Forests Under Fire
Álvarez, María D.
Illicit crops now account for half the annual deforestation of Colombia. Eradication has added to the damage, both by moving illegal production to previously uncultivated areas and through...
...Most of these threatened birds are concentrated in Today it is being heavily applied in both coca and mountains of the three Cordilleras of the Andes that poppy-growing areas...
...An estimated 10% of all plant and animal species of the world are found in Colombia, and many of them live nowhere else on earth...
...http://usfumigation.org/NovPressConfSpeakers/JeremyBigwood/Jere myBigwood.htm...
...http://socrates.berkeley.edu:7001/colombia/workingpapers/workingpapertokatlian.html...
...According to the monidirectly into Ecuador, Peru, crops, market and infrastructure toring coalition, "Coca and and Brazil...
...B) Serrania del PerijA...
...About a third of the forests of Colombia lie in municipalities currently under pressure from armed groups...
...Naranjo of plants...
...9 glyphosate," an 80-fold increase in the use of herbicide since 1986...
...1 0 What alternative development daunting...
...Growers clear forests in remote locations for their illegal crops, for food, and for airstrips and roads to facilitate trafficking...
...4. Elsa Nivia, "Effects on health and environment of glyphosate-containing herbicides," Press Conference, Washington, D.C., November 16, 2000...
...The governor of Narifio, for instance, reported that Aquatic life is also threatened by the eradication coca eradication in Putumayo has encouraged farmers campaign: According to Far- to begin coca farming in his ley, glyphosate is acutely toxic province...
...Expanding production of coca, opium poppy and marijuana, eradication of these illegal crops, armed conflict, and even development programs aimed at giving poor farmers alternatives to growing illicit crops are now threatening these unique ecosystems...
...Working paper presented at "Colombia in Context," conference held March 2, 2001, Berkeley, CA...
...they account for half the annual deforestation of Colombia and now Vol XX)(V, No 1 JuLY/AuGusT 200129 Maria D. Alvarez is a student at the School of Arts and Sciences, Columbia University...
...A coalition of human rights and environmental groups monitoring the program reports that local and national ombudsman offices in Colombia have "registered hundreds of complaints from peasants throughout Colombia that aerial eradication has caused eye, respiratory, skin, and digestive ailments, destroyed subsistence crops, sickened domesticated animals, and contaminated water supplies...
...But then he lightened up and in a chuckle concluded: "In any case, lots of people are just moving along, you know, finding a new plot...
...If things continue this way in the next administration, areas that the war has partially conserved could become wastelands with the advent of peace...
...See also Juan G. Londoio, "Yacimientos de oro en zona de guerra," El Tiempo (Bogota), March 12, 2001...
...E) West Andes...
...consistent with experiments showing (H) Eastern Llanos (natural grasslands...
...Were it not for the distorted price incentives created by high illegal drug prices, many of these areas might not be used for any kind of agriculture...
...Jorge Robledo-Castillo, "Neoliberalismo y desastre agropecuario," Deslinde, No...
...5. Linda Farley, "Pesticides and Birds Campaign of the American Birds Conservancy," Press Conference, Washington, D.C., November 16, 2000...
...And then came the defoliants...
...48-55...
...In illicitly cultivated areas, only tiny patches of threats to bird life stem from the indiscriminate forest vegetation are left in a matrix of coca and destruction of vegetation, reducing forest cover...
...1 1 And for all the enthusiasm for alternative development, there are no detailed analyses examining land-use options after crop eradication, assuming the soil is not irreparably poisoned with chemical or biological herbicides...
...If forest conservation is not made a priority in policy, some of the astonishingly rich forests that have managed to survive the war may not survive the kind of exploitation that Colombia's unlikely peace can afford...
...Eradication has added to the damage, both by moving illegal production to previously uncultivated areas and through the toxic effects of the substances used for eradication...
...http://www.ciponline.org/colombia/0401 putu.pdf...
...This, in turn, requires sustainable management of natural resources...
