Last October, I attended Conference of the Parties (COP) 16 to the Convention on Biological Diversity (CBD) in Cali, Colombia with the International Coalition on Drug Policy Reform and Environmental Justice to promote the Coalition's report, "Revealing the Missing Link to Climate Justice: Drug Policy". As a Los Angeles born, mixed-race person of Guatemalan and Indigenous descent, I also traveled to Cali, Colombia from Los Angeles, California to cultivate strategic alliances in strengthening Indigenous Rights and environmental justice in global drug policy. Until recently, the environmental impacts of the global drug economy had been absent from international treaty and negotiations forums, neglecting a critical gap in safeguarding protections for nature and biodiversity.
For years, diverse communities around the world have denounced the failures of the global war on drugs, particularly in generating compounding social and public health crises over multiple generations. However, little was known or mentioned on how the UN-led drug war was also contributing to deforestation, biodiversity loss, and climate change- not to mention deadly violence for Indigenous communities.

The Coalition’s report highlights how the current enforcement and punitive approaches in drug policies play a significant role in causing environmental devastation in the world’s most critical forest ecosystems, posing a serious threat to achieving global climate justice. Despite this, reforming drug policies is absent from the global climate negotiations agenda, as well as the 2030 Sustainable Development Goals (SDG’s) Agenda.
Our Coalition was formed to build a bridge between the global drug policy reform and climate justice movements, so that their strategies are mutually informed, responsive, and lead to integrated reforms. Securing land & Indigenous rights, achieving strong climate governance, protecting biodiversity, and ending deforestation will be severely thwarted without robust engagement from the Environmental Sector on the role of Prohibition.
We believe the necessity for this cross-pollination of global movements is urgent and would effectively advance planetary health and sustainable developments.

Within the UN bodies dealing with global drug policy and transnational organized crime, Indigenous rights, environmental, and climate justice have historically been neglected as priorities. This is the case particularly the Commission of Narcotic Drugs (CND) and the Commission on Criminal Prevention and Criminal Justice (CCPCJ), two Commissions of the ECOSOC Council situated within the UN Office of Drugs and Crime (UNODC). It is urgent for such international Commissions to provide a permanent platform for Indigenous Peoples and Local Communities (IPLC), environmental land defenders, and climate activists to offer testimony on the drug war’s environmental impacts and to offer recommendations for adopting a global health strategy rooted in demilitarization, human rights, and ecologically sound responses to drug production, sale, and consumption to minimize harms. The upcoming 68th session of the CND will be a key opportunity in 2025 for advocating for this safeguard.
Under Gustavo Petro's Presidency, the theme "Paz con la naturaleza," or "Peace with Nature," was chosen for COP16 to inspire international dialogue and cooperation around the ecological urgency of advancing a just transition away from global militarization, structural, and industrial environmental plunder. The international fora took place within days of Petro declaring the state’s intention to buy the coca crop from cultivators, a reiteration of a vision for a transition from elicit to licit industries declared earlier in 2024.
Members of the Coalition were invited by the Colombian Govt. in the Green Zone and the Brazilian Government in the Blue Zone to present on the relationship between current drug policies and the climate emergency and the possibility of delivering environmental justice by reforming drug policies. Both events marked a significant breakthrough of bringing drug policy reform to the climate justice and biodiversity movements. The Colombian government also hosted a number of discussions that highlighted the implications of the critical review of the coca leaf by the World Health Organization’s Expert Committee on Drug Dependence (ECDD) and recommendations on its schedule status. These events primarily took place at Casa de Pacifica, a space sponsored by Colombia’s Office of the Peace Commissioner Counselor that hosted critical dialogues on the relationships between global drug prohibition, Indigenous Rights, ancestral traditional practices, peacebuilding, environmental justice, public health, and biodiversity. Our Coalition also attended such events at De Justicia’s salon, which also focused programming on the social, environmental, and public health impacts of the illicit cocaine trade in the region, the traditional and cultural uses of the coca leaf, and the impetus for transforming the national and regional illicit drug economy.

