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Coca and conservation: cultivation, eradication, and trafficking in the Amazon borderlands

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Abstract

The cultivation and traffic of coca, Erythrolxylum coca, and coca derivatives remain understudied threats to the conservation of the Amazon rainforest. Currently the crop is transforming land use and livelihoods in the ecologically and culturally rich borderlands of Amazonian Peru. The isolated nature of this region characterized by indigenous populations (both settled and uncontacted), conservation units, resource concessions, and a lack of state presence provides fertile ground for the boom and bust cycle of coca production and facilitates the international transport of the product to neighboring Brazil. This paper explores the social and environmental impacts of coca production, eradication, and transport through an analysis of both spatial and ethnographic data on land use and livelihood strategies along the Ucayali and Purús Rivers. Results map out the regional distribution and recent history of commercial coca fields and transboundary transportation routes and identify threats to the conservation of indigenous landscapes and borderland forests.

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Notes

  1. The term biocultural diversity is used to recognize the increasingly accepted interdependence between biodiversity conservation and indigenous landscapes (Maffi 2001; Nepstad et al. 2006; Nietschmann 1992; Posey 1999; Stevens and De Lacy 1997). This term’s underpinnings can be traced to the Geographer Barney Nietschmann’s Rule of Indigenous Environments: “Where there are indigenous peoples with a homeland, there are still biologically-rich environments” (Nietschmann 1992).

  2. Rivers and other place names are correctly identified in the text, but may be omitted from figures due to the sensitivity of the subject.

  3. Serra do Divisor and Sierra del Divisor mean the dividing mountain range in Portuguese and Spanish respectively with both the Brazilian and Peruvian protected areas covering half of the transboundary range.

  4. Uncontacted indigenous people, also called indigenous people in voluntary isolation, refers to indigenous people avoiding all contact with strangers, instead practicing the isolated hunting, gathering, and gardening based livelihoods they have practiced for centuries in the interfluvial zones of the most remote rainforests.

  5. 7,022 and 7,604 ha in 2003 and 2004, respectively. The remainder was part of a voluntary eradication program.

  6. While this estimate is extremely conservative it also does not incorporate production costs associated with weeding or harvesting at approximately 2.1 $ US a day during those work periods. This daily wage also usually includes breakfast and lunch for the laborer.

  7. Estimating the total worth of the coca production eradicated in the fields provides a window to the regional importance of coca cultivation to these borderlands. Since the coca plant does not reach full maturity until 18 months (Morales 1994), we estimate borderland production using only those fields of at least 2 years in 2004, or 3,183 hectares according to Table 1. To be conservative we deduct from this total the un-weeded coca fields eradicated in both 2003 and 2004 (1,660 hectares according to Table 1) to arrive at a total of 1,523 coca hectares with plants over 2 years old that are weeded or semi-weeded. Using the conservative UNODC estimate, 2004 annual production of sun dried coca leaf would be approximately 1,309,780 kg for these fields with an estimated worth of 3,667,384 US $ at the 2004 farm gate average price. However, this is just a fraction of the potential profits the narcotraficantes realize from these fields in coca paste or cocaine. Since UNODC data on the cocaine/leaf ratios is derived from oven dried rather than sun dried leaf estimates we must reduce the 1,309,780 kg of sun dried leaf by 70% to 916,846 kg of annual oven dried leaf. According to the UNODC, one kilogram of cocaine can be processed from 375 kg of oven dried leaf (United Nations Office on Drugs and Crime (UNODC) 2005b) allowing us to grossly estimate 2,445 kg of potential annual cocaine production from these borderland watersheds. This amount of cocaine would be worth approximately 53,988,045 $ US in the United States and 111,809,850 $ US in Europe at wholesale prices (United Nations Office on Drugs and Crime (UNODC) 2005e). Wholesale prices are of course just a fraction of the estimated street prices: 188,265,000 $ US in the United States and 215,160,000 $ US in Europe (United Nations Office on Drugs and Crime (UNODC) 2005e). Thus, although the coca leaf significantly improves the local farmer incomes, their potential earnings are less than 2% of the street value of the coca leaf product, cocaine.

  8. ENACO or the Empresa Nacional de la Coca S.A. was created in 1949 and is a state company authorized to commercialize coca leaf and its derivatives. www.enaco.com.pe.

  9. The reserved zone designation is a transitional category that could become a national park, communal reserve, or another definitive conservation category depending on the conservation threats and opportunities of various human and non-human stakeholders.

  10. The Amazon is not the only remote Latin American frontier to have demonstrated linkages between loggers and the drug trade. An example that also includes indigenous people is Shoumatoff’s (1997) description of the nexus of logging, poppy, and marijuana cultivation and the Tarahumara in the Sierra Madre Occidental of Mexico.

  11. While Fig. 6 shows data from an existing community, we use a pseudonym for this community in the figure given the sensitivity of the subject.

  12. The amount of chemical inputs per kilo of coca paste is impressive: roughly 1 kg of sodium carbonate, 5 kg of sulphuric acid, 7 gallons of kerosene, 8 kg of lime, and 115 kg of coca leaves (Morales 1994). At 640 $ US per kg this 11,400 kg of paste would be equal to 7,296,000 $ US.

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Acknowledgments

We gratefully acknowledge support from the Blue Moon Fund, ProNaturaleza, The Nature Conservancy, Fulbright-Hays, and the Universidad Nacional de Ucayali’s Centro de Investigación de Fronteras Amazónicas (CIFA). Thanks to Jorge W. Vela Alvarado and CIFA for field support, Jen Lipton and Bill Woods for their expertise and insight, and Greg Knapp, Ken Young, Karl Butzer, Bill Doolittle, Peter Dana and four anonymous reviewers for comments on earlier drafts of this article.

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  1. Department of Geography and the Environment, University of Richmond, 28 Westhampton Way, Richmond, VA, 23173, USA

    D. S. Salisbury

  2. Centro de Investigación de Fronteras Amazónicas, Universidad Nacional de Ucayali, Pucallpa, Peru

    D. S. Salisbury

  3. Upper Amazon Conservancy, 741 Avalanche Circle, Victor, ID, 83455, USA

    C. Fagan

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  1. D. S. Salisbury
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  2. C. Fagan
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Correspondence to D. S. Salisbury.

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Salisbury, D.S., Fagan, C. Coca and conservation: cultivation, eradication, and trafficking in the Amazon borderlands. GeoJournal 78, 41–60 (2013). https://doi.org/10.1007/s10708-011-9430-x

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  • DOI: https://doi.org/10.1007/s10708-011-9430-x

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