...9. Author interviews with C. Gonzalez and I. Bedoya, Popayan, September 2000...
...Destruction of ille- conservation" overlap with several illicit crop progal crops will add to the ecological damage, however, duction zones, in the foothills of the East Andes in both by moving illegal production into previously Putumayo, for example, because all lie at the forest uncultivated regions and as a direct result of the sub- frontier...
...K) Guaviare river...
...the reports of fish kills in Overall, it seems, the Colomponds and streams in the declarations about the bian eradication program has of Putumayo...
...Traffickers, aided by paramilitaries, have consolidated five to ten million acres of productive land over the last decade, much of it in the Guaviare basin and the Llanos...
...Julian Villaruel, Jorge H. Ochoa, Jorge M. Molina, Liliana Alvarado, Jose L. Navarro, Luis Bernal, Luis E. Jaramillo, Rosalba Salinas, Carlos Sanchez, Hector Castro, and Joaquin Buenaventura, Minerales estratbgicos para el desarrollo de Colombia...
...An estimated two-thirds of coca growers are currently farming lands considered unsuitable for other crops...
...8. Thomas M. Donegan and Liliana M. Davalos, "Ornithological Observations from Reserva Natural Tambito, Cauca, Southwest Colombia," Cotinga, No...
...5 in the 1980s to destroy Colombian marijuana fields...
...and (P) Amazon river...
...7. Jeremy Bigwood, "Problems with the Chemical Herbicide Program in Colombia," Press Conference, Washington, D.C., November 16, 2000...
...C) Serrania de San consistent with experiments showing Lucas...
...Much of the glyphosate used in the Colombian eradication program is being applied at a higher concentration than its standard commercial formulation, and contains additives that may increase its toxicity to humans and animals...
...G) East Andes...
...The injuries from glyphosate may be most acute in insects and other invertebrates both directly, or by poisoning the animals that consume them...
...Agricultural imports have jumped from 800,000 tons in 1990 to 3,000,000 in 1995, to 7,000,000 in 1999...
...For current illicit growers to survive, productivity and market prices of alternative crops-or any resources-that replace illicit ones need to be sufficiently high to support growers with little or no further land clearing and without direct government assistance...
...In 1977 the Colombian government set aside over 100,000 acres for a natural park to protect the Golden-Headed Quetzals that are abundant there...
...4 (L) Macizo Colombiano...
...12, 1999, pp...
...Inset: A tree frog from the Serrania de los Churumbelos...
...At present, ecotourism is impossible given the high probability of kidnapping or confrontation, and environmental activists have become military targets of both guerrillas and paramilitaries...
...In any case, environmental conservation will have to play a role in the peace efforts of both the government and the guerrillas, as well as in the international eradication effort...
...He poppy fields and thickets, reports an estimate that for every acre of coca fumiPlan Colombia aims to eradicate about half the gated, two acres of surrounding forest may be affectexisting area of illicit crops by 2003 through a combi- ed as the herbicide drifts away from its intended tarnation of aerial spraying, armed law enforcement, and gets...
...The current economic outlook for agricultural production in Colombia is bleak at best...
...Manuel Rodriguez, "Forests and Conflict: the Colombian Case," Journal ofSustainable Forestry, forthcoming...
...It was first used 75 plus threatened species are forest-dependent...
...This rare bird is native to the tropical forests west of the Andes in Colombia and Ecuador...
...Naranjo says that glyphosate can be occupy almost 5% of the surface of some protected toxic to wildlife, including birds, while even greater areas...
...Linda Farley, the Conservancy's Science stances used for eradication...
...At right: A club-winged manakin...
...7 The combined effects of the growth of illicit trade and efforts to eliminate it are already vividly on display in Munchique, in southwest Colombia...
...J) Serrania de la Macarena...
...In the poppy-growing region in the take place, and what employment alternatives will highlands known as the Macizo Colombiano, for become available in both rural and urban areas are all example, USAID has proposed forestry, grazing, and ecotourism projects...
