The world over, people use natural products in their daily lives. Shampoos, soaps, perfumes and cosmetics are scented with essential oils extracted from forest plants. Spices, berries, nuts and mushrooms are harvested from tropical and temperate forests.
Many western medicines come from chemical formulas derived from plants.
Bamboo, grasses and vines such as rattan are used in furniture and handicrafts. Fine silk used in garments and designer fabrics is spun by forest-dwelling silkworms that feed on oak or mulberry leaves. Helping natural products gatherers obtain land, resource tenure, or permits allowing them legal economic access to resources is thus essential to increasing their incomes and instituting effective conservation practices. Similarly, providing access to processing facilities allows producers to bypass layers of middlemen traders and to add value to their raw materials themselves, increasing profits and reducing the pressure to over-harvest. In recent years, a combination of factors, principal among them the rising concern over loss of biodiversity, has spurred tremendous interest in finding ways to make the harvesting and collection of natural products more environmentally sustainable and, given the importance of natural products to the economies of local communities, more economically profitable over the long term.