Building resilience to opium poppy cultivation by strengthening the design of alternative development interventions: evidence from Afghanistan

Decomposition as Life Politics: Soils, Selva, and Small Farmers under the Gun of the U.S.–Colombia War on Drugs

Cultural Anthropology ◽

10.14506/ca31.1.04 ◽

2015 ◽

Vol 31 (1) ◽

pp. 56-81 ◽

Cited By ~ 58

Author(s):

Kristina Marie Lyons

Keyword(s):

Forest Ecology ◽

War On Drugs ◽

Small Farmers ◽

Alternative Development ◽

Regenerative Capacity ◽

Life And Death ◽

Development Interventions ◽

Central Elements ◽

Tropical Forest Ecology ◽

The U.S

How is life in a criminalized ecology in the Andean-Amazonian foothills of southwestern Colombia? In what way does antinarcotics policy that aims to eradicate la mata que mata (the plant that kills) pursue peace through poison? Relatedly, how do people keep on cultivating a garden, caring for forest, or growing food when at any moment a crop-duster plane may pass overhead, indiscriminately spraying herbicides over entire landscapes? Since 2000, the U.S.–Colombian War on Drugs has relied on the militarized aerial fumigation of coca plants, coupled with alternative development interventions that aim to forcibly eradicate illicit livelihoods. Through ethnographic engagement with small farmers in the frontier department of Putumayo, the gateway to the country’s Amazon and a region that has been the focus of counternarcotic operations, this article explores the different possibilities and foreclosures for life and death that emerge in a tropical forest ecology under military duress. By following farmers, their material practices, and their life philosophies, I trace the ways in which human-soil relations come to potentiate forms of resistance to the violence and criminalization produced by militarized, growth-oriented development. Rather than productivity—one of the central elements of modern capitalist growth—the regenerative capacity of these ecologies relies on organic decay, impermanence, decomposition, and even fragility that complicates modernist bifurcations of living and dying, allowing, I argue, for ecological imaginaries and life processes that do not rely on productivity or growth to strive into existence.

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People, Land and Poppy: the Political Ecology of Opium and the Historical Impact of Alternative Development in Northwest Thailand

Forest and Society ◽

10.24259/fs.v1i1.1495 ◽

2017 ◽

Vol 1 (1) ◽

pp. 48 ◽

Cited By ~ 1

Author(s):

Bobby Anderson

Keyword(s):

Political Ecology ◽

Land Tenure ◽

Smallholder Farmers ◽

The State ◽

Opium Poppy ◽

Vested Interest ◽

High Yield ◽

Alternative Development ◽

Hill Tribe ◽

Development Programming

Thailand’s near-total elimination of opium poppy cultivation is attributed to “alternative development” programming, which replaces illicit crops with licit ones. However, opium poppy cultivation was not drastically reduced because substitute crops earned the same income as opium: nothing can equal the price of opium to smallholder farmers, especially those without land tenure. Thailand’s reduction in poppy cultivation was achieved by the increased presence and surveillance capability of state security actors, who, year by year, were able to locate and destroy fields, and arrest cultivators, with increasing accuracy. This coercion was also accompanied by benefits to cultivators, including the provision of health and education services and the extension of roads; both stick and carrot constituted the encroachment of the Thai state. The provision of citizenship to hill tribe members also gave them a vested interest in the state, through their ability to hold land, access health care, education and work opportunities, amongst others. These initiatives did not occur without costs to hill tribe cultures for whom a symbiotic relationship with the land was and remains disrupted. These findings indicate that alternative development programming unlinked to broader state-building initiatives in Afghanistan, Myanmar and other opium poppy-producing areas will fail, because short-term, high-yield, high value, imperishable opium will remain the most logical choice for poor farmers, especially given the lack of a farmer’s vested interest in the state which compels them to reduce their income whilst offering them no other protections or services.

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A Global Empirical Review of Drug Crop Eradication and United Nations' Crop Substitution and Alternative Development Strategies

Journal of Drug Issues ◽

10.1177/002204269802800207 ◽

1998 ◽

Vol 28 (2) ◽

pp. 395-436 ◽

Cited By ~ 17

Author(s):

Graham Farrell

Keyword(s):

United Nations ◽

International Law ◽

Socioeconomic Development ◽

Development Strategies ◽

Opium Poppy ◽

Alternative Development ◽

Development Policies ◽

Measure Of Performance ◽

Near Future ◽

Annual Risk

Under international law, the cultivation of opium poppy, coca bush, and cannabis plant is allowed only for limited medical and scientific purposes. All other cultivation of these plants is marked for removal via eradication or other means, and strategies to implement these laws are reviewed. Globally, the annual risk of eradication is consistently below 10% for each crop. Evidence regarding socioeconomic development policies is taken from over two decades of United Nations programs in 11 countries. Using any measure of performance, they have had little impact. Even with marginal revisions in their methodology, the likelihood of these policies achieving their aims in the near future seems minimal.

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