Frankincense, shea, argan, and licorice are a few of beauty’s most prized ingredients gathered from the wild, often by communities that have harvested them for generations. As demand rises, so does the pressure on those plants and people. Most consumers and many brands have little idea this is happening.
A new framework from TRAFFIC, aglobal organization focused on wildlife trade that collaborates with a range of international conservation, university, and sustainability partners, aims to close that gap. The Cambridge-based wildlife trade monitoring organization marks its 50th anniversary this year, and the framework was developed with the consultancy Biodiversify and funded by the UK government through the Darwin Initiative. TRAFFIC collaborated with Biodiversity to introduce the Wild Harvest Improvement Project (WHIP), which provides brands, processors, and harvesting communities with a structured way to make wild-sourced ingredients more sustainable over time.
The International Union for Conservation of Nature (IUCN) and World Wildlife Fund (WWF) set up TRAFFIC to monitor wildlife trade under the Convention on International Trade in Endangered Species of Wild Fauna and Flora (CITES). Its mandate now goes far beyond ivory and rhino horn. “It covers wild-harvested plants and fungi, particularly where there are concerns about the sustainability of harvesting and trade,” Francesca Marcolini, TRAFFIC’s Communications Support Officer, said to BeautyMatter. According to Cara Flowers, Sustainability Supply Chain Manager at TRAFFIC, “Fungi are increasingly gaining some prevalence in ingredient sourcing.”
The numbers are large. An estimated 60%–90% of medicinal and aromatic plants in trade are collected from the wild, according to TRAFFIC's 2018 Wild at Home report. The trade is growing fast: global exports of medicinal and aromatic plants nearly doubled from $2.14 billion in 2010 to $4.18 billion in 2023, according to a 2025 study in the Journal of Agriculture and Food Research. IPBES, the Intergovernmental Science-Policy Platform on Biodiversity and Ecosystem Services, estimates that one in five people worldwide rely on wild plants, algae, and fungi for their food and income. Meanwhile, Kew’s State of the World's Plants and Fungi 2020 found that two in five plants are threatened with extinction.
For beauty, the risk is easy to miss. Because wild ingredients often make up only a small part of a company’s raw materials, businesses are frequently unaware that using them carries significant environmental and social risks. “Some cosmetics companies, I’m quite sure, don’t necessarily know that they’re sourcing ingredients that are most definitely wild,” Flowers said, “so identifying them is the first step. “Some cosmetics companies, I’m quite sure, don’t necessarily know that they’re sourcing ingredients that are most definitely wild,” Flowers said, “so identifying them is the first step.”
TRAFFIC incubated the FairWild Standard, now a benchmark for certifying wild plant materials. But Flowers says a certification logo isn’t the whole answer. “Despite certification, you often find challenges in supply chains; you often find a lack of sustainability; you often find communities that are exploited nonetheless,” she said. “Conversely, even where you don’t have certification, you can find really positive examples of good practice.”
Certification has also been slow to take hold in fragmented supply chains dominated by small producers. So the team borrowed an idea from small-scale fisheries, where fishery improvement projects have driven change alongside certification. The WHIP framework applies the same step-by-step approach to wild harvesting and lets brands invest in improvements together. That matters, Flowers argued, because “a lot of sustainability requirements get pushed down the chain and onto those who are least equipped and resourced to respond.”
The framework was piloted in two very different places. In Morocco, TRAFFIC worked with the Moroccan Biodiversity and Livelihoods Association on argan. The pilot focused on the Souss-Massa region, part of an argan forest that covers more than 870,000 hectares of southwestern Morocco, supports around 2.2 million rural people, and sits within a UNESCO biosphere reserve. The trees take seven to 10 years to mature, and drought, goat grazing, and poorly timed collection are holding back regeneration.
Argan is mainly produced by women, many of them Amazigh, working through cooperatives. For many of these women, the cooperatives provided a first job and salary. But middlemen control parts of the market, and wages in the cooperatives visited were well below the Moroccan minimum wage. Interviewees often didn’t know what argan oil sells for in Europe. “Argan oil is in huge demand. It’s used in marketing frequently within cosmetics,” said Flowers. “That is such a juxtaposition from the position that many people directly involved in that trade find themselves in.”
In Uzbekistan, TRAFFIC worked with the FairWild Foundation on wild licorice (Glycyrrhiza glabra) in the arid region of Karakalpakstan. Uzbekistan is one of the world’s top producers of wild-harvested licorice, with exports worth $25.4 million in 2022. Licorice is a root crop, so harvesting can be destructive, as mechanized plowing in desert areas contributes to soil erosion and dust storms. Harvesters face low prices and late payments, and they are paid by weight rather than by the hour. “A lot of the trade there looks quite extractive,” said Flowers.
What links the two, she explained, is scale. “One of the arguments that’s often given in sustainability discussions is that the volumes traded are small. These are two ingredients where the volumes are not small. And yet we haven't seen this impact in terms of improvement throughout the supply chain.”
The same pattern appears well beyond the pilot sites. Frankincense, a slow-maturing resin from the Horn of Africa, is increasingly tapped before the trees are ready. Shea is under strain from demand from both the cocoa and cosmetics industries. Flowers pointed to Ghana, where the government has made sustainable shea their unique selling point, as proof that producer countries can lead. “Ultimately, you don’t have the product if it’s completely exploited,” she said. “The folks who suffer most from that are the communities that relied on that harvest and trade for centuries. And that's also a form of cultural heritage that's being destroyed.”
Regulation is adding pressure. Flowers points to incoming EU rules on corporate sustainability, deforestation, and consumer protection that will make brands look harder at their claims. “Regional blocs like the European Union want to see that traceability, want to see proof of the chain of custody,” she explained. “I don’t see that trend backtracking.” Food supply chains are already under strain, and the cosmetics industry will not be immune.
TRAFFIC now plans to test the WHIP framework in other supply chains and is putting together a list of 100 wild plants and fungi used in trade. Beauty thrives on newness and competition, but Flowers wants brands to work together on this. “The cosmetics industry just has such a huge opportunity to drive positive change, and I think that comes through collaboration,” she said. “The current market structures are a problem. They often fail to reward people. They fail to reward the landscapes.”
She suggested brands treat the issue as a question of risk and resilience rather than box-ticking. “How does the business model stand up in relation to biodiversity loss, in relation to climate change, in relation to all of the social and human rights issues that we find in supply chains?” She also sees a commercial case, since ingredient quality and efficacy depend on long-term relationships that ensure consistent supply.
With one in five people relying on wild species, getting this right matters far beyond a single product. “Sustainable sourcing isn’t just a supply chain issue,” Flowers said, conclusively, “but about biodiversity and livelihoods, and about having a positive impact on the world around us.”