...Even hiking in state-protected areas has become a dangerous activity, as shown by the recent murder of students in Purac6, eastern Cauca...
...The United States has even upped the ante with a proposal to use a coca-killing fungus, though Colombian environmental authorities have so far refused to approve the application of this biological herbicide (see "A Killer Fungus Waits in the Wings," p. 32...
...There is even talk of famine...
...This much is clear: Prospects for economic health services, improved infrastructure, and guaran- success of alternative development programs are teed personal safety...
...M) Serrania de los Churumbelos...
...They sprayed the coca, the plantains, the cassava, and every area that seemed inhabited," said a local botanist last September of the myriad plots scattered throughout the park's buffer zone...
...http://usfumigation.org/NovPressConfSpeakers/lindafarley/lindafarley.htm...
...Eradication is accompanied by declarations about the "alternative development" of drug-producing zones...
...I) Parque Nacional Natural Munchique that inhaled glyphosate may quickly (West Andes and Pacific lowlands...
...glyphosate...
...Whether it's coca in the foothills of the East Andes, marijuana in the Sierra Nevada de Santa Marta or poppy in the Macizo Colombiano, illicit crops are irreversibly affecting the forests that contain large numbers of unique and imperiled plant and animal species...
...Amphibians like this frog are the vertebrates most affected by both the chemicals used in manufacturing cocaine and in eradicating coca...
...See also: Juan Forero, "No Crops Spared in Colombia's Coca War," New York Times, January 31, 2001, p. Al...
...and Colombian officials are forging ahead with eradication...
...Both Bigwood and Farley believe glyphosate can cause long-term changes in soil by affecting the balance of soil micro-organisms...
...tion of rural residents and in conservation efforts...
...3. Amazon Alliance press release, November 16, 2001, <<http://usfumigation.org/Literature/PressReleases/news_realease.htm...
...Bogota: UPME, Minercol, Ingeominas, 2000...
...succeeded only in turning department suty alternative development" of larger and larger parts of the Rivers in this southern province are part of the larger drug-producing zones...
...6. Adam Isacson and Ingrid Vaicius, "Plan Colombia's Ground Zero," A Report from Center for International Policy's trip to Putumayo, Colombia, March 9-12, 2001...
...Much of the U.S...
...The long-term success of illicit crop eradication depends on the socioeconomic stability of the rural population...
...Much the same has to fish, which might explain Eradication is accompanied by been true for poppy producers...
...Traditional farming by small-to-medium landholders has been replaced with extensive cattle ranching on almost 1.2 million acres...
...8 Over the last ten years, however, coca farmers began production in areas surrounding the park, felling trees with chainsaws to make room for their plots...
...Given the value of the resources involved and weak enforcement of environmental regulations, access to the frontiers could result in the wholesale rapid destruction of what forest remains in San Lucas...
...See also Maria D. Alvarez, "Illicit crops and bird conservation priorities in Colombia," unpublished ms...
...is, what crops are going to be introduced as alterna- What's more, many alternative development profives for small holders, what global market exists for grams would have to be carried out in an exceptionally them, what kind of infrastructure development will rich, fragile habitat...
...Today we know the Munchique park is home to hundreds of species of birds, several dozen different mammals, and hundreds of species of trees, some of which are found nowhere else in the world...
...I Colombia was one of the world's largest producers of marijuana in the 1970s, and with the growth and specialization of criminal organizations, by the 1990s it had become a large-scale producer of coca for cocaine and of opium poppies used to make heroin...
...They are not stupid...
...The park and its environs have the highest number of threatened bird species in Colombia: 137 by the latest count, 28 of which are endemic to the region...
...As the thousands of campesinos who have seen their fields eradicated in Putumayo can easily confirm, the reality of eviction is much more substantive than the fantasy of relocating to ranches as yet not wrested from paramilitaries and traffickers...
...See also Francisco E. Thoumi, Political Economy and Illegal Drugs in Colombia (Boulder: Lynne Rienner Publishers, 1995...
