“Vengo de uno de los tres países más bellos de la Tierra”, de esta manera comenzó Gustavo Petro su primer discurso ante la Asamblea General de la Organización de Naciones Unidas (ONU). Contrario a lo que se esperaba, el mandatario no comenzó su discurso hablando del cambio climático y de la necesidad de luchar en contra de este de forma conjunta, sino que se enfocó inicialmente en un pedido de cambio de enfoque en la lucha contra las drogas. Esta tesis fue la que articuló todo su discurso para también pedir la unión en contra del cambio climático.

Drug trafficking and the corresponding ‘war on drugs’ are driving deforestation in Central America, two new reports published by Fundación Neotropica and the PRISMA Foundation think tank have found. Military efforts to tackle cocaine traffickers have instead pushed them into remote forests, where the shadowy underground economy they build has a devastating effect on the environment, the researchers said. The economic impact on the region’s protected forests is at least $215m per year, they found. The traffickers then clear forests to create hundreds of air strips to land planes full of cocaine coming from the Andes.

Global drug control policies, much like tax or climate change, impact heavily on many areas of development and inevitably on efforts to meet many of the sustainable development goals that were launched by the UN last year and came into force on 1 January. Since the mid-20th century, global drug policy has been dominated by strict prohibition and the criminalisation of drug cultivation, production, trade, possession and use, with the intention of creating a drug-free world.

The United Nations Development Programme (UNDP), the UN agency charged with developing strategies to reduce global poverty, has strongly criticised current international drug policy, highlighting the disastrous costs it is producing – particularly for the world’s poor. In the agency’s formal submission to the UN General Assembly Special Session (UNGASS) on drugs (PDF), launched at the annual UN Commission on Narcotic Drugs which began last week in Vienna, the UNDP argues:

Cattle-ranching, not cocaine, has driven the destruction of the Colombian Amazon over the last four decades, a new study has found. Successive recent governments have used environmental concerns to justify ramping up their war on the green shrub, but the research shows that in 2018 the amount of forest cleared to cultivate coca, the base ingredient of cocaine, was only 1/60th of that used for cattle. The study’s findings vindicate conservation experts who have long argued that Colombia’s strategy to conserve the Amazon – often centered on combating coca production – has been misplaced. “We want to finally eradicate this narrative that coca is the driver of deforestation.” (See also: IDPC analysis of the UNODC World Drug Report 2022)

Many myths surround coca. Every day press accounts around the world use the word coca in their headlines, when they refer in fact to cocaine. TNI's Drugs and Democracy Team expose the myths and reality surrounding the coca leaf.

See also: Fact Sheet: Coca leaf and the UN Drugs Conventions

It is unfortunate that 35 years after the first chemical spraying in the Sierra Nevada de Santa Marta, we are still writing about aerial sprayings in Colombia, demanding the current government – how many governments have not happened since! – to definitely defer an ecocide and incompetent policy. Throughout these years we have seen increasing national and international voices opposing the spraying of coca with the herbicide Roundup (glyphosate).

An elderly cleaning lady enters the huge empty UN aula in New York with her polishing cart, to get the venue spic-and-span for an important upcoming meeting. A voice in the background explains: "Here, in this room, on the 8, 9 and 10 of June world leaders will join forces to confront the drug problem". As the lady dusts off a globe, in the swaying movement, a roaring helicopter appears spraying herbicides, followed by a fast sequence of images like burning drug crops, heavily armed soldiers and a farmer processing coffee. The voice ends with the slogan: "A drug free world - We can do it!"

Acompañamos la instalación de un espacio humanitario conformado por organizaciones sociales para atender la crisis desatada tras los operativos de erradicación forzada. Las comunidades denuncian una política de tierra arrasada y las autoridades defienden estas acciones porque van en contra de la disidencia al mando de “Gentil Duarte”, comandante del Frente Séptimo de las Farc que no se acogió al Acuerdo de Paz. Un puñado de campesinos, alrededor de una carpa improvisada que levantaron con plástico y les sirve de cocina, se comunican por radio con decenas de ellos que están regados por la zona alertas a la entrada del Ejército en los tajos de coca.

On June 26, the United Nations Office on Drugs and Crime released its annual report on the illicit drug trade. The headline is that despite millions of people killed, incarcerated and impoverished, and trillions of dollars spent on the global drug war, people are using more illicit drugs than ever. The UNODC accompanied its research with a booklet focusing on the effects of “environmental crime”—meaning, damage inflicted on ecosystems by organised drug trafficking groups—in the Amazon rainforest. Last year, the agency released its first specific report on “environmental crime,” and we are seeing increasingly high-profile figures speaking out about it. However, experts are warning that this latest UNODC report, along with much of the discourse around these issues, fundamentally misses the point in very dangerous ways.

This policy briefing discusses whether or not the aim of reducing cannabis cultivation is realistic or beneficial for Morocco, what it would actually mean for the major production area the Rif – one of the poorest, most densely populated and environmentally fragile regions in the country – and what that could imply for meaningful sustainable development. The briefing will give some historical background, discuss developments in the cannabis market, and highlight environmental and social consequences as well as the recent debate about regulation in Morocco and about European policies.

Download the briefing (PDF) | Version en français (PDF)

Across the world, the state of environmental stress is unprecedented. As scholarship and activism on ‘environmental justice’ points out, poorer and marginalised communities face particular exposure to environmental harms. This holds particularly true for populations in the global South. The role of illicit drugs in relation to these environmental stresses is an underexplored terrain. Yet, as this report will argue, drugs, as well as the policy responses to them, are an environmental issue.

Download the report (PDF)

Surging consumption from foreigners has seen the cost of the DMT-rich brew skyrocket, a familiar situation for locals already struggling to afford quinoa prices because of western demand. Demand is such that even in the ayahuasca trail’s more traditional jungle heartland of Iquitos, shamans are having to reach out further and further into the wild to cater to tourists. Exacerbating the situation is overseas demand – with ayahuasca retreats springing up everywhere from Canada to Turkey, a largely unregulated export market has developed. (See also: Ayahuasca: From the Amazon to the Global Village)