Pubdate: Sat, 17 Sep 2005
Source: Age, The (Australia)
Copyright: 2005 The Age Company Ltd
Contact:  http://www.theage.com.au/
Details: http://www.mapinc.org/media/5
Author: AAP
Bookmark: http://www.mapinc.org/coke.htm (Cocaine)

COLOMBIA TO SPRAY JUNGLE TO DESTROY COCA

The Colombian government plans to spray the country's national parks with 
herbicide to rid them of the raw material for cocaine despite protests from 
environmental groups.

Interior Minister Sabas Pretelt said spraying the parks would save them 
from destruction at the hands of drug smugglers, who the government says 
damage the environment with chemicals used to make cocaine, such as 
sulfuric acid.

"The government's duty is not to allow our nature reserves to be wiped out 
by these ecological criminals," Pretelt told reporters.

Environmentalists say spraying with the herbicide glyphosate, in a program 
funded by the US, will damage pristine jungle environments and harm 
indigenous peoples.

No date for spraying, to begin in parks, has been established.

Two-thirds of Colombia's 80,000 hectares of coca leaf - the raw material 
for cocaine - was planted in 13 of the country's 51 nature reserves at the 
end of 2004, according to satellite data from the UN.

While spraying has roughly halved the area planted with coca since 2000, 
more is being planted in nature reserves, where the plants have been safe 
from crop dusters so far. Coca planting in nature reserves has risen 30 per 
cent during the past year, Pretelt said.

Until now, the government has tried to placate environmental groups by 
limiting its eradication programs in nature reserves to manual uprooting of 
coca. But, while Pretelt said 17,000 hectares of coca has been manually 
removed this year, the government is impatient with progress and wants to 
spray.

One reason for this impatience could be that, while satellite data shows a 
big drop in coca area, another key indicator suggests the flow of cocaine 
to the US has not been significantly interrupted. The price of cocaine on 
US streets has hardly changed since the spraying program began in 2000.

Colombia is the world's largest producer of cocaine and has received more 
than $US3 billion ($A4 billion) in mainly military aid since 2000 from the 
US - the largest consumer of the drug - to fight the outlawed industry.

President Alvaro Uribe is currently in the US meeting officials to lobby 
for continued aid. He planned to tell the officials spraying has been a 
success.

Coca crops are protected by far-right paramilitaries and Marxist rebels - 
fierce foes in the country's four-decade-old guerrilla war, which claims 
thousands of lives a year. Both illegal armed groups rely on money from 
cocaine to buy weapons.

The government points to a study by the Organization of American States 
that concluded the chemicals used do not harm either humans or the 
environment. Glyphosate is commonly used by farmers around the world.

Still, the government will give the final order to spray only after studies 
showing that manual eradication is not practical in any one nature reserve, 
and after consultation with indigenous and other peoples in the area, 
Pretelt said.
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