...The success of any development initiative, however, is only partially contingent on local conditions...
...http:l/usfumigation.org/NovPressConfSpeakers/LuisNaranjolLuisNar anjo.htm#Colombia...
...2 (1997), pp...
...Despite this poor track record, U.S...
...http://www.presidencia.gov.co/webpres/plancolo/index.htm...
...This variety makes the country one of the world's most ecologically diverse and species-rich: Some 1,800 bird species have been observed in Colombia...
...To avoid harming the region's diverse wildlife and bird populations, grazing and forest harvesting would have to be minimal, and ecotourism will only be possible if peace negotiations prosper and generate safe conditions for prospective visitors...
...http://usfumigation.orglNovPressConfSpeakers/ElsaNivia/ElsaNivia.ht m...
...Between 1992 and 1999 annual crops on over two million acres were abandoned, and agriculture's contribution to GNP fell 4...
...Even a former Minister of the Environment, Manuel Rodriguez, readily acknowledges that coca may be partly responsible for partially slowing the push into new areas by making the current agrarian small holder economy viable...
...of "alternative development" opium poppy production in Glyphosate's overall effects Colombia tripled from 1994 to on local ecosystems are are all undefined...
...Rafael Vasquez-Ordohez, "La agricultura colombiana en 1996," Agronomia Colombiana, Vol...
...See Presidencia de la Republica, "Plan Colombia," 2000...
...25 (1999), pp...
...Otherwise, the productive system is sustainable only as long the alternative development project and subsidies continue...
...As bad as illicit crops are for the forests, it is possible that a switch to other crops, legal but less profitable, could increase deforestation...
...In fact, presidential candidate Alvaro Uribe V61ez, campaigning among Colombians in Queens, N.Y., recently pitched plans to "develop" the Pacific coast by selling the remaining hardwoods in the international marketplace...
...If current estimates are correct, illicit crops are expanding by more than 20% per year...
...Plan Colombia assumes that all poppy-growing and about a third of coca-growing lands can be productive if planted with other crops, if only campesinos are An Andean Cock-of-the-Rock, from the Serrania de los Churumbelos...
...Officer, thinks that "glyphosate spraying is already The chemical herbicide glyphosate is currently- having a significant detrimental effect on the endemand has long been-the mainstay of U.S.-funded aeri- ic and threatened birds of Colombia, as 95% of the al eradication programs in Colombia...
...Forests Under Fire 1. Luis Naranjo, "Bird Conservation and the Control of Illegal Crops in Colombia," Press Conference, Washington, D.C., November 16, 2000...
...2 Glyphosate kills a wide range make Colombia the bird paradise that it is...
...At the same time, unemployment has risen from 8% to 20%, and rural poverty indices grew from 65% in 1991 to 72% in 1995.12 The peace process, if successful, could increase the prospects for improvement in both the economic situaVol XXXV, No 1 JuLY/AuGusT 2001 33REPORT ON THE DRUG WAR At left: An Amazonian beetle...
...Her work on the environment in Colombia is in press in the Journal of Sustainable Forestry, Conservation Biology, and The Environmentalist...
...1999, despite the fumigation unknown...
...The Serranfa de la Macarena, adjacent to the Revolutionary Armed Forces of Colombia (FARC) demilitarized zone, may well be the first victim of the changes in environmental management caused in part by the peace process...
...The Conservancy's "priority areas for bird alternative development projects...
...Manufactured by Monsanto and used world- notes that nearly 500 bird species were recorded wide as an herbicide, it is sold in the United States- recently during a brief scientific survey of the Serand most of the world-under the brand name ranfa de los Churumbelos of Putumayo, "a region "Roundup...
...2. Juan Gabriel Tokatlian, "Estados Unidos y los cultivos iliicitos en Colombia: Los tragicos equivocos de una fumigacion fOtil," is a parallel history of illegal drug crop production and eradication programs in Colombia...
...The American Bird Conservancy's (0) Putumayo river...
