Colombian government persists with aerial crop spraying plans despite widespread opposition

The Colombian government is persisting with its highly controversial plans for aerial spraying of crops grown for the illicit drugs trade, despite the proven risks of violations of community rights and widespread environmental damage.

Aerial fumigation has long been contested in Colombia. Indigenous peoples, Afro-descendant communities, peasant organisations and human rights NGOs have carried out protests and other legal actions against it for decades. The spraying operations, often using glyphosate, began as a way to prevent the commercial cultivation of coca and other crops grown for the drugs trade, most notably under the controversial US-backed Plan Colombia programme in the 1990s.

More recently, the government has claimed that fumigation is necessary to tackle deforestation; as newly cleared forest land is often planted with commercial coca fields in the ‘cycle’ of deforestation, later being replaced by pasture for cattle. Past experience, however, shows that aerial spraying can in fact exacerbate local conflicts, human rights abuses and deforestation, by pushing growers further and further into intact rainforest and causing the militarisation of the forest frontier. In 2015, aerial spraying with glyphosate was suspended, following reports by the WHO that the pesticide was “probably carcinogenic”.

In 2017, the Constitutional Court ruled that the state is required to guarantee participation and access to environmental information as part of the social and environmental impact assessment on any plans to reactivate spraying, and, crucially, to ensure prior consultation with potentially affected communities. The same ruling emphasises the need for any such plans to fully respect community rights to healthy environment, the right to health and prior consultation. (Judgement T-236 – known as the Nóvita case). These measures are required by the Court in order to ensure that any new eradication plan, including through aerial spraying of herbicides, would guarantee the health and human rights of local communities.

However, despite this court decision and sustained public opposition, the Duque administration applied to the courts to restart aerial spraying as part of national counter-narcotics policy. In a public audience held in March 2019, the government and civil society presented evidence to the Court, for and against plans to reactivate spraying. In July 2019, the Court issued Auto 387 affirming the Nóvita ruling and adding extra conditions as enshrined in the peace agreement, most notably that spraying should only be used as a last resort and only if full compliance with the Nóvita judgement can be guaranteed.

Additional court rulings since 2017 also affirm the communities’ right to free, prior and informed consent in cases where potential harm is judged to be “intense” (eg. T-300/2017).

In November 2019, Forest Peoples Programme and 16 other civil society organisations – including indigenous, Afro-descendant and peasant organisations – sent an open letter to President Duque calling for the abandonment of proposals to reactivate aerial fumigation. The letter highlights the adverse human rights impacts of spraying and presents evidence demonstrating why the practice is an ineffective measure for tackling deforestation. It cites studies showing that this policy: 1) exacerbates deforestation due to the displacement of crop cultivation to distant areas of ‘intact’ forest; 2) generates damages to human health, the environment and the local environment of forest communities; and 3) violates the fundamental rights of indigenous peoples and other forest-dependent communities.

FPP received a brief acknowledgement from the President’s office, stating that the letter would be forwarded to the Ministry of Defence. Yet as of 19 June 2020, FPP and the other numerous signatories to the November 2019 letter have yet to receive a substantive response to the concerns raised. In the seven months since the letter was sent, the health and security situation in Colombia has deteriorated.

Following the arrival of COVID-19 in in Colombia in March, a strict national lockdown was declared and remains in force. Despite the serious risks of contagion, the state has controversially continued its forced coca eradication programme with the military. In Chocó, for example, in April 2020, government troops entered Afro-descendant communities in the municipality of Nóvita without seeking prior permission, and thus violating the Constitutional Court ruling, and sprayed not just the coca, but also the community’s plantain and lulo fruit crops. Several community members were injured as confrontation erupted over the manual spraying of their food crops.

As cases of COVID-19 rocket in Colombia, the government has pushed ahead with plans for a new national programme of aerial spraying. To this end, the National Authority of Environmental Licences requested communities attend online public hearings to approve the required environmental management plans. However, many of these communities have limited or no access to the internet, a challenge exacerbated by the lockdown and the inability to travel to more connected locations.

In May 2020, a judge ruled that virtual public hearings do not comply with the requirement for meaningful consultation with rural communities and their organisations. Meanwhile, the government and military continue to pursue manual crop eradication programmes without seeking free, prior and informed consent. This is resulting in further conflicts, complaints of human rights abuses and exacerbated risks of introducing coronavirus to rural communities, including indigenous peoples.

Local communities and civil society organisations continue to question the government’s plans, demand effective social and environmental safeguards and seek guarantees that any coca eradication programmes are based on the principle of prior agreement and consent.