Introduction
Coca production begins in the valleys and upper jungle regions of the Andean region, where the countries of Colombia, Peru and Bolivia are host to more than 98 per cent of the global land area planted with coca.Footnote 1 During the 1990s, Colombia rapidly overtook its neighbours and became the region's leading coca producer – while in 1994 the country accounted for 22 per cent of total regional cultivation, by 1990 that figure had risen to 73 per cent.Footnote 2 This Colombian expansion coincided with the implementation of aggressive coca eradication and interdiction campaigns in Bolivia and Peru, backed by the USA, as well as the dismantling of the Colombian cartels that imported Andean coca for production and export from Colombia. Despite aggressive interdiction and eradication measures within Colombia, myriad smaller cartels and the cultivation of coca have since proliferated in its countryside.Footnote 3 The United States government views the illicit drug industry as a national welfare threat and allocates enormous resources to its destruction. The USA has accordingly provided Colombia with well over US$4 billion since 1999 in order to combat the production of coca, cocaine's primary ingredient. The rationale underlying the US-funded supply-side strategies, collectively called Plan Colombia, is that they will curb availability, drive the street price up, and ultimately reduce the demand and consumption of cocaine.Footnote 4 Yet wholesale prices for cocaine within the United States have actually decreased throughout the Plan Colombia era, suggesting an ever-abundant supply.Footnote 5
Supply-reduction programmes, which under Plan Colombia rely heavily upon aerially-sprayed herbicides, have been implemented without a clear understanding of the factors that drive sub-national cultivation patterns. Forced eradication efforts, as a result, have amounted to large-scale ‘weed-whacking’. This is evident in US State Department reports, which state that attempted cultivation in Colombia continues to expand despite increasing efforts to suppress cultivation. Attempted coca production – defined as eradicated plus un-eradicated coca – has risen by 36 per cent since 2000.Footnote 6
The failure of eradication efforts and of coca's apparent cultivation shifts within the Andean region can be characterised as a balloon-effect, where production squeezed off in one locale simply forces illicit coca production into new geographic areas. The balloon-effect can be observed since Plan Colombia's commencement, with both a reversed displacement of coca to surrounding countries and a dispersion and reconstitution of coca-growing areas within rural Colombia.Footnote 7 While 2005 saw an eight per cent increase in overall cultivation in Colombia, 44 per cent of the fields where coca was detected in 2005 had never before been identified as coca-producing fields.Footnote 8 While the balloon-effect indicates the apparent resilience and mobility of the coca crop, it lacks explanatory power. What explains the geographic expansion of coca cultivation within Colombia? What drives coca to be cultivated in certain geographic areas and not others? What are the requisite preceding conditions to facilitate its cultivation? Diverse hypotheses address the origin and causes of coca production in Colombia, but most are based on much qualitative, and little quantitative, evidence.Footnote 9
In order to answer these research questions, this article reviews existing explanations of coca cultivation and develops an explanation of coca cultivation in Colombia that emphasises the local conditions that promote its proliferation. This study utilises the most recently published times-series cross-section data for 32 sub-national departments between 2001 and 2005 to examine explanations of Colombian coca cultivation following the inception of Plan Colombia in 1999. The results offer support for the reallocation of aerial eradication funds toward the development of localised public and market infrastructures as a long-term strategy for reducing coca production. The results also suggest that, despite official claims to the contrary, aerial eradication does not significantly reduce coca cultivation in Colombia, and that where it does have an impact, this is both temporary and in part due to displacement associated with fumigation efforts, generating significant human and economic costs. Also, coca cultivation in Colombia tends to occur in agricultural departments characterised by limited market access and state presence. The analysis modifies the general assumption that extreme poverty is a determinant of coca cultivation in Colombia by illustrating a parabolic relationship between poverty and coca cultivation in Colombia, where both very low and extremely high levels of poverty are associated with low rates of coca cultivation. Taken together, these results suggest that coca cultivation is most likely in areas with sufficient labour and land resources for production but that lack sufficient public infrastructure and state presence to facilitate production for legal markets. The following section reviews the existing hypotheses regarding the factors that explain coca cultivation. A description of the data used to describe each variable and its hypothesised effect precedes a discussion of the results of the statistical analysis, including the substantive and statistical significance of each variable. The article concludes with a brief discussion of the policy implications of our findings.
