COLUMN ONE
Drug Crops Ravaging Colombia
In their hunger to expand poppy and coca fields, narcotics producers are
wreaking havoc on the environment. Coffee farms and the watergiving cloud
forest are among the victims.
By JUANITA DARLING, Times Staff Writer
 
AN JORGE DE LAS HERMOSAS, ColombiaIn the mountains of central
Colombia, where the coffee bushes meet the clouds, this country's
most famous legal export is dying of thirst. Coffee farmers complain
that, for four years, the soil here has gotten progressively drier
and that it rains less and less often, leaving their bushes parched
and unproductive.      The mystery of the climate change clears up
along with the morning mist: The uncovered peaks are a blaze of red
and purple flowers bordered by the brown dirt of fields that opium
poppy farmers have already harvested. Only a few of the mountaintops
still have their olivecolored natural cover.      The effect on the
eyes is a crazy quilt of colors. The effect on the environment is a
disaster.      The scattered dark green patches are all that is left
of the cloud forest of lichenladen trees that trap the fog and
condense it into water for the plants downhill. By cutting down the
watergiving cloud forest to cash in on Colombia's emerging illegal
exportheroinpoppy producers have toppled the delicate balance
needed to grow Colombian coffee.      Coffee farmers herelike
banana growers in Santa Marta on the northern coast and fishermen
along the Inirida River near the Brazilian borderare learning that
the damage from illegal drugs extends beyond political corruption and
violence. Narcotics producers are wreaking environmental havoc,
destroying the livelihoods of lawabiding Colombians today while
stealing the inheritance of future generations, experts warn.
     "The war against illegal drugs would be completely justified on
environmental grounds alone," said Hector Moreno, director of PLANTE,
a government program to develop alternative crops for coca and poppy
farmers.      Illegal drugs have accelerated both the pace and scope
of the destruction of Colombia's rich, diverse environment.
Largescale narcotics producers are beyond the law, respecting
neither nature reserves nor prohibitions on highly toxic chemicals
nor restrictions to prevent erosion. By changing the climate and
poisoning the rivers, drug lords have forced Colombians to abandon
legal occupations and enter their illegal industry.      Few experts
have studied the environmental havoc related to drug production
because illegal crops are grown mainly in guerrillacontrolled
jungles and mountains, making research difficult and dangerous.
     And because the consequences of drug production for legal crops
like coffee and bananaseffects such as climate changes and
environmental shiftsare fairly recent and are measured over longer
time periods, most of the evidence of damage now is anecdotal and
nearly impossible to quantify.      But those who have done studies,
such as Luis Eduardo Parra, who heads the Colombian government's
Environmental Audit of Illegal Crop Eradication, have concluded that
"Colombia's environment is seriously threatened. In itself, that
might not be important. But what is important is that we are a
genetic bank for the world.      "Colombia is considered one of the
seven countries with megadiversity," a huge richness in plant and
animal species, Parra said. Ranked by number of species in relation
to the size of the country, he said, Colombia comes in fourth after
Brazil, Madagascar and Suriname.      Species that are being lost to
poppy and coca production might eventually be needed for medicine or
to end a plague, experts warn.      Mountains and Jungles Imperiled
     Because cocathe leaf used to make cocainegrows at about sea
level in the jungle and poppies grow in the mountains above 6,000
feet, illegal crops threaten two environments.      In five years,
growers of coca bushes have destroyed a portion of the Amazon rain
forest equivalent to twice the area of Los Angeles. In just four
years, poppy farmers have cut down a cloud forest bigger than New
York City.      "These Andean woods are our real water factory,"
Moreno said, referring to the South American cloud forest. "Because
of the steepness of the mountains, poppy cultivation has generated
irreversible problems of erosion."      Growers clear the land to
plant poppies, leaving no plants that will hold soil during rains.
Erosion caused by poppy cultivation has produced landslides in
Chaparral, just down the road from here, Parra said. The growers also
leave none of the lichencovered trees that collect moisture from the
clouds like natural sponges. That water runs down the trunks and
collects to form streams.      "When you cut down the trees, you
change the climate," Parra said. "Coffee growers are going to end up
without their water resources, neither streams nor rain."      The
banana growers near Santa Marta in the northern province of Magdalena
are facing the same problem, according to U.S. Embassy research. So
much of the forest in the Sierra Nevada of Santa Marta has been
destroyed for poppy production that rain has decreased, adversely
affecting banana production, although exact figures are not
available, the embassy reports. That's because without trees, there
is less precipitation.      At lower altitudes, nearly onethird of
the Colombian jungle cleared each year is slashed and burned to make
way for coca bushes, Parra said.      For every acre of coca bushes
planted, he estimated, growers burn away four acres of jungle,
because the fire is uncontrolled and destroys a larger area than they
can farm. Plants that survive the fire then are killed by
cultivators' chemicals. The growers know that coca bushes, like
poppies, will not produce to their maximum if other plants nearby are
competing for nutrients.      Parra reached behind his desk and
pulled out an empty gallon jug labeled "paraquat"a herbicide so
toxic it is banned in the United Statesthat he found in the
cocaproducing town of Miraflores on the Vaupes River in southern
Colombia. An estimated 200,000 gallons of such harmful substances are
poured into Colombia's soil each year to clear the ground for coca
bushes, PLANTE's Moreno said.      He emphasized that most of the
damage is not done by small coca farmers like Celina Martinez and her
husband, Felix. They plant a few coca bushes along with their corn
and yucca on the Guayabero River that flows through San Jose del
Guaviare, the capital of a notorious cocaproducing province. But
hidden behind those small farms, protected by guerrillas and financed
by drug traffickers, lie thousands of acres of coca plantations that
are destroying the Colombian Amazon, he said.      To produce
Colombia's 45,000ton annual coca leaf crop, growers use 17.6 tons of
fertilizer and 100,000 gallons of bugkilling poison, Moreno said.
