ETHNOPHARMACOLOGY AT A CROSSROAD: The Vanishing Link Between Nature and People

Ethnopharmacology is often framed as a scientific bridge between traditional and modern medicine discovery. However, this framing risks overlooking the complex social, ecological, and ethical systems that sustain medicinal knowledge. Drawing on field-based experiences in Malaysian tropical forests, particularly through repeated interactions with Orang Asli communities, this commentary reflects on ethnopharmacology as a relational discipline shaped by lived practice rather than laboratory validation alone. Informal forest-based dialogues with indigenous knowledge holders reveal sophisticated empirical understandings of dosage, toxicity, preparation, and therapeutic specificity concepts that closely parallel modern pharmacological principles. The article situates Malaysia as both a biodiversity hotspot and a site of rapid biocultural erosion, where medicinal plant diversity and orally transmitted knowledge are simultaneously under threat. It argues that ethnopharmacology currently faces a “double extinction crisis,” involving the loss of both species and knowledge systems. Beyond documentation, the discipline must therefore engage with ethical imperatives including relational consent, community recognition, reciprocity, and knowledge sovereignty. Advances in analytical technologies and data-driven research offer new opportunities but also raise concerns regarding digital biopiracy and decontextualised knowledge extraction. This commentary calls for a reframing of ethnopharmacology from an extractive, compound-centred enterprise toward a collaborative, systems-based, and community-led practice. By integrating pharmacological rigor with indigenous epistemologies and ecological stewardship, ethnopharmacology can remain scientifically relevant while contributing meaningfully to cultural continuity, biodiversity conservation, and ethical knowledge production in a rapidly changing world.