Global Warming - Is it real for you?

The information age has landed with a head bursting thump. In fact it has not only landed; it has planted roots and made a firm home for itself within our society. On a daily basis we have the opportunity engorge ourselves with new information - articles, the net, satellite television, pod casts and e-books. And yet as we revel in this golden age of information, we manage to casually face our biggest ever challenge as a species, and note it down on a virtual to do list for the future -  global warmin... fix next week. Just this evening while discussing the topic, my six year old daughter dropped her shoulders rolled her eyes and moaned 'not that again!' Too much information can be as bad as too little, as we run the risk of desensitization setting it. What's more, information without experience to help us internalize it does little good. Experience enables us to assign an emotion to the new information; this is what makes it meaningful.    

This being the case, I am not here to overload you with facts about global warming, there are multitudes of pages about it on the net and the 'almost' US president Al Gore has adequately illustrated the threat of global warming in his award winning film, An Inconvenient Truth. My interests are more to do with the effects of global warming on plants and more specifically on the special group of plants that manufacture a range of chemicals that are used medicinally.

How will the increase in average global temperature affect medicinal plants? The question was sparked by the unprecedented dry summer we have just experienced in Johannesburg. After a season of unrelenting heat, punctuated only by two meager rainfalls, Johannesburg's surrounding grasslands turned from green to brown and then shortly after to black as the inevitable veld fires started. These savannah areas are rich in medicinal plants including African Potato (Hypoxis hemerocallidea), Artemisia Afra and Bitterwortel (Xysmalobuim undulatum) to name a few. While these areas often burn in winter, the unseasonable fires arrived at the wrong time during the plants' growth cycle. Consequently some plants were badly damaged, while many did not survive at all. It was this experience that happened on my doorstep that really caught my attention.

My local African potatoes are only a reflection of a much wider problem. "Approximately 20-30 percent of plant and animal species assessed so far are likely to be at greater risk of extinction if increases in global average temperature exceed 1.5 to 2.5 Celsius"2. Extinction is not the only problem, some species of plants and animals are temperature sensitive for reproduction and certain plants require specific conditions in order to manufacture their medicinal qualities. This phenomenon has been demonstrated where medicinal plants have been deliberately cultivated and the crop has yielded low quantities of medicinal compounds. The fact is that many medicinal compounds are produced as secondary metabolites, which are substances produced to protect the plant under harsh environments from say, insect attack or frost. Under cultivation the plants are under less threat from the environment, and therefore produce less of these protective chemicals1. The question that then begs asking is how the plants that are sensitive to frost; altitude and specific insect populations will be affected in terms of producing their active medicinal compounds, or simply surviving. A good case in point to consider is the Himalayan areas which host numerous medicinal plants. Already there are drastic changes in glacial activity resulting in glacial flooding, mudslides and new group of lakes forming.4

Through out Africa, medicinal plants are already under threat due to over-harvesting and little is known of how what this addition threat could effect the people from the developing world who constitute eighty percent of our world's population that use traditional medicines. Equally profound would be the effects on the medical world. Some twenty five percent of all prescribed medicines contain an ingredient derived from a plant including some critical and very commonly used drugs such as quinine and cortisone. What compounds this threat further is the spread of diseases spread by carrier organisms such as fleas and malaria carrying mosquitoes which are able to extend their territories as temperatures and rainfall patterns change3.

Little focus is placed on medicinal plants in the conversation about global warming and the first tendency is to say, 'Well, what are the scientists doing about it'? However, global warming was created by factors such as industry, traffic and agricultural practices to name a few which all come down to one place - the place you call home. With the home in mind let's avoid the multitude of tips available to reduce global warming and consider what experiences we can have that will help us to internalize this mass of information and make it real. Experiencing means processing our world though our five senses, perhaps it's the time you take to brush your teeth while leaving the tap running and saying a sad farewell to those water drops that not even your grandchildren will gain any benefit from. Perhaps its not reaching for that headache pill until you've considered that without the plant world such a medicine is a luxury, or perhaps it's as simple as taking the time to notice what it feels like for your body to experience thirst. The fact remains that until information about global warming becomes real and experiential to each and every person we can expect a good few very dry summers to come.