Traditional healers and herbal producers have been urged to plant trees as a way of conserving the environment which their business is dependent on.
Chiyambi Mazengera, Managing director of Chia Investments Limited which producers Kombumax herbal, made this plea in an interview on Monday.
“I implore on all herbal business operators in the country to consider taking part in early tree planting so that we take part in preserving our forest where most of our ingredients for these products do come from.
‘It is of great importance for us as players in this business to plant trees because if the forest is to be depleted, our business will also seize to run as the source will have been close,” he said.
He added that the company’s products are purely natural and depend on the environment.
Malawi Traditional Healers Union Organization (MTHUO) Vice President Kondanani Kalua said the organization has a similar initiative and has already engaged all traditional healers in the country to immediately start planting trees with the early rains in order to increase tree survival rate.
She added that during the 2019-2020 tree planting season MTHUO is targeting to plant 10 million across the country.
“We value nature as our only source of our daily activities. Therefore, we have given ourselves a target of 10 million trees to be planted immediately with these first rains and have already started with Mitundu traditional healers camp site which has planted about a million now,’’ she said.
She added that any noncompliance from their members on tree planting will compel the organisation to exclude them from the list of its membership.
Herbalists, herbal products and some curative medicines that come from most of the herbal companies are dependent on roots, leaves and other vegetative plants.
I have read with great interest this article. I understand fully the reasons why “Traditional healers and herbal producers have been urged to plant trees as a way of conserving the environment which their business is dependent on”. However, I do not believe that planting only trees is the best way to conserve the environment and to ensure that all the interesting herbs for the herbalists are conserved. Let me recommend to read my recent article: “Shall we plant billions of trees to alleviate drought and climate change in Malawi ? Follow Mother Nature and stop weeping !”, published today at this blog : “https://malawidevelopment.wordpress.com/”. I hope it will make clear that Mother Nature’s universal example should be followed and that, when planting trees, one should also plant their companion shrubs and seed some local herbaceous plant species. Human beings should not correct what Mother Nature has shown to be successful for thousands of years.