**5. The Republic of Suriname**

#### **5.1 Generalities**

The Republic of Suriname is located on the northeast coast of South America, bordering the Atlantic Ocean and surrounded by French Guiana, Brazil, and Guyana (**Figure 1**). Roughly 80% of the approximately 600,000 inhabitants live in the capital city of Paramaribo and other urbanized areas in the northern coastal zone of the country (**Figure 1**). The remaining 20% resides in the rural-coastal areas and the southern-rural interior, which comprises approximately 90% of the country's land surface and largely consists of sparsely inhabited savanna and undisturbed, dense tropical rainforest with a very high animal and plant biodiversity [25, 26] (**Figure 1**).

Suriname's most important economic means of support are crude oil drilling, gold mining, agriculture, fisheries, forestry, and ecotourism [110]. These activities

substantially contributed to the gross domestic product in 2020 of about USD 3 billion [111], positioning Suriname on the World Bank's list of upper-middle-income economies [112]. Suriname's population is among the most varied in the world, comprising Amerindians (the original inhabitants of the country) as well as descendants from enslaved Africans, indentured laborers from Asia, and European settlers, as well as immigrants from various Latin American and Caribbean countries [113]. All ethnic groups have preserved much of their original culture and identity, still practicing the religion they were raised with, speaking the language from their country of origin, maintaining their specific perceptions of health and disease, and adhering to their ethnopharmacological traditions [114, 115].

As a result, the use of various forms of traditional medicine is deeply rooted in the country, despite the broad availability of affordable modern health care [114, 115]. This inclination, together with the easy access to raw plant material from Suriname's rich biodiversity, probably accounts for the frequent use of traditional herbal medications in the country, either alone or in conjunction with prescription medicines [114, 115]. As in many other regions throughout the world, parts from Fabaceae members are often used for preparing the traditional medicines. The botanical knowledge to identify useful and edible plants has probably been obtained from ancient knowledge from the country of origin, by exchanging information with other cultures, by observing other peoples and animals, and by trial and error [114, 115].

#### **5.2 Fabaceae in Suriname**

The Fabaceae plant family is the most common family in tropical rainforests and dry forests of the Americas and Africa [116]. This plant family is also abundantly present in Suriname, and all growth forms—from dwarf shrubs and broadleaf evergreen trees to lianas and plants with bulbs or rhizomes—can be encountered between the northern coastal plain and the heavily forested and mountainous interior of the country. The exact number of genera and species in Suriname is not known, but according to the Checklist of the Venezuelan Guiana, there were 1032 species and 146 genera in the Guiana Shield in the year 2007 [28]. These figures are well in accordance with those from the National Herbarium of Suriname, which has 146 Fabaceae genera and 531 species from the Guiana Shield in its repository, 132 genera and 429 species of which have been collected in Suriname [28]. Thus, the Fabaceae species in Suriname can be estimated to constitute roughly 10% of the total number of approximately 5100 vascular plants in the country.

Like in many other parts of the world, several of the Surinamese Fabaceae species are used for a diversity of medicinal purposes. These species of Fabaceae have extensively been dealt with in several comprehensive publications on medicinal plants used in Suriname [117–125], and their total amounted to about 60 of the roughly 800 medicinal plant species. Thirty-nine of the medicinal Fabaceae species (about 65%) belong to the subfamily Faboideae, 16 (about 25%) to the Caesalpinioideae, 4 (about 7%) to the Detarioideae, and only 1 (about 2%) to the Cercidoideae. This distribution is more or less in accordance with that of the Fabaceae subfamilies throughout the world [75].

So far, scientific data to support the health claims of the Surinamese medicinal species of Fabaceae are scant. It is also not certain whether these claims may be based on the relatively high content of phytochemicals with antioxidant activity of these plants that, as mentioned above, seems to be one of the hallmarks of this plant family.
