Organised by the Corporacion Centro de Estudios de Derecho Justicia y Sociedad with the support of Colombia, Czechia, Germany, Paraguay, Switzerland, the Office of the High Commissioner for Human Rights, the World Health Organization, the United Nations Special Rapporteur on Toxics and Human Rights, the Centro de Estudios de Seguridad y Drogas, Elementa DDHH, the Friedrich Ebert Stiftung, Fundación Ideas para la Paz, Health Poverty Action, the International Centre for Human Rights and Drug Policy, the International Drug Policy Consortium, the Open Society Foundations, the International Coalition for Drug Policy Reform and Environmental Justice, the Transnational Institute and the Washington Office on Latin America
Summary
Drug policy strategies and the presence of illegal economies have caused harm to the right to a healthy environment for rural communities within illicit economies. As part of a programme of 7 side events that discussed the main human rights challenges identified in the 2023 OHCHR report on drug policy, this session drew attention to the urgent need that the international community aligns environmental protection efforts with human rights-based drug policies, preventing from repeating the harmful mistakes of the war on drugs into the conservation strategies. With the participation of UNODC, drug policy authorities from Colombia and South Africa, as well as CESED and Dejusticia, the event exposed the environmental effects of drug policies, including eradication actions, the regulation of cannabis for medicinal use and the substitution of coca leaf crops. The event concluded the relevance of designing strategies for mitigating climate change and conserving the environment, with a focus on human rights for the populations.
Resources:
Speakers:
- Marcos Orellana – UN Special Rapporteur on toxics and human rights.
- Chloé Carpentier – UNODC Chief of Research and Knowledge Production Section.
- Nandi Mayathula-Khoza – Central Drug Authority / South Africa
- María Alejandra Vélez – Centro de Estudios sobre Seguridad y Drogas / Colombia.
- Luis Felipe Cruz Olivera – Dejusticia / Colombia.
Gloria Miranda (Drug Policy Office – Ministry of Justice, Colombia):
I want to thank first level desire to have the opportunity to moderate this important space, to discuss about the right of the health environment in the drug policies. Also, we want to thank Dejusticia, the Office of the United Nations High Commissioner for Human Rights (OHCHR), IDPC, other member States and civil society organizations who are supporting this event. This event is part of a programme of 7 CND side events that aim to discuss the main human rights challenges identified in the 2023 Office of the OHCHR report on drug policy.
The topic that brings us reunited drug policy strategies and the presence of illegal economies have caused harm to the right to actually healthy and sustainable environment for communities located in areas with illicit economies, both rural and urban populations. These harms include deforestation, monocultures, and pollution of natural resources such as soil and water. The report from the office of the Human Rights Commissioner challenges in addressing and countering all aspects of the world drug problem, and highlights the threats posed by drug policy and the illegal industry to the right to a healthy environment.
Marcos Orellana – UN Special Rapporteur on toxics and human rights:
This is the special procedure of the United Nations Human Rights Council that was created in the recognition that exposure to hazardous substances can have a range of adverse impacts on the effective enjoyment of human rights. One of the priorities of the mandate for many years has been highly hazardous pesticides, as glyphosate. This toxic is a priority because of its use in armed conflict, toxics and armed conflict has been another priority area for the mandate for a number of years.
In December of 2020, I sent a letter to the Colombian government in regards to its plans at the time to reactivate its program of aerial spraying of glyphosate for coca bush eradication. The Government of Colombia had for many years used and sprayed widely glyphosate in its failed war on drugs. In the context of internal armed conflict, and despite the World Health Organization’s determination that glyphosate is a probable carcinogen, this program went on until Colombia’s own National Drug Council concluded in 2015 that glyphosate impacts undermine the realization of fundamental rights.
Subsequently to this decision, the Constitutional Court of Colombia had the opportunity to examine this issue and arrive at a similar conclusion. In my letters to the Colombian government, I highlighted glyphosate spraying adverse impacts on several internationally protected human rights: the right to life, the right to health in regards to the right to health. I underlined the disproportionate impact suffered by women issues of reproductive justice that stem from stillbirths, infertility, and other serious health issues. I also remarked about the adverse impacts on the right to food, the right to water, and the right to a healthy environment. Healthy soils, clean soils, clean water. They’re essential for human life, for human health, for growing food, for human well-being.
In 2020, the possible resumption of glyphosate spraying undermined the peace process Colombia had worked so hard to achieve, and that is because the construction of peace in rural areas requires a healthy environment, a healthy environment that can sustain food production, that can sustain healthy communities.
Chloé Carpentier – UNODC Chief of Research and Knowledge Production Section:
Thank you. Good morning everyone. Let me start with the conceptual framework about drugs and environment. What you see here is that basically both sets of activities on drugs, whether we are talking about drug market dynamics on the left and responses to the drug problem, may have an impact on the environment and vice versa. And this impact can be both direct and indirect. We know this relation between drugs and environment is more complex but evidence that is available is either very limited or local. And there is not much that can help us to provide a comprehensive assessment of the scope and the scale of the impact drugs.
