Colombia registers historical maximums of coca leaf crops and cocaine production in 2021

Two all-time highs. Last year in Colombia may be remembered for the records of the area planted with coca in the country and also of the potential production of cocaine.

According to the Integrated Illicit Crop Monitoring System (SIMCI) of the United Nations Office on Drugs and Crime (UNODC), the Latin American country had an increase of 43% in the area planted with coca in its territory, going from 143,000 hectares in 2020 to 204,000 hectares in 2021. This constitutes a setback compared to the last three years, when a reduction in the growth trend had been presented.

At the same time, the last year of the Government of Iván Duque was marked by the increase in the potential production of cocaine hydrochloride, which went from 1,228 tons in 2020 to 1,400 in 2022.

The UN report called “Monitoring of territories affected by illicit crops 2021” gives more details about the causes and location of this increase.

Several data set off the alarms of the new president, the leftist Gustavo Petro.

The text indicates that 62% of the crops are found in only three of the country’s departments: Nariño, Norte de Santander and Putumayo.

In addition, it shows that 45% of these are in 10 of the Colombian municipalities. And he emphasizes that 52% of the crops are found in special management areas, that is, in National Natural Parks, forest reserves, Indigenous Reservations and Lands of the Black Communities.

Why was the increase presented?

The increase in crops in Colombia cannot be explained by just one reason, it is rather a multifactorial result. According to the UN, there are short-term and long-term causes, as well as structural aspects.

There are three short-term factors found by the UN: the reduction of intervention, the positioning of new criminal groups and the deterioration of conditions due to the pandemic. These are elements that can be compared with measures carried out in the years in which there was a reduction (2017-2020), such as sustained intervention or the drive for voluntary eradication.

However, the report points out that there are factors that transcend the short term, that is, the last four years, and that are significant when it comes to explaining crop growth. In this case, the UN points out three others: the changes in territorial control, the greater supply and the tendency towards the concentration of the enclaves.

According to the organization, one of the aspects that was generated due, in part, to the non-compliance with the Peace Agreements between the extinct FARC guerrilla and the Colombian State, is precisely that the control of the territories with the largest coca crops left to be hegemonic. It went from three groups to about sixty in 2021.

For Luis Eduardo Celis, advisor to the Peace and Reconciliation Foundation (Pares), this is basically explained by the inability of the Colombian State to generate territorial control in these parts of the country.

“For me, all this complexity must be simplified in the control of the territory, if you do not have control of the territory, you have nothing. If people are at the mercy of the illegals, it will be a permanent cycle of failures”, says Celis.

These actors are also diverse, ranging from illegal armed groups to drug traffickers and producers.

But such a factor is far from the only long-term explanation for the increase in crops. Another relevant aspect has to do with the existence of greater supply and demand for coca in many nearby population centers “which are accessed and enjoyed by the residents involved in the drug trafficking chain.”

On the other hand, the UN points to increasingly productive enclaves. The term “enclave” refers to those places in which there is a greater concentration of hectares of coca per square kilometer, some territories in which these crops have remained for more than four years and also where there is a presence of all the links of the production chain, among other factors.

The report shows that it is in the enclaves where 41% of the coca crops are found.

At the same time, there are structural factors in the macro dynamics both at the national and international levels that favor crop growth. This time, the UN pointed out five: the expectations derived from the peace agreements, the persistence of territorial vulnerability, the increase in global demand, the increase in illegal drug trafficking actors and greater incentives for the production of cocaine.

The failed prohibitionist policy of the Duque Government

The data from the UN report indicates that the change in direction of the policy against drugs in the mandate of Iván Duque failed. The former president sought to prioritize forced eradication and unsuccessfully defended glyphosate spraying.

At the presentation of the report, Candice Welsch, UNODC regional director for the Andean Region and the Southern Cone, assured that the intervention of forced eradication was effective only in one period of the mandate. But that there are “difficulties in sustaining this type of mechanism and the lack of complementary measures that manage to change the conditions of vulnerability.”

For his part, Celis assures that “this policy of persecuting the coca leaf is a constant coming and going. As long as people don’t have alternatives, coca is going to be an alternative for people.”

And it goes further: “There is still a prohibitionist framework that makes it enormously profitable. As long as the prohibitionist policy exists, profitability is enormous, because consumption does not decrease, on the contrary, it is increasing”.

For many, one of the most affected was the voluntary substitution of illicit crops, which seeks not only to reduce cultivation, but also “to promote projects to help overcome the conditions of poverty and marginalization of families and their livelihood from illicit crops. “.

Geography of coca crops in Colombia

Colombia is the largest producer of coca worldwide, but within its territory borders are marked within which there is a greater or lesser presence of crops. Likewise, these speak of the lack of opportunities in some parts of the territory and the asymmetries that continue to be present in the country between the center and certain peripheral areas.

In fact, the report shows that coca crops continue to be located in the same territories with vulnerable conditions.

In addition, it shows that the vast majority of municipalities are not directly affected by these crops. “Of the 1,122 municipalities, 181 are affected by coca, and only 12 contain half of the coca,” the report shows.

The municipality of Tibú, in the northeast of the country, ranks first with nearly 22,000 hectares.

Another relevant aspect is that 12 of the 14 enclaves are located in border departments or with direct access to the sea. This would speak of the fact that “the concentration and permanence of coca crops can be explained by a functional geographic relationship to trafficking.”

The UN recommendations

The UN report makes a series of interventions and territorial strategies that could help reduce coca cultivation in the country for the coming years.

One of these is the promotion of interventions where coca cultivation “tends to be abandoned”, such as in the “Middle Magdalena and Western Boyacá subregion” and eight other departments that have less than ten thousand hectares. According to the agency, “this type of strategy could be implemented to ensure elimination in a sustainable way.”

At the same time, considering the figures on coca crops in special zones, the report recommends “working with indigenous peoples and Afro-descendant communities in understanding the differentiated impacts caused by the drug problem from an ethnic and human rights approach.” ”.

It also points out the need to develop different components such as supply control, rural development, security, investment in infrastructure and services, and in “monitoring the socioeconomic conditions of the implementation and the successful impact of interventions.” All these would be bases to form long-term strategies.

On the other hand, it reiterates the need for an inter-institutional articulation that encompasses national and international, local and national, public and private actors.

A new approach loaded with expectations

From his campaign promises, to his inaugural speech and his first speech at the United Nations General Assembly; Petro has been emphatic about the need to change anti-drug policy.

In delivering the report, the Colombian Minister of Justice, Néstor Osuna, reaffirmed this commitment. “The anti-drug policy of the National Government goes in another direction, it goes towards aspects of pacification of the territory, non-criminal treatment of coca leaf growers, crop substitution and promotion on the international agenda of the need for a change in drug policy. drugs,” he said.

At the same time, Petro has indicated that he must come to an end to the war on drugs and has asked the countries that consume the most to generate public health policies.

For Celis, there are three points in which the new president has already shown the change of approach. “One is rural development, compliance with the Peace Agreement, point one (agrarian reform),” he says.

In addition, there is the promotion of an international discussion around the new policy. “Everything seems to indicate that the president wants to win over the region, Latin America and the Caribbean, for that debate.”

And at the same time, a national public health approach. A look that encompasses consumption from another perspective.

With EFE and local media