I suggest you look at the big picture concerning medicinal plants. (1) How do indigenous peoples around the world use them? How are indigenous peoples affected by medicinal plant prospecting?No need to focus specifically on Costa Rica. (2) How does the western World obtain medicinal plants? (3) How does biodiversity fit into the equation?
Some Other Leads:
MERCK and InBIO are key players you might want to investigate!
"The National Biodiversity Institute (INBio) is a non-profit and private Costa Rican institution dedicated to the conservation of this wild land biodiversity through facilitating its nondestructive intellectual and economic uses by national and international society. INBio operates under the assumption that a developing tropical society will conserve a major portion of its wild biodiversity only if this area can generate enough intellectual and economic income to pay for its own upkeep and also make a contribution to the national economy proportional to its area. Phytera, Inc. and INBio recently Signed Collaborative Research Agreement to Access Biodiversity and Support Conservation Activities in Costa Rica.
Interesting websites:
Here is an excellent book:
Tales of a Shaman's Apprentice : An Ethnobotanist Searches for New Medicines in the Amazon Rain Forest by Mark J. Plotkin.
Here is a web site that poses as "an ethnobotanical dictionary" for plants in Costa Rica
That's it for now,
Hays
Check out the URL: http://www.ars-grin.gov/duke/dictionary/tico/e.html. It is 1:32:28 PM on Friday, July 4, 2008. Last Update: Wednesday, April 19, 2000
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