Chemical Reactions: Fumigation’s Consequences in Colombia and Implications for Afghanistan

Please join us for this special event featuring Yamile Salinas Abdala of the Fundación INDEPAZ (Institute for Development and Peace Studies) in Bogotá, Colombia and William Byrd, Poverty Reduction and Economic Management Advisor at The World Bank. Despite intensified aerial herbicide spraying in recent years, coca growing and cocaine production in Colombia remain robust. Indeed, by jeopardizing rural families’ food crops, fumigation has reinforced farmers’ reliance on coca and prompted migration to new areas, spreading the ecological destruction that coca growing entails. Notwithstanding fumigation’s poor results in Colombia, the U.S. government has been pressing Afghanistan to undertake aerial spraying in the face of surging opium poppy cultivation. We will have a timely discussion of the impacts of fumigation in Colombia, the potential implications of adopting a similar approach in Afghanistan, and proposals for alternative drug control strategies in both countries. Yamile Salinas Abdala, a legal expert on environmental and human rights issues, is a consultant to Colombia’s comptroller general (Procuraduría General de la Nación) and to the non-governmental Institute for Peace Studies (Instituto de Estudios para la Paz, INDEPAZ). She has worked for Colombia’s environment ministry (Ministerio del Medio Ambiente, 1998-1999) and for the human rights ombudsman (Defensoría del Pueblo, 2000-2003), and has served as a consultant to the Inter-American Development Bank and the United Nations Development Program. She is co-author of WOLA’s new report, Chemical Reactions – Fumigation: Spreading Coca and Threatening Colombia’s Ecological and Cultural Diversity, at www.wola.org/media/WOLA%20Chemical%20Reactions%20February%202008.pdf William Byrd is currently serving in the World Bank Headquarters in Washington, DC, as Advisor in the Poverty Reduction and Economic Management Unit of the South Asia Region. Until recently he was the Bank’s Senior Economic Adviser based in Kabul, Afghanistan. He has been responsible for helping develop the World Bank’s strategy for support to Afghanistan’s reconstruction effort and was responsible for establishing the World Bank's office in Kabul. He led the team that produced the first World Bank economic report on Afghanistan in a quarter-century. He is co-author of a recent report from the World Bank and the UK’s Department for International Development, Afghanistan: Economic Incentives and Development Initiatives to Reduce Opium Production, at www.worldbank.org.af Ms. Salinas’ remarks will be in Spanish, with interpretation into English available. Please RSVP by April 3 to Rachel Robb at rrobb@wola.org.