Explaining Coca Cultivation in Colombia
Challenges in the effective analysis of coca production abound, particularly in Colombia, due to the labyrinthine and highly politicised nature of the problem. Anti-coca policies in Colombia have been propelled not by analytic study of coca cultivation itself, but rather by external political pressures and counterinsurgency efforts. Debate surrounding the militarisation of forced eradication through Plan Colombia is inflamed by persistent questions regarding the overall effectiveness, as well as the unintended social, environmental and health consequences, of herbicide-based eradication.Footnote 10 Statistical testing of the effectiveness of different supply-side programmes has only recently become possible due to the availability of sub-national data on cultivation in Colombia, collected through aerial observation over the last several years. This paper uses department-level cultivation data to model the theoretical factors, including market, state and socio-economic characteristics, hypothesised to explain sub-national patterns of coca cultivation in Colombia.
Market theories point to Colombia as a strategic locale for coca production. Not only is it located within the Andean coca-producing region near convenient air and sea routes to North American and European markets, but it also houses large, isolated internal regions where the presence of the state is weak.Footnote 11 US officials approach coca cultivation in Colombia as the supply side of a larger market cycle run by narco-traffickers increasingly associated with Colombia's illegal armed groups. This cycle, officials from US and Colombian governments argue, can be forcibly disrupted through tougher mechanisms of law and order.Footnote 12 Subscribing to market theories of supply and demand, US officials assert that worsened profit margins, both real and perceived, would cause coca growers to abandon the crop and seek alternative economic endeavours. For example, the US State Department concludes, ‘Crop control is by far the most cost-effective means of cutting supply. If we destroy crops or force them to remain unharvested, no drugs will enter the system’.Footnote 13 The US government argues that aggressive fumigation of land dedicated to coca should decrease both the net amount of coca presently cultivated and future attempted cultivation.
Launched bilaterally in 2000, Plan Colombia's principle strategy for reducing coca cultivation involves aerial fumigation by Dirección Antinarcóticos (DIRAN), Colombia's anti-narcotics police. In 2005, after five consecutive years of increases, and with support from the US Embassy, State Department and private contractors, the Colombian government sprayed a total of 138,367 hectares in 18 of Colombia's coca-growing departments. Notwithstanding this, the total area under coca cultivation increased by eight per cent between 2004 and 2005, representing a total of eight per cent of Colombia's national territory.Footnote 14 The funds and overall resources expended on combating coca via forced eradication are similarly notable, particularly those devoted to its security component. Up to 75 per cent of the US$ 4.7 billion in US Plan Colombia funding has been allocated to the Colombian police and military forces, which in 2000 launched counter-narcotics brigades to secure the flight paths of fumigation aircraft.Footnote 15
In response to eradication efforts, coca growers in Colombia have compensated in unexpected ways. They either grow greater quantities in smaller but more dispersed plots, or they clear plots in areas even further from state infrastructure, a reflection of the balloon effect.Footnote 16 Furthermore, there is mounting evidence that the socioeconomic disruption and intensified violence produced by Colombia's fumigation strategy displaces thousands of rural Colombians each year and may indirectly contribute to the sub-national proliferation of coca to new areas.Footnote 17 Displacement refers to the forced migration of people from their place of residence. While much of Colombia's internal displacement – which averaged 281,230 people between 2000 and 2005 – is directly attributable to intimidation and violence initiated by guerrilla and paramilitary groups, fumigation itself fosters displacement because it destroys peasants' subsistence patterns by wiping out both their illicit and licit crops.Footnote 18 Colombia's nongovernmental Council for Human Rights and Displacement estimates that in 2001 and 2002 – the two years following Plan Colombia's inception – fumigation alone displaced more than 75,000 people nationwide.Footnote 19 In addition, Colombia's militarised eradication strategies appear to produce intensified displacement in areas targeted for fumigation as state, guerrilla and paramilitary elements vie for military, economic and popular control.Footnote 20 This suggests that while aerial eradication may directly reduce coca cultivation in some areas through the eradication of plants, it may also indirectly reduce cultivation by generating localised displacement. This article estimates both the direct effects and indirect effects, via displacement, of aerial spraying on local coca cultivation.