"They have no concept of ecology, much less technical assistance to
cushion the effects" of the chemicals, he noted. "They use
exaggerated doses to get a higher yield."      The chemicals are
usually applied in the region's intense heat by barefoot peasants
wearing little clothingand, thus, receiving little protection
themselves from the toxins.      Health officials have no statistics
on chemicalpoisoning cases linked to narcotics cultivation. They
note, however, that they are unlikely to see such reports because the
peasants are involved in an illegal activity and would not seek help
at government clinics; there also are few if any such facilities in
the jungle areas where drug crops are grown.      Chemicals Are
Polluting Rivers      Meantime, authorities note that the drug trade
creates another ecological woe: To process coca leaves into the paste
they sell to drug traffickers, growers use outdoor "laboratories"
that mix the leaves with 55,115 pounds of cement, 25,000 gallons of
gasoline and 15,000 gallons of sulfuric acid. About a ton of
chemicals is needed to process the leaves from each acre of coca
bushes, Parra estimated.      Parra has seen containers of the
oilbased chemicals used to make paste stored floating in rivers.
"Can you imagine how many spills there are?" he asked. After the
paste is made, the waste is dumped into the nearest river, he said.
     As a result, fishermen along the Inirida River that runs through
the cocaproducing provinces of Guaviare and Guainia have told Parra
that they can no longer make a living.      "In one day of fishing,
they used to catch about 660 pounds of fish a yard long," Parra said.
"That was their production 10 years ago. Recently, they have not
caught more than 100 pounds in a day."      So now the fishermen buy
their fish and work for the coca farmers, picking leaves or mixing
chemicals to make paste. "They have stopped fishing because now there
is nothing to fish," he said.      After coca farmers abandon
fieldsbecause the delicate soil plays out in a few years of
intensive cultivationand move deeper into the jungle, cattle
ranchers take over the land, which is now fit only for pasture, Parra
said.      This means that an ecological system that once nourished
as many as 300 species of trees on two acresalong with a diversity
of other plants and animalshas been destroyed.      The government
can do little to stop the devastation from illegal crops; it does not
control the areas where opium poppies and coca bushes grow. Most coca
production takes place in the provinces that are, theoretically,
nature reserves. In reality, however, these areas are guerrilla
territory. Insurgents decide which people and chemicals enter their
region; regulation is, for all practical purposes, impossible.
     The only effective form of controland that is mostly a bid to
halt cocaine production rather than a response to environmental
concernshas been posting soldiers on the main rivers into
cocagrowing areas to block the entry of gasoline and cement. Even
then, growers smuggle the chemicals through the jungle borders with
Ecuador, Venezuela, Peru and Brazil.      Growers Blame Government
Spraying      In their defense, coca farmers contend that government
spraying programs aimed at destroying illegal crops are to blame for
most of the environmental damage in drug production areas.
     Authorities dispute that claim, saying that glifosate, the
chemical used in aerial spraying, is safe and widely used. It is,
they say, acceptable even in the United States, which has stringent
herbicide standards. "We are not going to ask the Colombians to use
anything that is not used in the United States," U.S. Ambassador
Myles Frechette said, defending glifosate's use.      That
chemicalwhich is a component of a commercially available garden
weedkiller in the United Stateshas proved unpopular in Colombia. A
former defense minister who authorized spraying to kill illegal crops
once even dumped a bucket of it over his head in front of TV cameras
in an attempt to demonstrate its safety.      "People think that
glifosate is the Great Satan," Moreno noted. "But no one ever
contrasts it with the destruction caused by illegal crop production."
     Colombians allow drug producers to destroy their environment,
Parra said, "because we have not yet achieved a sense of national
ownership of our natural resources."      But an increasing number of
Colombians is realizing the farreaching implications of the
devastation caused by narcoharvests, he said: "For us, putting an
end to illegal crops is urgent. We are not willing to keep on losing
our future." Copyright Los Angeles Times