Prof Ervizal AM Zuhud: Need a Change in Mindset to Face Import Politics for the Advancement of Native Indonesian Natural Medicine

Indonesia is a country with the second-largest tropical forest area in the world. Each region has potentially medicinal plants that have been used by people for generations. However, global imports and food and medicine politics have already dominated Indonesia.

Prof Ervizal AM Zuhud, IPB University lecturer from the Department of Forest Resources Conservation and Ecotourism (KSHE), Faculty of Forestry and Environment (Fahutan), said this was one of the causes of the non-development of medicines from native Indonesian plants. He considered that there needs to be a change in mindset both from the community and academics so that Indonesian herbal medicine can develop and win a superior position in its own country.

“Because there is no sustainability in thinking in the current generation to develop indigenous Indonesian medicinal plant commodities cross-disciplined, so these plants eventually disappear,” he said in the 6th BRIN Garden Talk with the theme ‘Conservation of Potentially Medicinal Plants’ online some time ago.

The IPB University professor said that the politics of global food and drug imports have changed the lifestyle of the Indonesian people. As a result, local resources are marginalized. “Herbs and herbal medicines become unstandardized because they are ignored, eventually global medicine besieges society,” he continued.

According to him, the centralized budget political system is also one of the root causes of the lack of development of Indonesian herbal medicine. In fact, each region has the potential for medicinal plants that can be managed by themselves.

“There must be a change in mindset, obsolete academic ways of thinking must be eliminated. Do not be easily provoked by global issues that cause local natural resources to be abandoned, “said Prof Ervizal.

He has conducted various ethnobiological research and expeditions and produced many reference books on medicinal plants and herbal herbs from various regions of Indonesia. These books, he added, are proof that the benefits of potentially medicinal plants have been proven to overcome various diseases and should be able to be developed further with the latest technology. (MW) (IAAS/MZS)