© Koninklijke Brill NV, Leiden, 2011 DOI: 10.1163/157342109X568793 Asian Medicine 5 (2009) 219–242 brill.nl/asme Conservation, Cultivation, and Commodification of Medicinal Plants in the Greater Himalayan-Tibetan Plateau Sienna R. Craig and Denise M. Glover Tis special issue of Asian Medicine: Tradition and Modernity emerges from the Seventh International Congress of the International Association for the Study of Traditional Asian Medicine (IASTAM), which was held in Timphu, Bhu- tan, from 7–11 September 2009. As readers of this journal may be aware, IASTAM’s unique vision aspires to bring academics and practitioners of Asian medical traditions into dialogue with each other, to promote the study and cross-cultural understanding of Asian medicines from a variety of disciplinary perspectives, and to do so in a way that honours and embraces the sometimes difficult task of reckoning the world of reflection and critique with that of engagement and practice. Tis Seventh Congress in Timphu brought together scholars, practitioners and students of Himalayan, East Asian and South Asian healing systems, as well as social entrepreneurs, civil servants, and representa- tives of global businesses engaged in the commercial sale of Asia-derived medicinal products. Tis mélange of perspectives owed a lot to the theme of this Congress: Cultivating Traditions and the Challenges of Globalization. Cultivating the wilds In the context of the Seventh Congress of IASTAM, we co-organised a large multi-day panel titled ‘Cultivating the Wilds: Considering Potency, Protec- tion, and Profit in the Sustainable Use of Himalayan and Tibetan Materia Medica’. Tis panel included presenters who were from, or who had done extensive work in, Nepal, Bhutan, Ladakh, India, China (Tibet Autonomous Region and Yunnan, Sichuan, and Qinghai Provinces), and at sites of Tibetan medical production and practice in Europe. In this panel, we aimed to inte- grate knowledge, methods, and field experience from a variety of disciplines Downloaded from Brill.com09/04/2019 04:44:53PM via free access