Pubdate: Thu, 14 Aug 2003
Source: Dallas Morning News (TX)
Copyright: 2003 The Dallas Morning News
Contact:  http://www.dallasnews.com/
Details: http://www.mapinc.org/media/117
Author: TOD ROBBERSON, The Dallas Morning News

COLOMBIA COULD BAN U.S. SPRAYING

Farmers, Activists Say Anti-Drug Effort Harmful To Citizens, Legal Crops

BUESACO, Colombia ­ With the fate of Washington's flagship anti-drug 
program hanging in the balance, a Colombian court is days away from 
deciding whether to ban the spraying of a U.S.-manufactured herbicide used 
to eradicate illicit drug crops.

The ruling by a judicial tribunal awaits only the submission of an 
environmental study due this month. Officials acknowledge the decision 
could force the United States and Colombia to halt the use of glyphosate, 
the only chemical herbicide approved for aerial eradication of drug crops 
here. Colombia is by far the largest supplier of the heroin and cocaine 
consumed in the United States. A ban on glyphosate, known by its U.S. brand 
name Roundup, would bring a large part of Washington's $2 billion anti-drug 
effort to a screeching halt and reverse progress in a 5-year-old effort to 
end the cultivation of plants that provide the base ingredients for cocaine 
and heroin.

But in Buesaco and hundreds of other towns across Colombia, peasant farmers 
have grown increasingly vocal in protesting the herbicide's use, charging 
that American-piloted crop dusters have mistakenly wiped out their legal 
crops and that glyphosate poses serious health risks to humans and farm 
animals. Their complaints coincide with efforts by constitutional and 
environmental activists to halt what they call the wanton destruction of 
the Colombian countryside with glyphosate.

The ban on glyphosate is pending before the Superior Administrative Court 
tribunal in Cundinamarca state, north of Bogota. In addition, the federal 
Constitutional Court in Bogota last April ordered the government to 
restrict herbicide spraying over Indian reservations, which compose about 
28 percent of Colombian territory.

Farmers' lawsuit Buesaco farmers, like others across the country, have 
filed their own lawsuit against the government that demands payment for 
losses they say they have suffered from glyphosate.

"The government claims that glyphosate doesn't harm human health or the 
environment. We know this is not true," said Jose Maria Moncayo, the mayor 
of Buesaco, in southwestern Colombia. "Our children started vomiting and 
developed skin rashes as soon as the spraying began. Our cattle developed 
respiratory infections, then started dying."

Such claims have been made in Buesaco and other towns for years, and 
studies commissioned by the State Department have dismissed the health 
problems, in almost all cases, as unrelated to the spraying. Both 
governments insist the herbicide is safe.

President Alvaro Uribe's administration has pledged to fight any court 
decision restricting glyphosate. But top officials acknowledge they are 
worried about the spate of cases.

They say the Cundinamarca tribunal's ruling is only the first of many 
expected challenges coinciding with new results showing that the 
eradication campaign has killed up to 25 percent of the country's known 
illicit drug crops. "The traffickers are feeling this is for real and that 
things are going to change for the worse very, very quickly. They're going 
to resort to any type of means to defeat this policy and to challenge it," 
said Colombian Vice President Francisco Santos.

"They're going to use the legal system, they're going to use violence and 
they're going to use corruption," he added. "We're confronting an industry, 
a huge criminal industry. They don't play games. We have to take these 
challenges seriously."

Claudia Sampedro, a constitutional law professor who filed the Cundinamarca 
lawsuit, said she was motivated solely by a desire to see Colombian law 
applied appropriately.

Ms. Sampedro said the government has failed on two counts: Although it 
insists that glyphosate is safe, the required environmental-impact studies 
on file are from U.S. State Department and Environmental Protection Agency 
studies, which are not necessarily valid under Colombian law. She added 
that U.S. credibility should be questioned, given the high political stakes 
and the recent controversy over U.S. claims about Iraqi weapons of mass 
destruction.

Environmental concerns Ms. Sampedro and other opponents also argue that the 
government is using a significantly more powerful mix of glyphosate and 
other chemicals whose environmental record is not demonstrably safe.

"The law requires the completion of a Colombian environmental-impact study. 
It is the requirement whenever you undertake any kind of activity that 
could affect the environment, whether it is herbicide spraying or building 
a house or a gas station or an airport," she said. "This entire case exists 
because they initiated spraying with glyphosate without carrying out the 
required environmental studies."

Ms. Sampedro also argued that the technology for spraying glyphosate, using 
U.S.-piloted crop-dusting planes, is nowhere near as accurate as the U.S. 
and Colombian governments say..

"They would have us believe that each molecule of glyphosate is 
individually intelligent, so that, after it is released from the plane, it 
thinks, 'I am only going to fall on a coca plant,' " ignoring all plots of 
legally cultivated farmland nearby, she said.

"Oh, please. Are they trying to suggest that this chemical only kills 
illicit plants, and that not a single yucca or corn or plantain plant is 
harmed? They treat us as if we were stupid."

Although the Cundinamarca court ordered the suspension of spraying, the 
ruling must await an appeals process and review of an environmental study 
now being completed.

Determined to spray Mr. Santos said the government would abide by the final 
decision, although it would search for any possible legal means to continue 
spraying ­ including introducing a constitutional amendment allowing the 
government to eradicate with herbicides anywhere illicit drug crops are 
growing. He said anyone who thinks he can avoid eradication by 
intermingling illicit crops with legal crops is sorely mistaken.

"Tough luck. He is using his land to poison Colombia, to destroy the land 
and to poison American, Colombian, Brazilian and European kids," the vice 
president said.

He said Ms. Sampedro and others may well force the suspension of spraying. 
The result, he warned, will be a sudden surge in bloodshed as Colombian 
troops fight back the insurgents protecting the drug trade. "Oh, fine. 
We'll have a great environment but with dead bodies all over," Mr. Santos 
said. "We'll have a great environment but nobody left to live in it." 
Claims of inaccuracy Many peasant farmers in Buesaco, a mountain community 
surrounded by peaks where opium poppy flourishes, said they support ending 
the drug trade but complained that the spraying has at times been wildly 
inaccurate. "I live in a low, dry area where opium cannot grow. The closest 
illicit crops are eight kilometers [4.8 miles] away," said Segundo Ballardo 
Benavides, from the nearby village of Las Minas. When crop-dusting planes 
swooped down over his farm last November, he said, the herbicide killed 
everything: corn stalks, beans, coffee trees.

Other farmers showed a videotape of spraying near Buesaco in April in which 
a plane swoops low over a hillside and releases herbicide. A strong gust of 
wind hits the herbicide upon release, dispersing it widely and carrying it 
far from its intended drop point.

Teodoro Campo, the chief of the National Police, said glyphosate has been 
in use for 20 years in Colombia.

The computer and satellite technology provided by the United States to 
guide the crop-dusting planes is said to ensure a very high rate of 
accuracy. "Yes, it's very possible that, with wind, the [accuracy] of the 
spraying could be affected," he said. "But if the drug traffickers think 
they can thwart us by putting, say, a coffee plantation here and here, and 
put a coca plantation in between so that we won't spray it, they are wrong. 
We will spray, and yes, that coffee will suffer."
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MAP posted-by: Keith Brilhart