...of over 240,000 hectares of testing of these products has illicit crops with more than been performed in Hawaii and two million liters of other places that are very ecologically distinct from the rivulet-laden, acidic, sensitive, nutrient-poor soil found in the jungle basins that empty into the Amazon," says Jeremy Bigwood, an independent researcher and herbicide expert...
...lead to death in mammals...
...Vol XXXV, No 1 JULY/AUGUST 2001 31 0 o 8 Vol XXXV, No 1 JULY/AUGUST 2001 31REPORT ON THE DRUG WAR given the right mix of incentives such as education and unclear...
...F) Central Andes...
...Colombia boasts a dizzying array of landscapes: from high Andean pdramos to the tropical Amazon, from arid deserts to the rainiest forests in the world in the lowlands along the Pacific Ocean...
...N) Caqueti river...
...Even now, as peace talks with the country's second guerrilla group, the National Liberation Army (ELN), founder in a paramilitary bloodbath, the government has released a mining prospectus aimed at international investors highlighting the gold deposits in the Serranfa de San Lucas...
...Despite the inclusion of environmental issues in the government peace talks with the FARC, the guerrilla group did not hesitate to build a 125-mile road right through two protected areas in the region...
...This increase is due partly to the need to replace food formerly grown on lands converted to annual crops, and partly to liberalization policies promoted by the World Trade Organization...
...But the country to illicit crop produc- Amazon system, and flow tion...
...14, No...
...Cocaine traffickers, says the park's director, had been "building a pipeline right through the park so they could process the coca harvest in the lowlands" and avoid carrying in "by car, mule, or on people's backs," the sulfuric acid and ammonia needed for turning coca into cocaine...
...3 Governors of the coca-producing provinces of southern Colombia have officially Remnant forests of Colombia as compiled by the Instituto de Investigaci6n de protested the eradication program for Recursos Biol6gicos Alejandro von Humboldt Main sites mentioned in the text: these reasons...
...158-181...
...In any case, the current government appears to have little commitment to conservation: The Pastrana Administration, which modernized the management of protected areas via decentralization, has delivered some significant setbacks to environmental legislation and enforcement by, for example, weakening regulations by presidential decree to attract multinationals...
...by comparison, the contiguous United States, though considerably larger, has no more than 800...
...D) Daribn lowlands...
...The flip side, however, is more challenging: Many forests that are currently inaccessible to settlers and to agriculture, mining and logging companies would be ripe for the taking in a safe Colombia...
...The government promises to set them up in micro-businesses in urban areas, or to relocate them to lands provided by the agrarian reform agency or seized from traffickers...
...If market prices fail to provide living wages after assistance stops, there would doubtless be further encroachment into the frontier facilitated by infrastructure-i.e., roads--built with money from donor agencies and government programs...
...Vol XXXV, No 1 JuLY/AUGusT 2001 29REPORT ON THE DRUG WAR mandated label cautions against direct contact with the chemical, and advises those who apply it to use protective gear-advice that the residents of eradication zones can hardly heed when the herbicide rains down on their villages and fields from low-flying planes...
...The domestic and global economic landscape limit the success of marketing strategies attached to alternative crops...
...1 3 Local residents are now exploiting the mines there, causing significant environmental damage while the ELN and the paramilitaries fight for control...
...The Sierra Nevada de Santa Marta, on Colombia's Caribbean coast, harbors some of the most unique and imperiled flora and fauna of South America...
...These complaints are (A) Sierra Nevada de Santa Marta...
...Luis Naranjo, the director of international programs for the American Bird Conservancy, believes that "unless the current policies against the drug problem in the country are revised, we will be facing the extinction of many of the organisms that make the country's biota so distinctive...
...32-49...
...An Environmental Protection Agency- that is now the main target of the largest campaign to 30 NACIA REPORT ON THE AMERICASREPORT ON THE DRUG WAR eradicate illegal crops by means of aerial spraying of The same trend has been evident all over Colombia...
Vol. 35 • July 2001 • No. 1
