Environmental Stress, Illicit Agriculture, and Peacebuilding Opportunities

Penelope Mitchell, Global Water Security Center, University of Alabama (United States)

Declining crop yields and resulting economic and food insecurity are major concerns as temperatures rise, and drought periods become more regular. In agricultural-reliant regions with limited economic opportunities and weak social support systems, constrained growing conditions can drive the expansion of illicit agriculture—notably, the cultivation of crops used to produce illicit drugs such as coca, poppy, or cannabis. The cultivation of these crops can offer an economic lifeline to subsistence and smallholder farmers. However, contribution to the drug trade can lead to regional violence and instability by undermining state governance and often financing non-state armed groups. This presentation explores pathways to illicit agriculture, leveraging the Pathways to Instability framework to help identify broad categories of biophysical impacts and social mediators in the causal pathways from water disturbance to instability and thereby aid identification of key intervention points. To be included in the panel entitled: From Environmental Stress to Instability: Using Tools to Identify Early Warning Signals for Peacebuilding