ISA 2022: Drug Wars, Climate Change, and Environmental Peacebuilding: Community Leadership for Sustainable Peace

Today’s world necessitates mass extraction---of minerals, coal, gas, timber, labor—to keep up with the pace of modern life. However, these extractive industries often foster brutal conflicts between local communities, industries, states, and sometimes even guerrilla or paramilitary groups. To exacerbate already existing environmental conflict, illicit drugs (such as cocaine, opium, marijuana, and others) often fill the gaps to fund arms and resources for these conflicts. Additionally, illicit crops themselves often exist in the natural ecosystems of specific places (coca in the Andes, poppy in the Middle East), wherein local peoples have historical agricultural and spiritual relationships with these plants. These complex intersections between environmental conflict, climate change, and illicit drugs deeply highlight the need for meaningful engagement with environmental peacebuilding to foster long-term peace solutions in regions impacted by extractive industry and illicit drug flows. Communities in Colombia, Mexico, and Afghanistan offer lessons on leadership for how to address the intersecting complications of conflict due to extraction, illicit drugs, and climate crisis. This paper undertakes comparative analysis of these three countries, following grassroots community leaders , state actors, and policy changes to illuminate solutions for sustainable peace that improve both human and environmental wellbeing.