It should be noted that most of Colombia's displaced do not grow coca and that the displaced also tend to migrate to its urban centres. Nevertheless, forced eradication does generate a dispossessed labour force pre-equipped with coca production know-how. Anecdotal reports indicate that Colombia's rural displaced, as a means of survival in their new locales, often engage in and proliferate the cultivation, harvesting and production of coca.Footnote 21 In addition, there is evidence that elements of Colombia's floating population migrate to coca-producing regions specifically in search of the economic opportunities afforded by the illicit drug industry.Footnote 22 These studies suggest that rural areas receiving people displaced by eradication efforts experience increased coca cultivation.
Unfortunately, the aerial eradication strategy implies a failure to fully appreciate coca's several comparative advantages as a cash crop within the regions where it is grown. First, coca is hardier than most other crops; it can grow on poor-quality or depleted soil and steeply-sloped terrain and is relatively resistant to climate variations and pests. Coca plants can provide initial harvests in as little as six months of planting and from three to six times per year, which provides a year-round income that seasonal crops cannot offer. Second, coca requires little in the way of processing infrastructure and is well suited to low-cost, long-range transport that does not depend on access to good roads.Footnote 23 Beyond Colombia, cross-continental studies conclude that coca growing regions are some of the most underdeveloped agricultural areas of the world, where growers suffer from lack of market access.Footnote 24 In Colombia, coca grows in regions that lack access to regional markets and cities, where rough terrain and civil conflict have impeded the construction of viable roadways.Footnote 25 Colombia's traditional coca-growing departments of Putumayo, Caqueta and Guaviare are located deep within the Amazonian jungle, where villages can be several days travel away from the nearest regional market.Footnote 26 Given these characteristics, it is not surprising that participants of the UNODC's Andean-wide survey ranked a lack of viable, stable markets for alternative crops as their number one reason for rejecting legal agronomic activities.Footnote 27 Similarly, econometric studies show that prices of key alternative crops in Colombia are negatively related to coca production,Footnote 28 and anecdotal evidence supports claims that coca traders, and increasingly illegal armed groups, offer growers almost guaranteed markets with stable farm-gate prices and access to credit and seeds.Footnote 29 Therefore, though coca can be grown on marginal land, it is also particularly likely to be grown in agricultural regions with underdeveloped roads and market infrastructure where other less hardy and more perishable crops would be less successful. Though much of the discussion surrounding coca cultivation in Colombia emphasises its utility as a cash crop that enhances the ability of rural Colombians to subsist,Footnote 30 quantitative, cross-Colombian studies that relate the relative availability of licit agricultural markets to coca cultivation levels are lacking.
