TY - JOUR
T1 - Narco-degradation
T2 - Cocaine trafficking's environmental impacts in Central America's protected areas
AU - Devine, Jennifer A.
AU - Wrathall, David
AU - Aguilar-González, Bernardo
AU - Benessaiah, Karina
AU - Tellman, Beth
AU - Ghaffari, Zahra
AU - Ponstingel, Daria
N1 - Funding Information:
The authors would like to thank the research participants for sharing their experiences with us and for their daily labor conserving Central America’s protected areas, biodiversity, and natural resources. We would also like to thank the members of the Landscapes in Transition – Central America (LITCA) research group for the years of collaboration and conversations that inform this analysis which were supported in part by the National Socio-Environmental Synthesis Center under funding received from the National Science Foundation Grant DBI-1052875. Lastly, we are grateful for the funding that enabled this field research provided by the Future Earth PEGASUS program, grant number 1555596.
Publisher Copyright:
© 2021 Elsevier Ltd
PY - 2021/8
Y1 - 2021/8
N2 - Central America exemplifies a dynamic unfolding around the world where transnational illicit economies are driving land use change. Despite an extensive network of protected areas, Central America has one of the highest deforestation rates in the world in the past 20 years. Some of this forest loss is due to the international cocaine trade, as drug trafficking organizations launder money into extractive economies and seek to control territories along their supply chain. While research documents land change from narcotrafficking in transit nodes, or narco-deforestation (e.g. Sesnie et al., 2017), less research exists examining other environmental impacts near cocaine transit nodes in protected areas and biodiversity hotspots, which we term “narco-degradation.” We conducted i) interviews and participatory mapping exercises with 65 actors working in protected areas in Guatemala, Honduras and Costa Rica and ii) 11 workshops with 76 protected areas managers to understand and document spatial concentration of different types of narco-degradation. Coded interviews and maps yield 500 narco-degradation activities occurring between 2000 and 2018. Our analysis reveals that narco-trafficking affects multiple ecosystems, not only forests, and that variations in narco-degradation types and intensities reflect differences in the three nodes’ transportation practices (air, land, maritime), their age and activity levels (emerging nodes, hotspots, and declining nodes), and their physical geography. In all three protected areas, narco-trafficking accelerates the conversion of natural resources into commodities (such as land, lumber, minerals, and fauna), their extraction, and entry into legal and illegal markets. We conclude by arguing that narco-degradation negatively and disproportionately impacts the livelihoods and governance structures of Indigenous and peasant communities living in and around Central America's protected areas. These insights contribute an integrated socio-ecological analysis of the role of narco-capital and cocaine trafficking's contribution to illicit global environmental change.
AB - Central America exemplifies a dynamic unfolding around the world where transnational illicit economies are driving land use change. Despite an extensive network of protected areas, Central America has one of the highest deforestation rates in the world in the past 20 years. Some of this forest loss is due to the international cocaine trade, as drug trafficking organizations launder money into extractive economies and seek to control territories along their supply chain. While research documents land change from narcotrafficking in transit nodes, or narco-deforestation (e.g. Sesnie et al., 2017), less research exists examining other environmental impacts near cocaine transit nodes in protected areas and biodiversity hotspots, which we term “narco-degradation.” We conducted i) interviews and participatory mapping exercises with 65 actors working in protected areas in Guatemala, Honduras and Costa Rica and ii) 11 workshops with 76 protected areas managers to understand and document spatial concentration of different types of narco-degradation. Coded interviews and maps yield 500 narco-degradation activities occurring between 2000 and 2018. Our analysis reveals that narco-trafficking affects multiple ecosystems, not only forests, and that variations in narco-degradation types and intensities reflect differences in the three nodes’ transportation practices (air, land, maritime), their age and activity levels (emerging nodes, hotspots, and declining nodes), and their physical geography. In all three protected areas, narco-trafficking accelerates the conversion of natural resources into commodities (such as land, lumber, minerals, and fauna), their extraction, and entry into legal and illegal markets. We conclude by arguing that narco-degradation negatively and disproportionately impacts the livelihoods and governance structures of Indigenous and peasant communities living in and around Central America's protected areas. These insights contribute an integrated socio-ecological analysis of the role of narco-capital and cocaine trafficking's contribution to illicit global environmental change.
KW - Conservation
KW - Drug trafficking
KW - Environmental degradation
KW - Global environmental change
KW - Protected areas
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U2 - 10.1016/j.worlddev.2021.105474
DO - 10.1016/j.worlddev.2021.105474
M3 - Article
AN - SCOPUS:85104151649
SN - 0305-750X
VL - 144
JO - World Development
JF - World Development
M1 - 105474
ER -