DRUGS-COLOMBIA - Aerial Spraying Remains Bone of Contention

<a href=www.oneworld.net>More Yadira Ferrer

BOGOTA, Mar 24 (IPS) - The Colombian government's decision to use a higher concentrate of the defoliant glyphosate in aerial spraying of coca crops has heightened the sense of alarm among environmentalists and local authorities, who complain of the effects that fumigation has had on human health and the environment.

They also point out that spraying merely forces many coca- growers to move to more remote areas in the jungle with little or no coca-planting tradition, where they carve out new fields on which to grow the illicit crop.

Colombian Minister of the Interior and Justice Fernando Londoño and police chief Teodoro Ocampo reported that the Environment Ministry had authorised an increase in the concentration of glyphosate -- a chemical defoliant produced by the U.S.-based Monsanto Corporation -- from eight to 10.4 litres per hectare.

The decision was based on reported findings that in some cases, the herbicide -- also known by its trade name Roundup -- served more as a fertiliser for native plant species than as a weedicide that destroyed coca.

Governors Floro Tunubalá of Cauca and Parmenio Cuéllar of Nariño, two departments or states in southern Colombia, have protested the use of more concentrated glyphosate, pointing out that they had received many complaints of skin and respiratory ailments from people living in areas that had been sprayed with the more diluted version.

The decision to increase the concentration of the herbicide is based on a U.S. State Department report according to which glyphosate does not pose a threat to human health.

But Cuéllar, the governor of Nariño, said ''It is not true that the fumigation is carried out with the chemicals that have been announced. These are much more toxic, and cause great harm to farmers and their subsistence crops.''

Since coca, which is used to produce cocaine, began to be sprayed here in the early 1990s, environmentalists have complained that the herbicide used also destroys subsistence crops, sickens domesticated animals, contaminates water supplies, and harms the flora and fauna of Colombia, a country rich in biodiversity.

In addition, they say, the herbicide, sprayed by the Colombian police and military from planes, often falls directly on indigenous peoples. Offices of the people's defender (ombudsman) around the country have received hundreds of complaints from peasant farmers of eye, respiratory, skin, and digestive problems, and of harm to legal crops, animals and water supplies.

People's Defender Eduardo Cifuentes told IPS that he had asked the constitutional court to annul the Environment Ministry's authorisation to increase the concentration of glyphosate.

Former president Andrés Pastrana (1998-2002) did not allow small coca plantations to be targetted by the spraying, in order to avoid antagonising peasant farmers in the midst of the touchy peace talks that his government was carrying out with the main guerrilla group.

But the talks broke off in February 2002, and when right-wing President Alvaro Uribe took office in August 2002, he launched a new phase of Plan Colombia, a largely U.S.-financed anti-drug strategy widely criticised by activists as a counterinsurgency offensive.

The new phase of Plan Colombia entailed much broader aerial spraying with glyphosate, even on coca farms of less than three hectares, which were previously included in the voluntary manual eradication programme in which farmers were given incentives to switch to legal crops.

According to the latest annual coca survey released on Mar. 17 by the United Nations Office on Drugs and Crime (UNODC) for Colombia and Ecuador, the land planted in the illicit crop in Colombia shrank from 144,807 hectareas in 2001 to 102,071 in 2002 -- a 30 percent reduction.

The results were partly due to expanded spraying by the Colombian government, especially in the southern departments of Putumayo and Caquetá, UNODC Colombia head Klaus Nyholm said in the report.

U.S. government statistics indicate that Putumayo and Caquetá produce around 60 percent of the coca leaves grown in this civil war-torn South American nation of 42 million, which has made the two departments the chief focus of Plan Colombia.

Nyholm said that another factor that may have contributed to the shrinking of the surface area planted in coca was a drop in prices, especially since the prices of farm products like cocoa beans and sugar rose at the same time, making coca less attractive.

To produce its annual coca survey, UNODC relies on the Integrated Illicit Crop Monitoring System (SIMCI), a joint venture set up in 1999 by the UN agency and the Colombian government. UNODC uses similar monitoring systems in Bolivia and Peru, which also produce coca, as well as in several opium poppy-growing countries in the Middle East and Asia.

The UNODC report also noted that between 2001 and 2002, coca- growing expanded slightly in Colombia's Amazon region, while new plantations were discovered in Venezuela and Ecuador, in areas along the Colombian border.

While the UN agency reported an overall drop in illegal crops in the Andean region, from a combined total of 210,000 hectares in 2001 to 172,000 hectares in 2002, the area planted in coca in Bolivia rose from 19,000 to 24,000 hectares, while falling only slightly in Peru, from 46,232 hectares in 2001 to 46,000 last year.

The case of Bolivia indicates the inconsistent way that Washington-dictated counter-drug policy has been implemented in that country, argued Ricardo Vargas, the Colombian representative of Acción Andina, a non-governmental organisation that studies the effects of the fight against drug trafficking on indigenous and peasant people in the Andean region.

Vargas told IPS that what has occurred in Bolivia demonstrated that ''getting one's hopes up over statistics is not recommended, because the numbers only reflect circumstantial effects.''

He pointed out that in 2000, ''the United States proclaimed the success of the forced eradication programme to which the peasants and indigenous people in Bolivia were subjected.''

As a result of forced eradication, coca production in Bolivia shrank from 48,000 to 14,000 hectares in 2000, before climbing again, to 19,900 hectares in 2001 and 24,000 in 2002, said Vargas.

He explained that indigenous people and peasant farmers in Bolivia were forced to take part in a crop substitution programme that replaced coca with seven legal products, such as bananas and pineapples.

But once the harvest was in, the farmers found there was no market for their new crops -- a situation that triggered a wave of protests and social discontent that nearly catapulted the leader of the coca-growers, lawmaker Evo Morales, to the presidency in last year's elections as the candidate for the Movement to Socialism. (END/2003)