As all previous interventions have made plain, drugs are unequivocally an environmental issue.
Looking ahead, three opportunities where the debate around the environmental impacts of drugs and drug policy can be taken forward:
1. Integrate environmental impacts into the 2024 mid-term review process
The first is to integrate the environmental impacts of drug policy into the 2024 mid-term review of international drug policy commitments as reflected in the 2019 CND Ministerial Declaration. The modalities resolution for this review as adopted by this year’s CND sets out the process and format for such a review process, including the organisation of “Two interactive, multi-stakeholder round tables, in parallel with the plenary meetings, on the topics ‘Taking stock: work undertaken since 2019’ and ‘The way forward: the road to 2029 and beyond’.
In light of government commitments emerging out of both the climate and biodiversity COPs, it is crucial that environmental concerns in relation to drugs and drug policy are integrated into this review process and in the plans for the coming 5 year, 2024-2029 period. As the UN Secretary General has said, “Making peace with nature is the defining task of the 21st century ... It must be the top, top priority for everyone, everywhere.”
The 2022 UNODC’s World Drug Report for the first time included a Special Booklet on drugs and the environment. While this is a welcome first step in raising the importance of the issue, the international drug policy community must acknowledge the breadth and severity of the environmental impacts associated with drug control policies, particularly for countries in the global South, and member states should commit themselves to reforming policies to eliminate this damage. Some of our more detailed proposals for doing so are contained in our response to the World Drug Report, copies of which can be found in the room!
2. Don’t go it alone: Develop an environmental harm reduction strategy
The second recommendation – and related to the above - can be summed up as ‘don’t go it alone’. The agreement of the UN Common Position on Drugs and linkages to the 2030 Sustainable Development Agenda are all welcome developments that can help to foster UN system wide coherence and overcome some of the regime contradictions and blindspots that were spoken of earlier.
There is much scope, certainly at in-country programme level but also at international regime level, for greater inter-agency collaboration between UNODC and e.g. UNEP, UNDP, FAO, the UN Permanent Forum on Indigenous Issues to enhance understanding of the drugs-environment-development nexus. Such inter-agency collaboration could help in the formulation of an environmental harm reduction approach and could look at things such as:
- The complex drivers of land use change, expansion of the agricultural frontier and loss of forest cover in areas where drugs are produced or trafficked
- The needs of fragile ecosystems negatively impacted by the drug trade and by drug control policy for access to financial support to meet conservation targets, invest in climate adaption and mitigation, and repair previous harm
- How best to strengthen the environmental governance capacity of local communities in drug affected areas within the broader context of sustainable (rural) development
Such an environmental harm reduction approach can be used to submit drug control policies to an environmental stress test or risk assessment framework as talked about earlier. This would not only put an end to harmful drug control strategies such as forced eradication or badly designed crop-substitution programmes, but can be used to predict and prevent future harm moving forward.