In addition to underdeveloped market infrastructure, an underdeveloped public infrastructure or lack of state presence can also directly contribute to higher levels of coca cultivation. Up to 40 per cent of Colombia's territory remains effectively beyond the control of the state, which has not exercised a consistent presence throughout its territory.Footnote 31 Lack of state presence and infrastructure can contribute directly to increased coca cultivation by limiting the range of legal economic activities available to residents.Footnote 32
Weak state presence can also contribute to coca cultivation by providing a vacuum in which illegal armed groups compete for or establish dominance. In areas beyond effective state control, illegal armed groups may operate. The principal groups are the leftist Revolutionary Armed Forces of Colombia (FARC), the smaller National Liberation Army (ELN), and paramilitary groups created by wealthy land-owners and drug-traffickers, such as the United Self-Defence Groups of Colombia (AUC). In areas with weak state presence, the groups fight federal forces and each other not only for territorial control and access to strategic trafficking corridors, but for control of the economic resources within their areas of operation. Often the drug trade finances the activities of illegal armed groups, and the one strengthens and perpetuates the existence of the other. The result is a proliferation of illegal armed groups in many of Colombia's ungoverned rural regions.Footnote 33
Some argue that illegal armed groups should lead to higher rates of coca cultivation.Footnote 34 This is consistent with reports that Colombia's illegal groups have, in some regions, substituted for an absent state and imposed their own regimes, defining their own laws and regulations and providing basic education, a police force, and civil justice system to solve conflicts among the population. In exchange for public order, the groups demand popular allegiance and impose a tax on peasants' productive activities, including coca cultivation.Footnote 35 Though traditionally Colombia's illegal armed groups have not participated directly in the production and supply chain, there is increasing evidence of their direct involvement in production and trafficking in some regions.Footnote 36 Further, in municipalities with both illegal group presence and coca cultivation, cultivation appears to be more intense.Footnote 37 Therefore, the absence of a state presence creates an environment that lacks sufficient opportunities for legal activities and is permissive of illicit activities, including those of illegal armed groups. Weak state presence should be directly associated with higher rates of coca cultivation.
At the same time, when weak state presence permits violence perpetrated by illegal armed groups intent on establishing economic and political control of a territory, then conflict-related displacement may interfere with coca cultivation. For example, studies suggest that weak state presence leads to higher levels of guerrilla violence.Footnote 38 In some areas where narco-traffickers once paid taxes to guerrillas to maintain a secure operating environment, the traffickers have instead created their own paramilitaries, leading to escalations in violent conflicts between these and guerrilla forces.Footnote 39 Interestingly, the same studies find that coca cultivation itself is not a significant cause of guerrilla violence.Footnote 40 Consequently, we might expect weak state presence to be associated with higher levels of displacement and thus lower levels of coca cultivation.
In addition to such factors as market conditions, state presence, and displacement, Colombia's colonisation resulted in inefficient bureaucracies, ill-equipped to govern Colombia's swaths of rough frontier, where cutting corners in pursuit of survival or individual advancement became, if not institutionally encouraged, at least socially tolerated.Footnote 41 This environment of unregulated individualism fostered practices of corruption that allowed large areas of the country to function independently of centralised control, and meant that ungoverned regions became, in effect, ungovernable. This culture of corruption prevails throughout Colombia's coca-growing regions, further facilitating the expansion of cultivation.Footnote 42
Finally, poverty and illicit crop production tend to overlap, and international studies describe illicit cultivation areas as characteristically poor, where indicators of malnutrition, infant mortality and illiteracy are consistently and substantially higher than national averages. Specifically, there tends to be an Andean-wide association between the size of landholdings and the proportion of land dedicated to coca cultivation, where those with the least amount of land were found to cultivate the largest proportion of their holdings with coca.Footnote 43 An estimated 60 per cent of Colombia's coca crops are on small landholdings of less than two hectares, indicating that coca cultivation in Colombia is part of a wider cropping pattern aimed at self-sufficiency.Footnote 44 The UNODC asserts that while growing coca does not significantly increase the income of rural Colombians, of whom 85 per cent live below the international poverty line, it can serve to improve their basic subsistence in the absence of other income generating activities.Footnote 45
However, in a department-level analysis, the UNODC found no statistically significant correlation between poverty and coca cultivation within Colombia.Footnote 46 The study notes that departments like Guainía and Choco, where poverty levels were high, were not the departments with high levels of coca cultivation in 2004, whereas the department of Meta, with relatively fewer people below the poverty line, accounted for a significant portion of Colombia's coca cultivation. Though the UNODC found no linear relationship, its findings do not preclude a curvilinear relationship between poverty and coca cultivation. Coca cultivation may be limited in areas with very little poverty and become more widespread as poverty increases. However, it is not likely that areas with very high concentrations of poverty will have sufficient resources to sustain coca production. Therefore, we might reasonably expect the relationship between poverty and coca cultivation to flatten at the highest levels of poverty.
