An analysis by the London-based group Zero Carbon Analytics (ZCA) supports a claim conservationists have made for decades: Tropical forests are worth more standing than cleared, with the Amazon as the world’s “crown jewel” in this context. According to the ZCA analysis released in July, tropical forests worldwide could hold a median of $714 billion — within a range of $382 billion to $1.176 trillion — in potential commercial value from undiscovered drugs based on flowering plants. The Amazon alone holds around $215 billion, or roughly 30% of the total, the largest share compared with regions such as Southeast Asia and the Congo Basin. Natural compounds are central to medicine. Roughly three in four cancer drugs approved between 1940 and 2014 were derived from or inspired by natural products, and an estimated 99% of the chemical compounds plants produce remain unscreened. In that logic, the Amazon stands out: It “hosts potentially the greatest commercial option value for medicines from flowering plants” of any major forested region, co-author of the ZCA analysis Joanne Bentley-McKune told Mongabay. But deforestation is eroding this value. ZCA estimates that tropical forest clearing since 2001 has already put $86 billion in commercial drug value at risk globally. In the Amazon, the pharmaceutical benefits of some extinct species may be gone forever. “Over the last 20 years, many endemics, or plants that occur nowhere else, might have been lost due to deforestation in Brazil, across different regions,” Bentley-McKune said. The Amazon alone holds roughly 30% of the…This article was originally published on Mongabay

From Conservation news via This RSS Feed.