SAPA, VIETNAM – For tourists visiting Sapa, a town among the clouds in Vietnam’s northwestern mountains, a medicinal bath developed by the indigenous Red Yao people is a must-try experience.

These forests hold half of the secret to the healing power of the bath as the forests are where hundreds of medicinal plant species grow.

The other half lies in the knowledge of the Red Yao people, who for generations have studied the plants’ healing properties and perfected the formulae for a vast range of medical conditions.

But overharvesting driven by strong demand from China over the past two decades has already driven some species to extinction.

Many plants around Sapa are classified as critically endangered in the IUCN Red List of Threatened Species of Vietnam, including those that can help treat cancer, diabetes and hypertension.

Still, trading in those endangered plants continues. Conservation, as it is now, depends on individual accountability, “but where would you find this will power,” asked Tran Van On, an Associate Professor at the Hanoi University of Pharmacy.

“The buyer has money, the prize is in the forest. [The Chinese] just go straight to the forest to buy [the endangered plants], if there are any still left there.”

Amid such declining biodiversity, in 2005 two Red Yao women stepped in and founded SapaNapro, a social enterprise that offers the now famous medicinal baths. The company has since expanded to include 10 franchises as it developed a model for sustainable harvesting.

Yet the threat of biodiversity loss remains as rising land prices in the area are threatening the core of their business model.

It all started in the early 2000s, when Associate Professor On started making regular visits to Ta Phin to research the Red Yao people’s medicinal bath recipes.

This was how he met Chao Su May and Ly May Chan, chairperson of the local Women’s Union and vice-chair of Ta Phin People’s Committee, respectively. Little did they know that the trio would soon lay the foundations for SapaNapro.

May is locally known as the queen of medicinal plants. She is also Chan’s niece-in-law.

Chan, on the other hand, is one of the only people in Ta Phin to have had some business experience. She had led some 200 people in making brocade products for souvenir shops in big cities, including one of her own in Hanoi’s Old Quarter.

Chan remembers vividly the first time she met On, the first researcher interested in the Red Yao people’s traditional medicine.

“You came here for research, now please come back and work with us. If you go elsewhere, I’d lose my job,” Chan recalled telling On as deep down, she was worried the outsider would “steal their secrets.”

She remembers him replying: “Of course, I always want to come back to help the people here.” But that wasn’t enough for On to earn Chan’s trust.

Step by step, meeting after meeting, the three bonded over their shared commitment to preserving the medicinal plants.

For On, it was driven by anger as he witnessed outsiders coming in to profit from the Red Yao’s medicinal bath recipe without paying anything back to the community, save for a nominal harvesting fee.

“I could see plants being harvested to extinction everywhere,” On said. “The Chinese market is too vast – if they buy something, we run out of that thing.”

On’s own research published in 2005 concluded “this is the most detrimental exploitation,” and he pointed out that at least 500 species of medicinal plants all over the country were harvested and sold that way.

As for medicinal plants for the bathing liquid, one-fifth of the 19 species used are declining at an alarming rate, and two are nearly extinct.

With that in mind, as an advisor and board member, On helped SapaNapro standardize their medicinal bath liquid’s ingredients for easier commercialization and drew up a blueprint for sustainable harvesting.

But his ideas would have amounted to nothing without Chan and May’s execution. Thanks to their established reputation in the community, the two women quickly gathered 11 Red Yao and H’Mong people to invest in SapaNapro. None had any business experience.

In fact, these first 11 shareholders were the poorest of the poorest in the village where most people don’t even have a high school diploma.

With no money to chip in, On suggested an alternative: everything, from labor, forest land titles to even a wood pallet could be converted to the company’s stock.

That’s how SapaNapro’s first bathhouse came to be.

The early years, were however, an uphill battle. The first bathhouse soon collapsed because the terrain was too steep. Then the second one collapsed, too. Morale was low, even among the founders.

“I cried so many times,” said Chan, still traumatized by the events back then, when they made zero money after shareholders had pulled together everything they had.

Chan and May decided to risk it all. As they juggled their government jobs, the women gave the investors their pocket money (that would later be converted to stock) so they could buy food and other necessities to survive. After three years, SapaNapro still hadn’t turned a profit, but the women persisted.

By 2007, May’s son, Ly Lao Lo, returned home after completing military service and became the company’s CEO. The two women could step back to focus on R&D.

“I and May are the people who took up the responsibility,” said Chan. “If we gave up, everyone would leave. So we would try, try, try.”

Soon their efforts started to pay off, and the majority of shareholders remained with the company. These were those who contributed their forest titles, which were originally granted to them by the government to protect and earn a living from the forest.

That was enough for SapaNapro to establish a 5-hectare conservation area for medicinal plants, where locals are trained in sustainable harvesting: leaving a part of the stem for the plants to continue growing.

A University of Resources and Environment study in 2015 showed that the majority of people selling medicinal plants to SapaNapro complied with good practices, and 90% of the plants were collected in the right way.

Fast forward to the present day and Chinese traders offer to pay approximately 20 million dong (US$854) for a ton of medicinal plants, according to a survey by On. But SapaNapro pays 500 million dong ($21,330) back to the community in stock and wages for the same amount.

As word of mouth of SapaNapro’s growing success spread, so did the number of shareholders, whose count has now grown to 140, a quarter of whom contributed their forest land title rights ranging from 1-4 hectares each.

Others can join by simply chipping in 500,000 dong ($21.34), or by contributing their labor by tending to the medicinal plants. This model has allowed SapaNapro to expand and have enough forest land to rotate harvests, letting plots take turns to rest.

“If they did not [join SapaNapro], the medicinal plants on their land would run out very soon,” said May. “But if they join the company, they will have a stable yearly income of 10 million dong ($426.50).”

Their products have also expanded beyond medicinal baths, which helped them survive the pandemic.

As travel restrictions nearly eliminated tourism for two years, SapaNapro was able to stay afloat thanks to manufacturing medicinal bath products with a longer shelf life for postpartum women and infants, as well as essential oils supplied to more than 100 retailers across Vietnam.

On wants to replicate the SapaNapro model in Y Ty, a mountainous town 100-kilometer northwest of Ta Phin.

A SapaNapro franchise is already up and running there by the local Ha Nhi people, who have also established a conservation area of native flora and fauna.

But behind vast and dense forests and terraced paddy fields in and around Y Ty are mostly wealthy new owners from faraway cities.

Among the numerous homestays that have recently sprung up in Y Ty to serve a fledgling tourism industry, only one visited by this reporter still belonged to an indigenous Ha Nhi person.

Similarly in Ta Phin, speculative investors are driving real estate prices through the roof, which poses a threat to SapaNapro. Shareholders could end their contracts with the company at any time to sell their land at a high price, one that the company would not be able to afford.

This trend could potentially prevent similar social enterprises from springing up.

According to On, only 2% of the medicinal plants sold around Sapa were from SapaNapro. The rest were from free-harvesting, meaning the vast majority of medicinal plants are still very likely to be collected in an unsustainable manner.

May, who at 60 is still climbing mountains to study medicinal plants, can feel the decline in biodiversity acutely.

“Before, I told people to just collect the branches, but people now axe the whole medicinal plant, leaving it unrecoverable,” she said.

Despite that, On still has faith in his vision that one day, a chain of businesses like SapaNapro would be spread out along the mountain ranges of northern Vietnam, a hybrid model that combines tourism and herbal plants.

“I would never do it alone,” On said. “My students have already got together to build a company to make this dream come true.”

This story was produced in collaboration with Tia Sang Magazine and supported by Internews’ Earth Journalism Network.