This section has reviewed a variety of factors that are likely to explain the sub-national pattern of coca cultivation in Colombia, including aerial eradication, displacement, corruption, state presence, economic development, agricultural activity, access to agricultural markets, and poverty. The following section articulates the specific hypotheses to be tested and describes the data used in the statistical analysis that follows.
Hypotheses and Data
Colombia is divided into 32 administrative territorial departments. The time-series, cross-section dataset consists of department level, annual observations for each independent variable from 2000 to 2004, and the dependent variable, coca cultivation, from 2001–2005.Footnote 47 Descriptions of the variables and their hypothesised effects on cultivation can be found in Table 1.
Table 1. Variable Definitions and Hypothesised Effects
The analysis begins in 2001 because this is the first year that full national coverage was achieved from UNODC and the Colombian government's use of satellite imagery and verification flights over coca growing areas to monitor the location and spread of coca cultivation. In 2005, the area within each department with active coca cultivation was between 28 and 17,305 hectares, with nine departments having no reportable levels of coca cultivation.Footnote 48 Because the urbanisation and territory of each department differ, we calculate per capita cultivation rates by dividing the annual square kilometres under cultivation within each department by its rural population.Footnote 49
Aerial fumigation by DIRAN is the Colombian government's primary method for reducing coca cultivation.Footnote 50 In 2000, it sprayed 58,498 hectares in 11 of the country's previously identified coca-growing departments. Coverage has expanded annually under Plan Colombia, and in 2004 targeted over 136,552 hectares across 16 departments. Aerial eradication is the percentage of department land area aerially fumigated by DIRAN.Footnote 51 The direct effect of aerial fumigation on coca cultivation should be negative.
Coca cultivation appears to occur in communities beyond the effective reach of the state because weak state presence creates permissive conditions that enable illegal activity.Footnote 52 In Colombia, department level governments have fiscal and operational responsibility for basic services and infrastructure. State presence in each department, calculated by dividing public administration and community services output (in thousands of constant pesos) by population, is hypothesised to be negatively associated with coca cultivation.Footnote 53
Aerial eradication efforts and lack of state presence are also expected to affect coca cultivation indirectly, through their effects on displacement. Eradication contributes to displacement through its disruption of both legal and illegal cultivation and the violence associated with military efforts to secure areas for fumigation. Weak state presence contributes to displacement when illegal armed groups compete for control of remote areas. The Colombian government works with non-governmental agencies and the Catholic Church to compile the Sistema Unico de Registro (SUR), a database of internally displaced persons.Footnote 54 Federal law defines database entrants as migrants forced to abandon their physical residences and employment activity by armed conflict, generalised violence, massive human rights violations or other circumstances that threaten or drastically alter public order. In describing internal displacement, SUR distinguishes between departments where original displacement occurs, and the departments where displaced persons relocate. This distinction is analytically important, because displacement reflects the existence of a migratory cause. In areas with high displacement, we would expect cultivation to decline due to the disruption of agricultural activities, both licit and illicit, and of the local labour market. Reception rates, in contrast, reflect the presence of floating populations that seek employment. Some argue that the presence of displaced populations is positively associated with coca cultivation, although this correlation is weakened since displaced populations often flee to urban destinations.Footnote 55 For this study, ‘displaced’ measures the ratio of the annual number of displaced persons to the total population in the department of origin. ‘Incoming displaced’ measures the ratio of annual displaced persons to the total population in the department of settlement.Footnote 56
In addition, widespread public corruption in Colombia encourages unregulated individualism among the civilian population, which facilitates the expansion of the coca industry within Colombia.Footnote 57 Transparency International assessed Colombia's department-level governments using a corruption index scaled 0–100 with weighted categorical variables that measure internal and external transparency in fiscal management, adherence to operational mandates, and the responsiveness of Colombia's department-level governments. Higher outcomes on the corruption index are hypothesised to be positively associated with higher rates of coca cultivation.
