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Jakarta. Indonesia should look no further than its own backyard for answers to a myriad of world problems, with its rich and as yet largely unclassified vegetation possibly holding the secrets to stopping climate change or curing cancer, a leading scientist has said.

But development of forest lands and exploitation of resources have resulted in Indonesia having the world’s longest list of critically endangered plant species, Kuswata Kartawinata, an expert on plant ecology at the Indonesian Institute of Sciences (LIPI), said recently at the institute’s 43rd anniversary celebration.

“Indonesia is abundant with floral biodiversity but many species have still not been scientifically detailed, while deforestation is threatening to bring them to the brink of extinction,” he said, adding that about 60 percent of the country’s 30,000 native flowering plants had been systematically recorded.

However, even the biological aspects of the majority of the recorded species are still unknown because a comprehensive catalog of the plants is not available, he added.

This is where the expertise of taxonomists would come in handy. Classifying the country’s diverse plant species would allow scientists to predict the unobserved characteristics of plant organisms, including their chemical elements, molecular data, anatomy or life history.

A comprehensive classification system could help trace down chemicals such as taxol, which is used in some chemotherapy treatments. Taxol is found in the extract of the Pacific yew, a coniferous plant native to Pacific North America. However, producing taxol from a single species is inadequate and risks driving it to extinction.

Kuswata said taxonomy help could detect taxol in other species of yew, including the Chinese yew found on the islands of Sumatra and Sulawesi. “Although the predictions are based on probability, it could provide solid grounding for future biological research,” he said.

Together with the Philippines, Malaysia, Singapore, Brunei, Papua New Guinea and East Timor, Indonesia is part of a coherent floristic region called Malesia, whose vegetation is distinct from the rest of Southeast Asia, Australia and the Pacific.

Malesia, Kuswata said, was estimated to have 40,000 species of plants, of which 30,000 were found in Indonesia. “This is equal to roughly 10 percent of the world’s flora,” he said.

However, the country still lacks a complete reference for flora, with the latest being a study by Dutch botanists in Java in 1963.

Lukman Hakim, LIPI’s new chairman, said the situation emphasized the important role of taxonomists in detailing the country’s rich biodiversity. “Indonesian scientists should be the masters of their own country’s biodiversity,” he said.