Ethnobotany is the science of the direct interactions between people and plants. Its core subject is traditional botanical knowledge and how people apply it, including economic, medicinal, ecological and cultural uses of plants. People and plants are the two actors of ethnobotanical research, and traditional folk knowledge of plants is one of its central topics.

Ethnobotany is “the science of survival”

Kaua‘i Declaration, 27–30 January 2007.

Without plants, human beings could not exist. Nearly all of our energy is captured by plants, and we depend on them for survival in countless ways.

We can learn much from living cultures, and we need to respect the wisdom of the diverse ways in which each society relates to nature.

The close links between biological and cultural diversity give ethnobotany a unique position to help humankind, as a species, find effective solutions to global problems.

Ethnobotany can strengthen the bonds between people and the natural world, helping us to understand these relationships and to use that experience in meeting the challenges we face.

Three key scientific questions of ethnobotany

What traditional plant knowledge exists? (documenting the inventory)

How do people choose which plants to use? (exploring the mechanisms)

What is the significance of people's choices of plants? (extending applications)

Traditional knowledge is a form of knowledge that exists in a particular area, is held by a particular community and is passed down from generation to generation; it is an intellectual achievement expressed in traditional forms. Traditional knowledge is not only a source and precondition of modern knowledge, but has also become an important asset affecting national resource security, ecological security and the development of the biotechnology industry.

Traditional knowledge of developing countries has often been misappropriated and misused by developed countries, seriously harming national, public and collective interests.

Since 2000, traditional knowledge has been recognized by WIPO and protection efforts have been under way.

China is the country with the richest traditional knowledge of plants: about 30% of its plants (some 11,000 species) are or have been used as medicines, food, dyes and for many other purposes.

In September 2021 the Central Committee of the Communist Party of China and the State Council issued the Outline for Building a Strong Intellectual Property Country (2021–2035), calling for stronger systems for access to and benefit sharing of genetic resources, traditional knowledge and folk arts, for effective links between the protection of traditional knowledge of Chinese medicine and the modern intellectual property system, and for intellectual property rules in emerging fields such as traditional knowledge.

In October 2021 the COP15 conference adopted the Kunming Declaration, committing to fair and equitable sharing of benefits arising from genetic resources and traditional knowledge.

The survey, registration and protection of traditional knowledge were also included in the Opinions on Further Strengthening Biodiversity Conservation issued by the General Offices of the Central Committee and the State Council in October 2021.

Building on the large body of historical data surveyed and accumulated by three generations of Chinese ethnobotanists, and on the data holdings of the Science Data Center of the Kunming Institute of Botany, Chinese Academy of Sciences, this database will:

(1) Use theories and methods of ethnobotany, plant resource science and information science, starting from traditionally used plants, to clarify the concept, scope and applicability of the “prototype of plant traditional knowledge”; establish standards for data curation and registration; achieve standardized parsing of traditional-knowledge prototypes; and compile a data standard for the Chinese Plant Traditional Knowledge Database.

(2) Build and publish the Chinese Plant Traditional Knowledge Database, benchmarked against the internationally recognized Traditional Knowledge Digital Library. Using big-data aggregation techniques, it will integrate the plants used in China throughout history and their related information, register traditional knowledge for 10,000 plant species, and link geographical, ethnic, regional, plant-resource and related traditional-knowledge information.

(3) Use knowledge graphs and image databases to digitize and parse 500–600 historical documents, local chronicles and compilations in Chinese medicinal formulas, ethnobotany, ethnopharmacology and related disciplines, producing declarative data of archival significance for registration and archiving.

(4) Establish a big-data-based index of potential value to assess and grade the current applications and potential value of particular items of plant traditional knowledge.

(5) Build a semantic information retrieval platform: the database will classify and index content compatibly with multiple classification systems, provide species information and intelligent search with suggestions, synonym linking and multi-level filtering, and present diverse types of information, with intuitive visualizations based on the scientific data of plant traditional-knowledge prototypes, offering users one-stop online services.

The project will build a continuously maintained database and service platform, together with a submission system for knowledge prototypes, continually incorporating published plant traditional knowledge and the latest survey results in China, laying a foundation for national systems of access to and benefit sharing of biological resources and associated traditional knowledge.

The Second Tibetan Plateau Scientific Expedition and Research (STEP) builds on the first expedition. Guided by the principles of being goal-oriented, integrating forces, identifying changes and supporting development, and carrying forward the spirit of hard work, unity and striving for excellence of the older generation of scientists, it focuses on the key scientific question of changes in the Tibetan Plateau Earth system and their impacts. Its priorities include uplift and its resource and environmental effects, resource and environmental carrying capacity, changes in the Asian Water Tower and their impacts, interactions between the westerlies and the monsoon, optimization of ecological security barriers, human impacts on and adaptation to the environment, and disaster risk prevention. It examines the processes and mechanisms of change over the past 50 years and their effects on human society, reveals the mechanisms of change in the plateau's Earth system, optimizes its ecological security barrier system, and proposes scientific plans for protecting the Asian Water Tower and ecological barriers, building a group of Third Pole national parks and pursuing green development.

The sub-project “Ethnobotanical survey and assessment of wild economic plant resources” (No. 2019QZKK05020301) belongs to Task 5 “Biodiversity conservation and sustainable use”, Topic 2 “Conservation and sustainable use of plateau plant diversity”, Project 3 “Sustainable use and assessment of plant diversity” of the Second Tibetan Plateau Scientific Expedition and Research. Combining ethnobiological methods with modern biological analyses, it focuses on biodiversity-rich areas inhabited by distinctive ethnic minorities, mainly south-eastern Tibet, the Himalaya, the alpine gorges of the Hengduan Mountains (north-west Yunnan and western Sichuan) and the South Asian corridor, involving 15 indigenous ethnic groups including the Tibetan, Monpa, Lhoba, Yi, Bai, Naxi, Qiang and Lisu. The project surveys, collects, conserves and systematically evaluates wild economic plant resources of the Tibetan Plateau, compiles a catalogue of these resources and regional ethnobotanical floras, screens plants for medicinal, food, skin-care, dye, spice and fibre uses, and develops strategies for the sustainable use of plateau plant resources, serving ecological civilization, livelihoods and other sustainable development goals of the plateau and the national Belt and Road Initiative.