Coca is also more likely to be cultivated in agricultural regions, especially when controlling for a department's level of economic development. Even though coca can be cultivated on marginal land, agricultural areas have the resources necessary for cultivation, especially in comparison to more urbanised areas. Licit agricultural production is measured by the department-level gross domestic product (GDP) in thousands of constant pesos derived from agricultural activities, divided by the rural population. Level of economic development is measured as departmental per capita gross domestic product (GDP) in thousands of constant pesos.Footnote 58 Even when controlling for both economic development and agricultural production, coca cultivation should be more likely in areas that lack agricultural market access. Market access is measured in terms of paved roads as a percentage of all intra-departmental roads.Footnote 59
While it would be useful to separate structural and income indicators of poverty, economic indicators in terms of income levels, unemployment and underemployment in Colombia are not published at the department level.Footnote 60 DANE utilises the Unsatisfied Basic Needs (UBN) Index to measure poverty at the department level. The indicator, ranging from zero to 100, is the percentage of households for which one or more of poverty indicators are present. The poverty indicators include the materials with which the house is made, water and sewage services, degree of economic dependence, number of people per square metre, and school attendance of at least one child between the age of seven and eleven.Footnote 61 While poverty is generally assumed to be positively associated with coca cultivation, sub-national studies have experienced difficulty in establishing a statistically significant, linear relationship between poverty and coca cultivation.Footnote 62 Because coca cultivation may be less common at both very low and very high levels of poverty, the statistical analysis will test whether an inverted-U relationship exists between poverty and coca cultivation remains when controlling for other variables.
Model Results
The relationships between the variables described above and coca cultivation in Colombia are analysed using a Prais-Winsten regression model estimated with panel corrected standard errors and fixed effects. Pooling the data increases estimation efficiency by increasing the observable cases from 32 to 160, but pooled data often violate the assumptions of ordinary least square (OLS) regression, and as a result can exhibit panel heteroscedasticity and autocorrelation. Estimating the model with heteroscedastic panel corrected standard errors accounts for panel heteroscedasticity.Footnote 63 Autocorrelation of the errors was addressed by estimating the model using a Prais-Winsten transformation with a common autoregressive parameter.Footnote 64 Panel fixed effects model were included to account for unobserved differences across the Colombian departments.Footnote 65
Table 2 presents the results for two models, one with poverty as a linear predictor of cultivation (Model 1) and a second with a non-linear relationship between poverty and cultivation (Model 2). The results for both models are nearly identical, and the discussion below will focus on those for Model 2. Standardised coefficients are also presented to facilitate comparisons of explanatory power across different independent variables.
Table 2. Colombian department-level coca cultivation, 2001–2005
Note: Prais-Winsten regression with common AR-1 autocorrelation estimate (rho), fixed effects (not shown), and panel corrected standard errors (in parentheses). Wald χ2 and R2 reported by Stata 9, using xtpcse command with common AR(1) option.
Key: * p<0.10, ** p<0.05, *** p<.001, two-tailed tests.
According to the results, aerial eradication has a small and statistically insignificant direct effect on coca cultivation in Colombia. The small size of the substantive direct effect on coca cultivation is clear because aerial eradication has the smallest standardised coefficient of the model. In addition, both displacement and state presence have substantively and statistically significant dampening effects on coca cultivation, according to the model results in Table 2. These findings are consistent with expectations that displacement disrupts agricultural activity and labour markets and thus coca cultivation, and that a strong state presence precludes extensive illegal activities, including coca cultivation.
To better understand the complex relationships among aerial eradication, state presence, displacement, and coca cultivation, we also estimated a limited model of displacement. The category ‘displaced’ was regressed on aerial eradication and state presence to estimate the role of these two variables on the rate of displacement. Figure 1 illustrates the path relationships among eradication, state presence, displaced population and coca cultivation. The path coefficients are the standardised betas from Model 2 and the model of displacement described above.
