Coca eradication may harm Colombia's environment

World Watch, March, 2002 by Curtis Runyan

The World Wildlife Fund (WWF) has requested that the U.S. State Department halt its massive effort to eradicate illicit Colombian coca crops through aerial spraying of herbicides, which the group says "pose potentially serious risks to human and ecosystems health." Past eradication efforts have failed to reduce coca output, and instead have driven farmers to clear additional rainforest for farmland: Colombia's 1994 planting of 40,000 hectares of coca had grown to 136,000 hectares as of 2000 despite the interim spraying of nearly 2 million liters of herbicide.

In April 2000, the United States started Plan Colombia, a $1.3 billion initiative that aims to undermine Colombian coca growing by 2005. The U.S. plan pays largely for military-backed aerial fumigation, setting aside just $81 million to help farmers shift to legal crops.

WWF Vice President William Eichbaum in November 2001 wrote to U.S. lawmakers requesting closer environmental investigation of the effects of spraying the Monsanto herbicide glyphosate in massive quantities in "one of the most biologically rich places on the planet." More emphasis should be given to assistance to help farmers switch crops, says Eichbaum, because "aerial fumigation may cause even further human misery and environmental degradation as communities lose food crops and are forced to retreat further into previously uncultivated areas."

In a recent State Department report, officials stressed that glyphosate is "one of the least harmful herbicides in the world" that kills only emergent plants and is quickly broken down when it comes into contact with soil. But environmentalists warn that the manufacturer does not recommend aerial application of its herbicide and cautions against exposing people, water, and desirable plants and trees--now commonplace occurrences in Colombia, where the spraying has exposed farmers, cattle, legitimate crops, drinking water, and entire rainforest watersheds.