Fumigation’s Consequences in Colombia and Implications for Afghanistan
The Washington Office on Latin America
is pleased to invite you to a seminar
Chemical Reactions
Fumigation's Consequences in Colombia
and
Implications for Afghanistan
featuring
Yamile Salinas Abdala
Fundación INDEPAZ (Institute for Development and Peace Studies)
Bogotá, Colombia
and
William Byrd
Poverty Reduction and Economic Management Advisor
The World Bank
Monday, April 7, 2008
10:30 am – 12:00 noon
The Washington Home of Stewart R. Mott
122 Maryland Avenue, NE
Washington, DC
Despite intensified aerial herbicide spraying in recent years, coca growing and cocaine production in Colombia remain robust. Indeed, by jeopardizing rural families' food crops, fumigation has reinforced farmers' reliance on coca and prompted migration to new areas, spreading the ecological destruction that coca growing entails. Notwithstanding fumigation's poor results in Colombia, the U.S. government has been pressing Afghanistan to undertake aerial spraying in the face of surging opium poppy cultivation.
Please join us for a timely discussion of the impacts of fumigation in Colombia, the potential implications of adopting a similar approach in Afghanistan, and proposals for alternative drug control strategies in both countries.
Yamile Salinas Abdala is an expert on environmental issues and researcher for the Inspector General of Colombia at the Institute for Development and Peace Studies (INDEPAZ).
She is co-author of WOLA's new report, Chemical Reactions – Fumigation: Spreading Coca and Threatening Colombia's Ecological and Cultural Diversity, at www.wola.org/media/WOLA%20Chemical%20Reactions%20February%202008.pdf
William Byrd is currently serving in the World Bank Headquarters in Washington, DC as Adviser in the Poverty Reduction and Economic Management Unit of the South Asia Region. Until recently he was the Bank's Senior Economic Adviser based in Kabul, Afghanistan. He has been responsible for helping develop the World Bank's strategy for support to Afghanistan's reconstruction effort and was responsible for establishing the World Bank's office in Kabul. He led the team that produced the first World Bank economic report on Afghanistan in a quarter-century.
He is co-author of a recent report from the World Bank and the UK's Department for International Development, Afghanistan: Economic Incentives and Development Initiatives to Reduce Opium Production, at http://www.worldbank.org.af/
Ms. Salinas' remarks will be in Spanish, with interpretation into English available.
Please RSVP by April 3 to Rachel Robb at [email protected] or call (202) 797-2171.