Fig. 1. Relationships among aerial eradication, state presence, displacement and coca cultivation
This exercise confirms that though aerial eradication has only a marginal direct effect on coca cultivation (−0.001, p>0.100), it has a significant effect on displacement (0.296, p<0.001) and thus does contribute indirectly to local reductions in coca cultivation. While the direct effect of aerial eradication on coca cultivation is modest (−0.001), the indirect effect via displacement is larger (−0.080, the product of 0.296 and −0.270). The total effect of aerial eradication on coca cultivation (−0.081, or −0.001 plus −0.080) is still modest, compared to some of the other variables in Model 2. The model suggests that much of the effect of aerial eradication on coca cultivation occurs through displacement of the population, which implies significant and unintended human and economic costs of the eradication policy.Footnote 66 At a minimum, the result suggests that the effectiveness and externalities of aerial eradication should be more closely examined.
Figure 1 also provides some insight into the relationship between state presence and coca cultivation. A strong state presence clearly directly reduces the extent of coca cultivation (−0.172, p<0.001).Footnote 67 Meanwhile, state presence does not have a significant direct effect on displacement (0.035, p>0.100). This finding suggests that weak state presence does not necessarily correspond to increases in displacement due to violence between illegal armed groups. Instead, a strong state presence is important because it directly reduces the intensity of coca cultivation in a department.
Overall, the simple path model results illustrated by Figure 1 suggest that future studies should more closely examine the complex relationships between eradication, state presence, displacement, and coca cultivation. In particular, the results suggest that aerial eradication affects coca cultivation mainly through displacement, which entails significant human and economic side effects, and that a strong state presence directly reduces the intensity of coca cultivation, though state presence has little impact on displacement.
Most of the remaining indicators of state or market context are consistent with existing theoretical expectations, although not all of the variables have statistically significant effects on coca cultivation. For example, although areas that receive displaced populations do have slightly higher coca cultivation rates, even when controlling for departmental level of economic development, this effect is not statistically significant.Footnote 68 Likewise, coca cultivation is greater in departments with higher levels of corruption and lower levels of economic development, though these effects are not statistically or substantively very significant. Coca cultivation is significantly higher, however, in agricultural regions, even after controlling for poverty and level of economic development. Not surprisingly, extent of legal agricultural production is one of the better predictors of coca cultivation because many of the resources necessary to produce agricultural goods for legal markets are the same as those necessary to produce for illegal markets: arable land, appropriate climate and sufficient labour. At the same time, not all agricultural areas have sufficient infrastructure to integrate producers into legal markets. Given the hardiness of coca as a cash crop, it is ideal to overcome barriers to market entry, including long distances or poor public infrastructure. The model supports this argument because coca cultivation is higher in areas with fewer paved roads, or poor access to legal markets for producers. Even controlling for level of economic development and state presence, the percentage of roads that are paved in a department has a substantively and statistically significant effect on reducing coca cultivation. This suggests that improving public infrastructure to provide agricultural producers with greater access to legal markets may be a useful strategy for combating coca cultivation in agricultural regions.
Finally, the models suggest that the relationship between poverty and coca cultivation may be more complex than is often assumed. The statistical analysis suggests that poverty has a statistically and substantively significant inverted-U relationship with coca cultivation rates, where very low and extremely high levels of poverty are associated with little coca cultivation.Footnote 69Figure 2 presents the predicted cultivation rates according to Model 2, at levels of poverty found in the sample. The figure is based on simulations using CLARIFY, to account for sampling variability.Footnote 70 Indeed, when poverty exceeds 80 on the poverty index, as it does in some Colombian departments, the model predicts no coca cultivation. Coca cultivation is highest in regions of moderate poverty, peaking in those with UBN scores between 50 and 60. This suggests that regions with low rates of poverty will be less likely to engage in significant coca cultivation and also that regions with extremely high rates of poverty will also be too resource poor to have sufficient resources to engage in coca cultivation. From a policy standpoint, this relationship creates a conundrum because efforts to reduce poverty may have an untended consequence of facilitating the expansion of coca cultivation. This is why it is important to understand the myriad factors that contribute to regional patterns of coca cultivation so that coherent policies can be implemented not only to reduce cultivation but also reduce poverty and promote economic development.
