How much are tropical forests worth? Obviously the correct answer is “their value is inestimable”, but it is well known that such rich and “biodiverse” ecosystems contain an immense quantity of chemical substances of all kinds, of which we know nothing and which could prove to be very powerful drugs.
Zero Carbon Analytics, an international research group that studies climate change and the energy transition, has tried to do the math and give a value to this still largely unexplored pharmaceutical treasure chest. The result? 714 billion dollars.
Hidden medicines
Plants have always been our main source of medicine; “always” is to be understood in a very literal sense: our ancestors already used vegetables to medicate themselves, and other primates do so too. And progress has not changed things: even today it is estimated that 40% of all the medicines we use have a plant origin. It is therefore not difficult to understand why tropical forests, which alone contain 60% of all vascular plant species, have always been considered a potential “drug paradise”.
The ZCA study confirms everything: the Amazon Forest alone holds, according to their estimates, 30% of all undiscovered drugs, for a total value of 215 billion dollars.
The rainforests of Asia are “worth” 107 billion and the Congo Basin 39. In total, the chemicals still undiscovered in tropical forests around the world amount to a total estimated value of 714 billion dollars.
Protect, don’t exploit.
The research does not only have a theoretical value: according to ZCA it should attract the attention not only of pharmaceutical companies, but of all those companies for which tropical forests can be a source of profits.
The idea is that, faced with these numbers, there is a collective change of mentality: no longer exploiting these forests but protecting and conserving them, because they hide an unsuspected source of money not yet used properly – and indeed, often destroyed or damaged by deforestation, fires and other environmental catastrophes.
ZCA also uses numbers to demonstrate this last concept. The study explains that since 2001 we have lost 13% of all tropical forests in the world: by crossing this data with geographical data (where we have lost them) and with estimates of drugs not yet discovered, we arrive at 86 billion dollars already “burned” due to human activities. In short, if we can’t save tropical forests because it’s right to do so, perhaps putting money into the mix could finally make something happen…
