27 June 2008: According to a report issued last week by the United Nations Office on Drugs and Crime, coca cultivation is up 16% across the northern Andean region; 27% in Colombia, 5% in Bolivia, and 4% in Peru. The report comes as “a surprise and a shock”, according to Antonio Maria Costa, head of the UNODC, who went on to say that the findings are “a surprise because it comes at a time when the Colombian government is trying hard to eradicate coca: a shock because of the magnitude of cultivation.”

The Colombian government has rejected the report, denying that coca cultivation has increased. Oscar Naranjo, director of the Colombian Police, says the problem is that of measurement, citing discrepancies between the figures issued by the Colombian government and the United Nations. For example, in 2007 Colombian authorities claimed to have eradicated 220,000 hectares of coca, while the UN reported closer to 78,000.

Also, despite the reported increase in coca production, estimated cocaine production has remained relatively stagnant, with about 1,000 tons of cocaine being produced this year and last year. According the UNODC this is largely the result of lower yields due to the dispersal of coca crops as farmers try to avoid aerial fumigation.

If accurate, however, the report has important implications for current policy in Colombia, currently funded largely by the United States, which has already spent some $5 billion on a program emphasizing aerial spraying as well as military aid, often at the expense of development programs which could better help farmers switch to legitimate crops. Indeed widespread aerial fumigation as a means for coca eradication has received a great deal of criticism. 

“Forced eradication, including aerial spraying, only guarantees more replanting,” says John M. Walsh of the Washington Office on Latin America, a think-tank dedicated to policy analysis in the Americas, who believes the emphasis should be placed on programs which wean farmers of coca rather than eradication. “[F]or there to be progress beyond this plateau there needs to be an alternative livelihood.” The good news is that efforts at just such a solution are already underway, and not just in Colombia. 

Take for example the case of the Bolivian state of Chapare. In 1998 U.S. supported anti-drug forces began aggressively pursuing coca eradication there, reducing the crop from 120,000 acres to almost zero in only four years. Yet the program was an embarrassing failure, and what followed was a complete resurgence of coca cultivation in the absence of viable alternatives. A silver lining did emerge, however, thanks to Bolivian coffee grower and coffee “guru” for the Market Access and Poverty Alleviation (MAPA) program, Marcos Moreno, who has shown that Bolivian coca growers can switch to legal crops like coffee if weaned off coca slowly. Moreno explains that many crop substitution plans demand unrealistic returns from new crops. MAPA allows growers to continue growing coca for a few years while letting other crops, usually coffee, take hold. 

A similar program has had some success in Colombia as well. A project called Guardabosques, or Forest Warden Families, is encouraging a similar shift from illicit crops to legal enterprises. Funded by the UNODC and Colombia's Social Action agency the Gaurdobosques program offers roughly $100 dollars a month for 18 months to families who can prove they have a realistic plan to give up coca farming. The program is beginning to take hold, with thousands of families across Colombia jumping on board. In the words of Richard Velazquez, a former coca grower from the Sierra Nevada de Santa Marta who now runs an eco-lodge, "[w]e've had a very nice change of lifestyle, because we've gone from illegal work to legal work, and now we have peace in our hearts.”

Alternative development will not work alone, however, and despite the criticism often lent to the United States’ ardent military support for Colombia, gains are being made against the FARC, further undermining the cocaine trade.  Costas sees the gains against the FARC as instrumental in the battle against coca production. “[J]ust like in Afghanistan, where most opium is grown in provinces with a heavy Taliban presence, in Colombia most coca is grown in areas controlled by insurgents… In the future, with the Revolutionary Armed Forces of Colombia in disarray, it may become easier to control coca cultivation.”

Realistically, Colombia and her northern Andean neighbors can never fully expect to see an end to coca cultivation and cocaine production so long as Americans and Europeans clamber for the drug. Efforts to stem the tide of the drug trade are not completely futile however, and can markedly improve the lives of Andean people. In the words of Costas, “This underlines the need for all countries of the world to assume a shared responsibility for drug control: to reduce demand for cocaine focused on health), to reduce the supply of coca (by promoting development), and by stopping the flow of drug trafficking (through security and justice). The combination of these three factors will increase the long-term effectiveness of drug control, and bring greater peace, security, and prosperity to the Andean countries.”