And here we have an example for cocaine and considering the conditions in Colombia. We estimate the carbon footprint of producing 1 kg of cocaine in 600kg of carbon emissions. More than half is accounted for by activation of coca. Now, I just wanted to say that when we compare range of different crops with other drug crops, it is a very high quantity produced.
Emissions per one kilogram of cocaine are 30 times higher than per one kilogram of cocoa beans. In cannabis growing the difference between indoor and outdoor shows that indoors is 60 to 100 times higher than outdoors.
What I wanted to highlight is that if I we aggregate this carbon footprint global it’s very minimal compared to other human activities. Illegal economy and its footprint affect some territories, but even if it’s minimal, it has directed consequences at local level. So, the impact can be very, very significant for local communities, including indigenous communities.
Cocaine production includes the use of agrochemicals in fragile ecosystems and both can act as a driver and as a catalyst of deforestation. A study conducted in two Colombian regions showed that coca bush cultivation is directly related with deforestation of 2 to 4% deforestation. But the indirect or catalyst effect was quite high in 40 and 50%.
We have data about illicit cultivation and drug manufacture harms the environment, but many other activities along the illicit drug supply chain have an impact also. And I want to talk about impacts of trafficking and the reinvestments of drug profit, which can have a tremendous impact on the environment.
Last year we looked at the Amazon basin, where some parts are at the intersection of multiple forms of organized crime that are accelerating environmental devastation with implications for the security, health and well-being of the population. In Amazon basin countries profits from illegal activities can even finance other illegal and legal business (mining, cattle breeding, etc) that are very damaging to the environment.
Finally, some recommendations. First, integrated efforts to address the drug-related and environmental challenges, sencond, tailored, community-level interventions for local and indigenous communities that protect their rights to health and safety and to a clean, healthy and sustainable environment, and three, disrupt the cycle of instability and limited rule of law where illicit economies thrive.
Nandi Mayathula-Khoza – Central Drug Authority / South Africa:
I’m honored to be part of this panel, and I’m grateful to the OHCHR organizers of this event to start an important discussion on the environment within the human rights framework in addressing drug policy. The intersection of drug policy and environmental impact, particularly containing cannabis and cultivation, unveils a complex web of consequences that extend far beyond societal norms and legal issues.
Within this context, the forced eradication of control programs represents an example of the environmental harm of such policies. Cannabis cultivation, often driven by illicit markets due to regulatory restrictions, has historically faced harsh crackdowns from law enforcement agencies globally.
The use of many herbicides like roundup in eradication in some countries, especially in the Global South and the country, has raised significant concerns due to its potential adverse effects on the environment. Controls are saying that a broad-spectrum herbicide is known for its effectiveness in eliminating unwanted vegetation, but has also been linked to various environmental and health risks. One of the most pressing environmental impacts of these aerial fumigation is water contamination. Glyphosate can leach into waterways contaminating both surface water and groundwater sources.
Moreover, contaminated water sources can also pose a risk to human health, particularly in communities reliant on these water sources for drinking and agricultural practices. Additionally, the indiscriminate aerial fumigation of cannabis crops can have a dramatic effect on surrounding vegetation and agricultural land. Glyphosate is not selective in its targets and can harm plants, including food crops and native vegetation. This collateral damage not only inspired the visiting, but also jeopardizes food security and agricultural livelihoods in affected areas.
Environmental damage caused by forced eradication necessitates evaluation of drug policy and enforcement strategies, and that’s what we are doing in our country evaluating strategies, policies and legislation. But examples are of employment punitive measures that exacerbate environmental degradation. Policy makers must prototype evidence-based approaches, and this is what we are doing in country to address the root causes of illicit cannabis cultivation, whilst minimizing funds to both ecosystems and communities.
This is what we see in our country investing in real time developments by shifting the focus from enforcement to holistic interventions that prioritize environmental stewardship and community well-being. Some cannabis farmers resorted to creating demand into valleys and planted on steep slopes to evade detection by aerial surveillance. This displacement not only exacerbates environmental damage caused by deforestation and soil erosion, but also poses risks to the safety and wellbeing of farmers who venture into the rugged terrain to cultivate homes.
Furthermore, the migration of cannabis cultivation into remote valleys can have indirect social and economic consequences for affected communities. Increased isolation and limited access to essential services and economic opportunities can create dangerous cycles of poverty and marginalization, further exacerbating social inequalities.
María Alejandra Vélez – Centro de Estudios sobre Seguridad y Drogas / Colombia:
In my short intervention, I would like to talk about environmental impacts of drug policy and the environmental impacts of alternative development programs, in particular in Colombia in recent years. And we have seen a lot of panels these days, the discussion around environmental impacts of drug production has gained importance, particularly for coca crops used for cocaine production. The emphasis has been on the impacts of these crops being a possible driver of the forestation and water pollution due to cocaine production under the prohibition regime.
