Economics of Sustainable Harvesting of Medicinal and Aromatic Plants (MAPs) in North-West Himalaya

Abstract

The North-West Himalaya  spanning Jammu & Kashmir, Himachal Pradesh and Uttarakhand  is one of the richest reservoirs of medicinal and aromatic plants (MAPs) in South Asia, hosting several hundred species of high pharmaceutical, cosmetic and cultural value. For a large share of mountain households, particularly the landless and marginal landholders, wild collection and small-scale cultivation of MAPs constitute an indispensable source of cash income, seasonal employment and risk diversification. This paper synthesises secondary evidence, field-study findings reported in the literature and illustrative economic modelling to examine the costs, returns and sustainability implications of alternative MAP harvesting regimes in the region. It quantifies the sector's contribution to state-level rural GDP and employment, benchmarks indicative mandi prices of eight high-value species, traces the escalation of value along the harvester-to-export supply chain, and compares the benefit-cost performance of unregulated wild collection against rotational sustainable harvesting and on-farm cultivation. The analysis suggests that although wild collection currently supplies the bulk (an estimated three-quarters or more) of raw material entering trade, it delivers the lowest long-run benefit-cost ratio and the shortest resource-sustaining horizon once ecological depletion and price volatility are internalised. Sustainable, rotation-based harvesting nearly doubles the effective time horizon over which income can be sustained relative to open-access extraction, while cultivation - though requiring higher upfront investment and a multi-year gestation period - offers the highest long-run returns and price stability. The paper further finds that value is highly concentrated downstream: primary harvesters typically capture well under one-fifth of the final retail or export price, which weakens their incentive to conserve the resource. Policy instruments reviewed include community-based resource rights under Joint Forest Management and Van Panchayats, minimum support price and government procurement mechanisms, quota-based and certified sustainable harvesting protocols, and targeted subsidy for cultivation of threatened, high-value taxa. The paper concludes that an integrated strategy combining secure tenurial rights, price and market-information support, cultivation promotion for the most threatened species, and strengthened post-harvest value addition at the source is required to align private harvesting incentives with the long-term ecological sustainability of the Himalayan MAP resource base.