A key critique that emerged among voices in the civil society “green zone” was the exclusive nature of the “blue zone,” where negotiations for the Convention took place among party delegations, heads of state, and observers accredited by the CBD. The green and blue zones were geographically far from each other, the green zone in the city center and blue zone in the modernized Valle del Pacífico Event Center, limiting the engagement of civil society with the negotiations. Although the unique role Indigenous Peoples and Local Communities play in the frontlines of safeguarding global diversity is recognized in Article 8(j) of the CBD and, even though there has been a Working Group on Article 8(j) and related provisions established since 1998 at COP 4, it was repeatedly critiqued that the structure of COP 16 negotiations excluded and limited the full and effective participation of diverse Indigenous Peoples around the world.
The International Indigenous Forum on Biodiversity (IIFB) has been tackling the exclusionary structures within the CBD and other relevant international fora since they formed in 1996 during COP-3. Composed of, “representatives of Indigenous governments, Indigenous non-governmental organizations, and Indigenous academics and activists to help coordinate strategies at the global, regional, and national levels to ensure the rights of Indigenous Peoples are respected during negotiations, adoption of decisions of the CBD and its protocols, and its implementation.” At COP 16, it was insightful and thought provoking to hear accounts from a colleague working in the frontline advocacy of the IIFB in the blue zone, while also hearing first-hand accounts from Indigenous Peoples in the green zone over how the representation of Indigenous Peoples within the blue zone was “not enough” and that “we [Indigenous Peoples] are not going to wait for others [to protect them from urgent threats to their territories, ecosystems, and biodiversity posed by illegal mining, deforestation, and transnational organized crimes].”
I was profoundly moved by countless Indigenous land defenders from around the world who shared their emerging strategies for exercising sovereignty, raising global consciousness through the audio-visual arts, advances in capacity-building for defending ancestral lands, biomes, carbon sinks from the extractive industries and how they are cultivating global alliances. Another strong impression I left Cali with is that Indigenous people in frontline forest territories are not waiting to be saved, taking brave actions to defend their rights. The survival of their communities and territories cannot afford the delays in CBD negotiations to produce tangible commitments and financing.
Although negotiations in the blue zone ended without completing the agenda, a key outcome of COP16 was the landmark decision to establish a program of work and a permanent subsidiary body on Article 8(j) and other provisions of the Convention, led by Indigenous Peoples and Local Communities (IPLCs) to safeguard the central role of IPLCs in monitoring and implementing the Convention, including the Kunming-Montreal Global Biodiversity Framework. A priority of this body will be to guide the multilateral benefit-sharing mechanism for digital sequence information of genetic resources associated with traditional knowledge. Disagreement over the financing mechanisms for the CBD and low submission of National Biodiversity Strategies and Action Plans (NBSAPS) by countries led to the suspension of COP16 as negotiations extended beyond November 1st. Funding pledges fall short of the estimated annual $200 billion needed to counteract global biodiversity loss.
My modus operandi at COP 16 was to attend as many sessions in the green zone and maximize my opportunities to listen, learn, ask questions, and introduce myself and the report published by the Coalition. Among the sessions I attended, I noticed that the illicit drug economy, extractive industries, and organized crime were factors consistently noted by Indigenous land defenders from around the world. The number of times I heard Indigenous land defenders and climate activists name the roles of the joint illicit drug economy and the militarized state responses to the illicit economy in driving environmental injustices and deadly violence on Indigenous communities was so notable, that by the end of COP-16, I realized I should have been tracking the number of times it was mentioned in a systematic way. Indigenous peoples and land defenders have been repeating themselves for years on this intersecting crisis so why does a holistic, rights-based and ecologically sustainable approach to the illicit drug economy continue to be neglected and delayed by global NGO’s and UN bodies?

By the end of COP 16, it was clear that there is indeed a missing link. Indigenous Peoples and Local Communities have a strong presence and have sustained extraordinary efforts in international fora such as the CBD and the WIPO Treaty on Genetic Resources and Traditional Knowledge (GRATK) to defend and advance the fulfillment of Indigenous Rights. The UNODC’s CND, the UN fora for drug policy making at the global level does not have a comparable intergovernmental or civil society organization composed of Indigenous members that can participate in dialogues, negotiations, and decisions at the same level as member states of the CND. In light of the persisting testimonies at COP 16 that a militarized response to the “global drug problem” is misaligned with Indigenous Rights, environmental justice, and biodiversity, and in light of last week’s reconvened 67th CND session, where Colombia, Bolivia, Mexico, and Brazil held a united front in advocating for the rights of Indigenous Peoples and the need to address environmental crimes- it’s time to prioritize creating a permanent body within the CND to represent the rights of Indigenous Peoples in global drug policy.

* A note of gratitude to the International Drug Policy Reform and Environmental Justice Coalition and to the Cannabis Embassy for its monumental efforts in 2024: hosting a side event at the 67th Commission on Narcotic Drugs in March and for leading a delegation to the World Intellectual Property Organization (WIPO) Treaty on Genetic Resources and Traditional Knowledge (GRATK) in May, which had been formative to my learning, engagement, and advocacy this past year.

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