Why Do Narcos Invest in Rural Land?

McSweeney, Kendra; Richani, Nazih; Pearson, Zoe; Devine, Jennifer A.; Wrathall, David

doi:10.1353/lag.2017.0019

Cited by 64 publications

(53 citation statements)

References 60 publications

Supporting

Mentioning

Contrasting

Unclassified

Order By: Relevance

“…In Central and South America, many indigenous peoples occupy large territories, even though their populations may be scarce [72]. This fact, coupled with the typical absence of State authorities on the ground and widespread corruption, facilitates the entrance of illegal actors who often operate within indigenous territories [73], sometimes turning communal land into private property through various mechanisms [74,75]. Given that Central and South America are the most violent regions on Earth, where the majority of environmental defenders are killed every year (particularly in Brazil and Colombia but many also in Peru, Central America and Mexico) (see https://www.theguardian.…”

Section: Lessons Learnt From Initial Experiences Using Drones With Inmentioning

confidence: 99%

Grassroots Innovation Using Drones for Indigenous Mapping and Monitoring

Paneque-Gálvez

Vargas-Ramírez

Napoletano

et al. 2017

Land

View full text Add to dashboard Cite

Indigenous territories are facing increasing pressures from numerous legal and illegal activities that are pushing commodity frontiers within their limits, frequently causing severe environmental degradation and threatening indigenous territorial rights and livelihoods. In Central and South America, after nearly three decades of participatory mapping projects, interest is mounting among indigenous peoples in the use of new technologies for community mapping and monitoring as a means of defense against such threats. Since 2014, several innovative projects have been developed and implemented in the region to demonstrate and train indigenous communities in the use of small drones for territorial mapping and monitoring. In this paper, we report on five projects carried out in Peru, Guyana, and Panama. For each one we describe the context, main objectives, positive outcomes, challenges faced, and opportunities ahead. Preliminary results are promising and have gained the interest of many indigenous societies who envision this technology as a powerful tool to protect their territories and strengthen their claims regarding specific environmental liabilities and justice issues. Based on the results presented here and a review of previous similar studies, we offer a critical discussion of some of the main opportunities and challenges that we foresee regarding the use of small drones for indigenous territorial mapping and monitoring. In addition, we elaborate on why a careful, well thought-out, and progressive adoption of drones by indigenous peoples may trigger grassroots innovations in ways conducive to greater environmental justice and sustainability.

show abstract

Section: Lessons Learnt From Initial Experiences Using Drones With Inmentioning

confidence: 99%

Grassroots Innovation Using Drones for Indigenous Mapping and Monitoring

Paneque-Gálvez

Vargas-Ramírez

Napoletano

et al. 2017

Land

View full text Add to dashboard Cite

show abstract

“…11 The idea is part of Jason Moore's (2010aMoore's ( , 2010bMoore's ( , 2015 agenda-setting push for a "World Ecology" perspective. 12 Reyes (1997), Ballvé (2012), andMcSweeney et al (2017). 13 This is not to say, however, that a space must be riven by decades of "war" to qualify as a narco-frontier; political violence comes in various forms.…”

Section: Deadly Conflations: Counterinsurgency and Narco-capitalmentioning

confidence: 99%

Narco‐frontiers: A spatial framework for drug‐fuelled accumulation

Ballvé

2018

Journal of Agrarian Change

View full text Add to dashboard Cite

Based on historical and ethnographic research conducted in a region of northwest Colombia and drawing on the stories of novelist Gabriel García Márquez, this article develops the analytical concept of “narco‐frontiers” to help disentangle the confusing political economy of agrarian spaces affected by the violence of the drug war. As socially produced spaces, narco‐frontiers emerge through the convergence of four interlocking processes: uneven development, internal colonialism, political violence, and narco‐fuelled dispossession. Although often depicted as “ungovernable” or “stateless” spaces, narco‐frontiers are wracked by extra‐legal regimes of rule in which the state is simply one actor among others. With the drug trade inducing violent agrarian change all over the world—from Colombia to Afghanistan, Burma to Central America—this article offers a spatial‐historical framework for understanding these dramatic transformations.

show abstract

“…A higher-level driver of land conversion in the region that underpins both mining and infrastructure is the flow of international capital, both legal [35] and illegal [11,35], and the associated threats to governance associated with the latter [36]. While individual mining operations are small in scope and managed by individuals, they are interconnected by capital sources and can be viewed as working on behalf of larger enterprises.…”

Section: Economic Drivers Of Mining Expansionmentioning

confidence: 99%

“…Indeed, ASGM is the largest single contributor of global mercury pollution, accounting for over 37% of all emissions [8]. The difficulties inherent in managing for such a disruptive land use is further complicated by a web of socioeconomic factors such as poverty, gold prices, infrastructure, and the flow of illegal capital [9][10][11].…”

Section: Introductionmentioning

confidence: 99%

Deforestation and Forest Degradation Due to Gold Mining in the Peruvian Amazon: A 34-Year Perspective

Espejo¹,

Messinger²,

D.³

et al. 2018

Preprint

View full text Add to dashboard Cite

While deforestation rates decline globally they are rising in the western Amazon. Artisanal-scale gold mining (ASGM) is a large cause of this deforestation and brings with it extensive environmental, social, governance, and public health impacts, including large carbon emissions and mercury pollution. Underlying ASGM is a broad network of factors that influence its growth, distribution, and practices such as poverty, flows of legal and illegal capital, conflicting governance, and global economic trends. Despite its central role in land use and land cover change in the western Amazon and the severity of its social and environmental impacts, it is relatively poorly studied. While ASGM in southeastern Peru has been quantified previously, doing so is difficult due to the heterogeneous nature of the resulting landscape. Using a novel approach to classify mining that relies on a fusion of CLASlite and the Global Forest Change dataset, two Landsat-based deforestation detection tools, we sought to quantify ASGM-caused deforestation in the period 1984-2017 in the southern Peruvian Amazon and examine trends in the geography, methods, and impacts of ASGM across that time. We identify nearly 100,000 ha of deforestation due to ASGM in the 34-year study period, an increase of 21% compared to previous estimates. Further, we find that 10% of that deforestation occurred in 2017, with 53% occurring since 2011. Finally, we demonstrate key patterns and changes in ASGM activity and techniques through time and space and discuss their connections with, and impacts on, socio-economic factors such as land tenure, infrastructure, international markets, governance efforts, and social and environmental impacts.

show abstract

Why Do Narcos Invest in Rural Land?

Cited by 64 publications

References 60 publications

Grassroots Innovation Using Drones for Indigenous Mapping and Monitoring

Grassroots Innovation Using Drones for Indigenous Mapping and Monitoring

Narco‐frontiers: A spatial framework for drug‐fuelled accumulation

Deforestation and Forest Degradation Due to Gold Mining in the Peruvian Amazon: A 34-Year Perspective

Contact Info

Product

Resources

About