Pacari Network

Brazil

The Pacari Network is a medicinal ecology initiative in the cerrado (savannah) biome of Brazil, working with 47 traditional pharmacies to cultivate and catalog medicinal plants and preserve the ecology of the land in which they grow. Smallholder farmers, gatherers, agrarian reform settlers, women’s groups, people receiving immigrant and health benefits, coconut palm workers, and community organizations representing Afro-Brazilians and indigenous peoples are all represented in the network. In addition to supporting community pharmacies, Pacari has developed a set of standards for sustainable harvesting and quality control of medicinal plants, and has created the “Pharmacopoeia of the People of the Cerrado,” a database for recording known remedies, techniques for harvesting, and other bits of medicinal information which might otherwise be lost. In 2012, the Pacari Network won the Equator Prize, a biennial award given to community-based, rural sustainable development organizations. To learn more, see the Pacari Network’s Equator case study.