In turn, the study noted that the figure for 2021 is the highest recorded by the UN since it began monitoring cocaine production in 2001.
While the largest buyers are the United States and Europe, something that was evidenced by different evidence collected and the increase in what is produced for those destinations, which went from 1,010 tons of cocaine to 1,400.
Nariño and Putumayo allocate almost 90 thousand hectares
Looking at the Colombian production map, the departments of Nariño and Putumayo, on the border with Ecuador, add up to 89,266 hectares and Catatumbo, neighboring Venezuela, follows on the list with 42,576.
62% of coca crops are concentrated in three departments (Nariño, Norte de Santander and Putumayo), 45% in just 10 municipalities and close to 50% in “special management zones”, in particular, on community lands. black and in forest reserve areas.
This increase is mainly due to the “territorial vulnerability”, “the increase in global demand” for the drug and the presence of armed actors who profit from this business, the UN pointed out.
The director of UNODOC, Candice Welsch, and the Minister of Justice, Néstor Osuna, assured that the President’s Government Gustavo Petro “will design and implement a drug policy that does not include the legalization of cocaine.”
“If we continue with the same thing that has been done in the last 10 or 20 years, the result will not change. If we want to reverse that figure, we have to do something different, something new. The roadmap is compliance with the peace agreement. There is an alternative crop substitution policy that cries out to be executed. This government wants to implement it and is absolutely committed to implementing it,” Osuna said.
For his part, Welsch assured that “Coca crops continue to threaten the cultural potential of the country and its biodiversity”.
“Nearly 50% are in special management areas; therefore, the creation of strategies focused on the country’s forestry, ecological and cultural potential will be essential to ensure the sustainability of future generations in these territories,” he assessed.
Source: Ambito
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