Sustainable Botanical Ingredient Production in a World of Climate Change: Impact on Quality and the Long-Term Viability of the Herbal Trade
by Ann Armbrecht
With support from Euromed, Stefan Gafner, Chief Science Officer at the American Botanical Council, and the Sustainable Herbs Initiative co-organized a pre-workshop at the International Congress and Annual Meeting of the Society for Medicinal Plant and Natural Product Research (GA) held in Naples, Italy on August 31, 2025.
Speakers
Speakers included:
- Michael Heinrich, A different look at sustainability – how does climate change impact on medicinal plant use
- Ann Armbrecht, Framing the issues: quality and sustainability in sourcing medicinal plants
- Tony Cunningham, Medicinal plants in a complex world: how do we bridge the “knowing, but not doing gap”?
- Alain Cuerrier, Impact of climate change on medicinal plants in the Canadian boreal forests and Subarctic
- Deepak Mundkinajeddu, Climate change and its impact on the quality and trade of Indian medicinal plants: Case studies of ashwagandha and bacopa
- Stefan Gafner, Exploring the connection between climate change, sustainable practices, and adulteration of botanical ingredients.
- Anna Mulà, Ensuring authentic and sustainable botanical ingredients in a challenging market and changing climate
- Gaia Scalabrino, Shaping the future: Integrating sustainability and policy in research and innovation
- Paolo Goi, Regenerative agriculture: Influence on soil ecosystems and plant phytochemical composition
Research Needed
We will write a more in depth overview of the themes and issues shared by the speakers. Below are a few highlights that stood out for me.
Michael Heinrich pointed out that the herbal world is rather late to address the impacts of climate change and that the industry as a whole has consistently ignored the impacts of sustainable sourcing. He added that the US and EU are also behind in researching the impacts of the effects of climate change on individual species. He then gave the example of how the phenology of wine is changing and, in turn, the taste. Wine at higher temperatures can have a cooked flavor. “We need to understand this level of impact on all these medicinal plants,” he said.
Deepak Mundkinajeddu from Natural Remedies and Anna Mulà from Euromed each then gave examples of the impacts of changing weather patterns on particular species, including boswellia, ashwagandha, and saw palmetto. And Paolo Goi from Davines then shared the research Davines is doing on the impacts of regenerative farming practices on species quality.
Complexity as Key Challenge
A key challenge to getting more solid data is that it is very difficult to connect cause and effects in a simple linear way. Tony Cunningham talked about the importance of both capturing that complexity and also in communicating it clearly and in ways that inspires action to, as he said, close the “knowing but not doing gap.”
Tony Cunningham highlighted the value of case studies that demonstrate how developing transparent sourcing networks, connecting farmers, processors, traders, ingredient suppliers, and brands, can help demonstrate how this transparency increases resiliency, addresses climate impacts, and more. For this he said ‘ground truthing’, actually going to the field to understand the actual impacts of actions on the ground, is essential.
Next Steps
Anna Mula, Deepak Mundkinajeddu, and Paolo Goi have been invited to present their findings to the SHI Quality and Sustainability Working Group. We will then discuss how to take this research further, both through species level research on quality impacts and case studies on transparent sourcing.