What biodiversity is losing because of illicit crops in Colombia

All the cocaine that is consumed around the World is produced in three countries: Colombia, Perú and Bolivia. Even though the United Nations Office on Drugs and Crime sates in its 2012 World Drug Report stands that “there has been an overall decline in a global manufacture of cocaine, prompted by a major decline in cocaine manufacture in Colombia in the five-year period 2006-2010”[i] the country at the 31 of December of 2011 still has 48.000 hectares in its territory which means a reduction of 25% compared to the year before. Further, 80.000 farmers’ families in Colombia depend on illicit coca bush cultivation to survive and the figures in this same report show that while the crops reduced in 25%, the production of cocaine reduced only 10%.

Although all these facts are important to understand the situation of illicit crops in Colombia, what really concerns me is the environmental impact that the process itself of creating, maintaining and harvesting a crop of cocaine or marihuana implies in itself, as well as further action of fumigating the illicit crops, a strategy define in 2000 with the implementation of Plan Colombia. This plan was a bilateral agreement between the governments of Colombia and the United States with the objectives of generating social and economic revitalization, ending the armed conflict in Colombia and creating an anti-drug strategy in which the eradication of illicit crops was done through the fumigation of the area with glyphosate.

The glyphosate is a herbicide used in agriculture because it’s action blocks an essential metabolic pathway for plant growth. Because of the objective of this post, I’m not going expand on the components of the glyphosate, I just want to highlight that the herbicide is a patent of Monsanto and that the scientific magazine Chemical Research in Toxicology published a study in which it’s noted that the Roundup, whose active ingredient is glyphosate, is lethal for human cells and  “stimulate cell death of human embryos, which could cause defects, abortions, hormonal problems, genital or reproductive, as well as various types of cancer”[ii].

The negative environmental effect of drug production in Colombia begins when farmers need to destroy approximately four hectares of forest to plant one hectare of cocaine. In fact, “30% of annual deforestation in Colombia corresponds to the action because the implementation of cocaine crops”[iii]. Moreover, they use insecticides and fungicides to control plagues and sicknesses in the crop and also chemical fertilizers to improve results. All these substances that illicit crop farmers introduce daily into the ecosystem cause much harm to it. For example, the loss of the resource as a source of water and food, human and animal poisoning, soil contamination, persistence of the substances in the food chain, influence on insects and flora and to add one more, packaging waste and residual products, to name just a few.

Furthermore, the fumigation of the same crops is being done in many more territories than the ones with cocaine or marihuana crops, thus affecting the way other food plantations and the work of hundreds of rural workers in the country. Besides, due to the presence of revolutionary armed groups in the zone, who are the owners of the drug trafficking business, the pilots of the airplanes that did the fumigation couldn’t fly at low altitudes because these guerrillas could attack them. Additionally, they were positively evaluated if their tanks return without glyphosate, the reason why on many occasions they release all the product in just one area, making the environmental effect of the herbicide into biodiversity and habitat worse.

One can say that the strategy of fumigation has important political concerns that prevail in front of the ecological heritage of the country and the large effects that the act has in environment, conservation of flora and fauna, and public health. What is more disturbing is that by evaluating the strategy of the fumigation of illicit crops, we can see that it is directly affecting the farm workers that have been forced by the armed groups to leave their traditional food yields to work with drug production in order to survive. The problematic then begins with the existence of the armed groups outside the law that from 60 years have been affecting the social, economic and political life of the country and the creation of the drug traffic as their business for subsistence.

Despite the political problematic, the way in which it has been tackled hasn’t been so effective. The fumigation with glyphosate began 25 years ago and now we can see that the production of drugs in Colombia is still a reality. In fact, the United States government based in CIA studios said, “despite the large financial investment and the enormous cost of spraying operations in 2003, it represented only in practice eradicating 30,000 hectares.”[iv]

Among 195 nations, Colombia is the country with the second highest biodiversity on Earth, and the first worldwide in flora and fauna per square kilometer even with the huge challenges described. The presence of the drug crops in the country and the conflict with armed forces has more than political, social and economic consequences; the environment has been directly affected and is now a key factor to evaluate and stop the loss of the biodiversity and all it’s environmental potential.

Comments Off on What biodiversity is losing because of illicit crops in Colombia / 27 Jan 2014 por anamariarocha
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