However, the focus her in this panel is on the right to a healthy environment. Thus, the discussion will be on the effect of the state intervention of the environment and be most assured that the situation without intervention is no worse than in the absence of it. A basic principle of no-harm that drug policy systematically fails in its intention of reducing the supply, something that we already saw with the glyphosate.
At the Universidad de los Andes, and finance by Colombia’s National Planning Department, we conducted the impact evaluation of the National Comprehensive Substitution Program within the Alternative Development framework from 2017 and 2022. We measure the impact because of the impact of this policy in poverty, coca crops and deforestation.
The substitution program intended to benefit more than 99,000 families with technical assistance, food assistance and productive practice. The announcement, because of the expectation created on the conditional benefits, explained the growth on coca crops. In fact, the announcement multiplied coca crops by eight times in neighbor zones next to the areas where beneficiaries were located. It also increased deforestation by 20% and 31% in the same neighboring communities.
Most have this effect occurred outside of the agricultural frontier, which are areas for forestry and conservation not for coca or agricultural activities. The implementation of this program had many problems. There was a systematic unfulfillment in the delivery of benefits. Six years after the program started, only about 2.7% of beneficiaries have received all the benefits.
On this evaluation, we measure the impact on the economic condition of the household, coca crops and deforestation all receiving those benefits. Our results suggest, which means that the delivery of all of the components reduced multidimensional poverty between 6% and 7%. This effect is explained because of reduction of poverty in households that were already less vulnerable at the beginning of the program, or in female that household receive benefits.
But even if the program improved the livelihoods for some beneficiaries, it did not have expected effects of coca crops and deforestation. We found that the delivery of the components increased areas of coca crops in neighbor zones to the program beneficiaries in 53 to 56%. Additionally, the delivery of the benefits increased deforestation in the grids where the beneficiaries were located and in the neighboring zone between 15 and 13, respectively.
These results are similar to what has been found as a consequence of viral spraying, in terms of the balloon effect. Additionally, in the original design, the program didn’t consider environmental or ethnic documents not to verify where many beneficiaries of the program were located. For example, 13,000 households were in national parks and forest reserves, and the program promised to these people agricultural and cattle ranching projects. But after verifying their location 2 or 3 years later, the state could not sustain their promises because they do not have cattle ranches or agricultural producing national parks.
Alternative development results are limited in terms of efficiency to reduce illicit crop production, and also cause harm due to some characteristics of the program design. The policies that intended to improve the livelihoods of coca families can have perverse and unintended effects, like a disproportionate increase in security risk for social leaders and environmental capital loss.
If the policies are limited to an agricultural approach, the territorial intervention should foresee perverse incentives and unintended effects. This implies that the design should have an adjusted prevention approach aligned with the social environmental condition of the characters in this land. However, it is necessary to insist on the limitations of alternative development strategies, as they will not reach the goal of eliminating coca and cocaine production.
Luis Felipe Cruz Olivera – Dejusticia / Colombia:
According to the interventions that preceded me, today we need to adapt drug policies not only to a human rights approach in general but also with discussion on the right to a healthy environment. Here, I need to mention the UN human rights council resolution that recognizes the right to a clean, healthy and sustainable environment as a human right.
Because beyond the environment and climate change, the existence of a right implies the State obligation to protect the populations that have challenges to enjoy a healthy environment, or who are affected by environmental policies. And the talk about the post “war on drugs” world is also relevant where consequences of drug policy have to be measured even in regulated scenarios. The connection between the environment and drug policy is not limited to glyphosate aerial spraying.
This context should prompt us to re-think the way we design and implement drug policy strategies. This entails coordinating efforts and actions at two levels: within the policies promoted by the United Nations system, and at the level of cooperation that extends to countries in the global South, where strategic ecosystems and climate change mitigation and adaptation actions are concentrated.
UN system can no longer turn a blind eye to calls for drug policy reform and this includes a mandate to align drug policy, climate change policy and the protection of the right to a healthy environment within the UN agencies. This includes: system common position in support of the implementation of international drug control policy, the OHCHR report and the general comment form CESCR process.
The OHCHR report outlines 7 key challenges today, including the emerging challenge that drug law enforcement measures pose to the enjoyment of the right to a clean and healthy environment as a universal human right. In accordance with the UN human rights council. Drug policy can no longer ignore the fact that the populations where the war on drugs is being implemented are also those whose right to a healthy environment has been most affected. Whether due to a lack of water or access to other resources, or due to the action of eradication strategies as glyphosate airspraying.
The maintenance of life and the presence of rural populations who grow coca in these remote areas are consequences of the countries’ development model. This highlights the intersection between the cooperation agenda of protecting the Colombian Amazon and alternative development projects.
The fundamental issue is how to balance the necessity for coca-peasant populations to live in decent conditions in their own territories without harming the environment. I ask: Can the solution be framed in terms of the right to a healthy environment? his perspective prompts us to pursue alternative purposes: I believe the focus should be on alternative development without the goal of reducing coca.