Historically, ethnopharmacology has served as a bridge between traditional knowledge systems and modern drug discovery, providing critical leads for the development of therapeutics derived from natural resources. As global demand for plant- and nature-based medicines expands and as climate change intensifies pressures on ecosystems, the sustainability of botanical sourcing practices has become central to ensuring biodiversity preservation, the resilience of medicinal plant populations, and continued pharmacological innovation.
Herbal medicine has long been intertwined with environmental stewardship, sustainable local economies, and the preservation of Indigenous cultural knowledge. Indigenous models of medicinal plant stewardship in particular offer time-tested frameworks for ecological balance, community benefit, and responsible resource management. At the same time, the natural products industry increasingly plays a pivotal role in shaping sustainable value chains, influencing cultivation practices, market incentives, and conservation outcomes.

Recent advances in sustainable cultivation technologies, traceability systems, certification standards, and green extraction methods provide new opportunities to align ecological integrity with the growing popularity of herbal products. Embedding these sustainability principles within ethnopharmacological research strengthens the discipline’s contribution to both environmental protection and the advancement of evidence-based herbal medicine and phytotherapy.

This Research Topic seeks to foster a multidisciplinary dialogue on the sustainable sourcing of natural resources, highlighting approaches that ensure responsible utilisation of medicinal species while maintaining long-term ecological and economic resilience. The goal is to promote integrative frameworks that link conservation science, sustainability science, Indigenous stewardship, and Intellectual Property Rights with pharmacological research. By doing so, the collection aims to support an ethically grounded, culturally respectful, and evidence-based future for herbal medicine and phytotherapy.
We welcome original research articles, reviews, and case studies addressing (but not limited to) the following themes:

· Sustainable cultivation, propagation, and wild-harvesting practices for medicinal species, including Indigenous and community-based stewardship models.
· Sustainability of botanical medicines amid increasing global demand, environmental change, and pressures on biodiversity.
· Traceability systems, certification standards, benefit-sharing mechanisms, and equitable value chains in the sourcing of crude drugs and natural products.
· Application of green, resource-efficient extraction technologies to produce extracts and isolation of pure compounds.
· Integration of sustainability indicators, conservation frameworks, and environmental impact assessments into pharmacological research pipelines.
· The role of the natural products industry in promoting sustainable economies and incentivising ethical resource management.
All submissions must follow the Four Pillars of Best Practice in Ethnopharmacology and the ConPhyMP statement (Front. Pharmacol., 13:953205). Detailed descriptions of plant material, extraction, and processing are essential; manuscripts lacking this information will be desk-rejected. Authors are encouraged to self-assess their manuscripts using the ConPhyMP tool before submission. Purely computational or network-only studies, without ethnobotanical or experimental components, fall outside the journal’s scope. Best-practice guidance: https://ga-online.org/best-practice.

By consolidating research that unites biodiversity conservation, Indigenous knowledge systems, and pharmacological advancement, this collection aims to define a forward-looking, science-driven agenda for sustainable ethnopharmacology. The resulting insights will contribute to more transparent, responsible, and innovative natural product research, ensuring that therapeutic discovery, cultural heritage, and ecological integrity evolve together.

Are you interested in contributing a manuscript to this Research Topic?

Sustainable Sourcing in Ethnopharmacology: Integrating Biodiversity Conservation with Therapeutic Innovation