits, he believed the plant was being cut illegally outside the province, and exported on the permits issued locally.
"We are investigating it and will have to find a way to control it, or else take more drastic steps," Kas Hamman, of CapeNature, said.
CapeNature had issued only 14 permits. They were now following "the paper trial" trying to establish whether there was illegal harvesting.
In 1997 the CSIR patented hoodia's active appetite suppressant ingredient, P57, and in 1998 signed a licence agreement with the British company Phytopharm to develop and commercialise it.
This was done without the San's involvement, although it was the San's knowledge that led to the CSIR's research.
The San were also excluded from the lucrative commercialisation deals. The San took up the issue and the CSIR later agreed to give 6 percent of the royalties that it received from Phytopharm to the South African San Council.
Source: By Melanie Gosling, from iol.co.za |