Fig. 2. Predicted effect of poverty on coca cultivation with 95% confidence interval
Conclusions
The model developed in this article elucidates and reveals some of the complex factors explaining patterns of coca cultivation in Colombia since the implementation of Plan Colombia in 1999. The preceding analysis presents several findings, each with important policy implications for Plan Colombia and long-term strategies for reducing coca cultivation in Colombia.
First, the analysis illustrates the complex relationships existing between aerial eradication, displacement and coca cultivation. Aerial eradication, the centrepiece of Plan Colombia's efforts to stymie Colombian coca exports, has a small overall impact on coca cultivation, compared to other variables. Furthermore, the effects of aerial eradication on coca appear to derive not directly from the fumigation of the plant itself, but rather from the associated side effects of fumigation, namely, violence and indiscriminate disruption of agriculture in coca growing regions. That aerial eradication principally affects coca by generating significant levels of displacement suggests that the unintended human and economic costs of aerial eradication should be explicitly considered and addressed by policy makers. The human and economic costs of displacement due to aerial eradication may only perpetuate the poverty and underdevelopment common to agricultural regions already most likely to grow coca, creating an on-going cycle and pattern of transient coca cultivation. At a minimum, aerial eradication policies should be complemented with sufficient funding to mitigate the human and economic costs and reduce the likelihood that eradication will continue to generate a sub-national balloon-effect.
Second, the results create a dilemma for policy makers hoping to reduce coca cultivation by reducing localised poverty and marginalisation. Because coca cultivation is concentrated in areas of moderate poverty and is seldom found in areas of extremely low or high poverty, efforts to address extreme poverty might have the unintended consequence of facilitating coca cultivation. The answer is not to abandon areas in extreme poverty, but to ensure that poverty alleviation programs simultaneously address the other factors that make coca cultivation attractive. For example, poverty alleviation programs should simultaneously address local public infrastructure and access to agricultural markets to reduce the likelihood that extreme poverty is replaced by coca cultivation.
Finally, the results suggest that coca cultivation thrives in economically underdeveloped, agricultural regions where residents have the means to partake in agricultural endeavours but lack access to legal markets due to poor public infrastructure and a weak state presence. The policy implication is that establishing strong local state capacity, reducing corruption through improved accountability and transparency, and investing in public infrastructure to support local access to legal agricultural markets should all help reduce coca cultivation. Unfortunately, these are all policies that have been underdeveloped or under-funded as part of Plan Colombia. Securing long-term reductions in coca cultivation will require the strategic yet localised funding, development and oversight of public and market infrastructures that emphasise both accessibility and sustained viability. Given Colombia's large expanse of relatively ungoverned territory, institutionalised solutions that foster government and communal accountability are clearly needed, and Colombia's nascent efforts in this terrain warrant internationalised analytical, financial and logistical attention. Policy formulators should acknowledge that the surest investments are not necessarily those of immediate returns.
This is the principle argument of alternative development proponents who seek increased funding for localised projects (UNODC, 2005). During 1999–2007, US$350 million was allocated to national level alternative development activities, and the annual alternative development activities implemented at the municipal and departmental levels increased from US$3 million in 2000 to US$78 million in 2004.Footnote 71 These funding levels are small relative to funding for military and eradication efforts. Increasing emphasis on alternative development programmes to combat coca cultivation acknowledges the shortcomings of forced eradication as a long-term policy. However, the inconsistent development, implementation, oversight and dispersal of funds for alternative development projects since Plan Colombia's commencement has severely impeded both their potential effectiveness and the availability of data on funding dispersal and project results.Footnote 72 Though the effect of alternative development projects on local and national coca cultivation levels may be difficult to monitor because their implementation and results take longer to mature, our findings suggest that such programmes, by addressing the structural sources of coca cultivation, may have a longer lasting effect on cultivation in Colombia than short-term strategies to fumigate current cultivation.
Appendix: Jack-knife Test Results
Note: *Cultivation in km2 per capita.
