Seeing a 200-horsepower drug-trafficking boat in rural Central American communities would be the equivalent of finding a Lamborghini in the Selway Bitterrot Wilderness, according to Erik Nielsen, assistant professor in the School of Earth Sciences and Environmental Sustainability at Northern Arizona University, and one of the researchers behind the recently published article “Drug Policy as Conservation Policy: Narco-Deforestation.”
Nielsen and Spencer Plumb, a University of Idaho doctoral student in Conservation Social Science, are part of a research team that went into Central America to research the clearing of rainforests — the results of which were unexpected.
“I did my master’s work in Honduras, and so I was looking at what was driving deforestation and ways that you can create local governance that help slow deforestation,” Plumb said. “So, putting control of lands back in local people’s hands and indigenous communities. And while I was down there doing that research, we noticed that one of the things that looked like it was driving a lot of the deforestation was drug trafficking.”
Plumb said the team saw large patches of deforestation that would be difficult for the local community to accomplish. That type of deforestation would require a lot of money and time, Plumb said. “Narco-deforestation” is a term the team coined to specifically describe the cause of the deforestation they saw: the effects of narcotic drug traffickers moving into those rural areas.
“Fundamentally what we’re talking about is deforestation in Central America — so the countries of Guatemala down through what we’re really talking about is Nicaragua, Honduras and Guatemala — that is either directly or indirectly being driven by multiple activities by narco-traffickers,” Nielsen said. “You start seeing evidence of the drug culture and the drug money and then we start asking what’s causing this deforestation and everyone’s saying ‘los narcos,’ the drug traffickers.”
Plumb said when his team went to Central America, they did not know drug trafficking was a cause of deforestation.
“We didn’t know that (deforestation) would be occurring at the rate that we were seeing it,” Plumb said. “We knew that it was an issue and something that might be able to be addressed through some of the carbon programs that are being set up sort of internationally. So we thought it would be an interesting study to see how we might use a carbon program to fund local forest governance — that was more the focus — but we had no idea that drug trafficking was behind some of it. And certainly it’s not the only driver, but it’s a contributing factor.”
Nielsen said they talked about the three main ways that narco-trafficking is leading to deforestation in the article.
The first is the clearing for runways and roads, so traffickers can land planes from South America in the rainforest. The second is the overall corrupting influences of narco-traffickers, and the third is the laundering of money by the traffickers by converting the rainforests into cattle pasture, Nielsen said.
“And what’s really important is the narco-traffickers are there because U.S. drug policy is chasing them, you know, from Mexico into Guatemala, from Guatemala to Honduras,” Nielsen said. “So wherever we sort of push or chase the trafficking activities, they’re going more and more remote out into these frontier rainforests. And you know, with this consequence of narco-deforestation.”
Plumb said it’s important to continue a discussion about drug intervention policies because of the social, environmental and economic costs of the drug trafficking issues.
“The (system) we have in place has significant costs, and we need to be aware of those costs in order to make an informed decision about how to best address this situation,” Plumb said. ” … So we need to think strategically about what that policy should look like and consider working within the communities that are most affected. I think that’s one thing that we can say is that involving local communities, and not just having strike forces or whatever come in and interdict. But working with people on the ground, being careful not to put them in harm’s way, you know, involving communities is the key step.”
Nielsen said that in the article they write about the need to rethink drug policy. The status quo with drug policy is a focus on outlawing and eradicating coca in the cocaine producing regions of the world, Nielsen said. However, he said this strategy is not acceptable for the Latin American countries involved.
“So they were exploring what are the alternatives. So things like trying to reduce demand in Europe and the United States,” Nielsen said “How we do that, I’m not exactly sure, that’s not really an area of specialty. But focusing on more of the demand side than the supply side is kind of a major theme in the world of drug policy right now.”
The article written by Nielsen and Plumb is available on the University of Idaho library website.
Amber Evans Pinel can be reached at [email protected]
