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Pharmaceuticals and Specialty Chemicals

Specialty products that can be produced from plants include essential oils, pharmaceuticals, herbal health products, dyes and colorants, cosmetics and personal care products, plant protection products (e.g. biocides), and intermediate products for the preceding. About 100,000 hectares are under cultivation around the world for pharmaceuticals or cosmetics, though many of these products are also harvested from the wild 1.

Drug Policy

Illicit drugs are a major industrial crop and are widely used.

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Source: UN 2.

Exact cultivation figures are hard to determine due to the legal status of the industry.

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Source: UN 2.

Additionally, drug cultivation places pressure on biodiversity 3. Drugs also cause environmental damage as they enter the water supply or the atmosphere 4.

About 20% of people currently incarcerated in the United States are incarcerated for drug charges 5. Therefore, it is hoped that decriminalizing or legalizing classes of drug use will reduce incarceration rates, allow law enforcement spending to go to other crimes, and reduce the health and environmental harms of currently illegal drugs by bringing production into an open, well-regulated setting. The evidence to support this outcome is mixed, with some researchers finding an increase in drug abuse and drug-related deaths after decriminalization in Italy and Portugal 6, and others finding no such effect 7.

Bioprospecting

Bioprospecting is the practice of searching for pharmaceutical or other products among wild plants and animals. It has been proposed as a mechanism for funding conservation. In biodiversity hotspots, the value of nature from bioprospecting has been estimated at $21 8 to $9177 9 per hectare. About 25% (range of 14-40%) of modern pharmaceuticals can be traced to wild sources 10.

If the indigenous population is not compensated fairly for the use of native organisms, the practice of bioprospecting is sometimes known as biopiracy 11.

Problem:
Biodiversity Loss
Solution:
Pricing of Bioprospecting Value

Pearls

Pearls, mostly produced in mollusks, are used primary for jewelry 12. Most pearls today are cultured, or produced in farms, with a minority of expensive pearls (natural) harvested from the wild and some imitation pearls 13. Most cultured pearls are currently produced in China 14.

Pearl cultivation carries several environmental costs and risks, such as a disease that devastated the Japanese pearl industry 15.

Horseshoe Crabs

Horseshoe crabs are a species that lives in coastal waters and often comes to the beach for mating. Chemicals in the blood of horseshoe crabs can be used to manufacture a material known as Limulus amebocyte lysate, which is used in medical settings to detect certain bacteria 16.

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Source: Walls and Berkson 17.

The loss is a threat both to horseshoe crabs themselves and shorebirds that depend on them. The development of a chemical called recombinant Factor C (rFC) could provide a synthetic alternative to horseshoe crab blood 16.

Problem:
Reliance on Horseshoe Crabs
Solution:
Transition to rFC Testing

Larger numbers of horseshoe crabs are killed annually for fishing bait 18.

References

  1. Lubbe, A., Verpoorte, R. "Cultivation of medicinal and aromatic plants for specialty industrial materials". Industrial Crops and Products 34(1), pp. 785-801. July 2011. ↩

  2. United Nations Office on Drugs and Crime "World Drug Report 2021". 2021. ↩ ↩2

  3. United Nations Office on Drugs and Crime "Environmental Effects of Illicit Drug Cultivation and Processing". Accessed November 15, 2022. ↩

  4. Pal, R., Megharaj, M., Kirkbride, K. P., Naidu, R. "Illicit drugs and the environment - A review". Science of the Total Environment 463-464, pp. 1079-1092. October 2013. ↩

  5. Sawyer, W., Wagner, P. "Mass Incarceration: The Whole Pie 2022". Prison Policy Initiative. March 2022. ↩

  6. Yablon, D. R. "The Effect of Drug Decriminalization in Portugal on Homicide and Drug Mortality Rates". Thesis, Department of Economics, University of California, Berkeley. Spring 2011. ↩

  7. Hajizadeh, M. "Legalizing and Regulating Marijuana in Canada: Review of Potential Economic, Social, and Health Impacts". International Journal of Health Policy and Management 5(8), pp. 453-456. August 2016. ↩

  8. Simpson, D., Sedjo, R., Reid, J. "Valuing Biodiversity for Use in Pharmaceutical Research". The Journal of Political Economy 104(1), pp. 163-185. February 1996. ↩

  9. Rausser, G., Small, A. "Valuing Research leads: Bioprospecting and the Conservation of Genetic Resources". https://www.journals.uchicago.edu/doi/abs/10.1086/262115. February 2000. ↩

  10. Costello, C., Ward, M. "Search, bioprospecting and biodiversity conservation". Journal of Environmental Economics and Management 52(3), pp. 615-626. November 2006. ↩

  11. Sandhu, H. "Bioprospecting: Pros and Cons". Punjab Agricultural University. May 2012. ↩

  12. The Tiffany and Co. Foundation. "Uses of pearls". Accessed May 31, 2022. ↩

  13. The Pearl Source. "Natural Pearls VS Cultured Pearls: Benefits & Differences". June 2021. ↩

  14. Zhu, C., Southgate, P. C., Li, T. Production of Pearls. In: Smaal, A., Ferreira, J., Grant, J., Petersen, J., Strand, Ø. (eds) Goods and Services of Marine Bivalves. Springer, Cham. 2019. ↩

  15. Akamatsu, S. "Pearl culture and the biological environment". The Ocean Newsletter 86, the Sakakawa Peace Foundation. March 2004. ↩

  16. Maloney, T., Phelan, R., Simmons, N. "Saving the horseshoe crab: A synthetic alternative to horseshoe crab blood for endotoxin detection". PLoS Biology 16(10): e2006607. October 2018. ↩ ↩2

  17. Walls, E., Berkson, J. "Effects of blood extraction on horseshoe crabs (Limulus polyphemus)". 2003. ↩

  18. Berkson, J., Shuster, C. "The Horseshoe Crab: The Battle for a True Multiple‐use Resource". Fisheries 24(11), pp. 6-10. 1999. ↩