Narco-Deforestation

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The Mesoamerican Biological Corridor is a global biodiversity hotspot, but it also has one of the highest deforestation rates in the world. Many factors, both anthropogenic and natural, have contributed to this forest loss, including weak governance, high poverty, climate change, illegal logging, and agribusiness expansion. However, the timing and location of much of the recent forest loss in this region corresponds strongly with increased cocaine trafficking, or narco-trafficking, activities. This project is motivated by the need to better understand the processes that produce spatial patterns of narco-trafficking influenced land-use and land-cover change (LUCC), which have both direct and indirect detrimental effects on conversation goals. Ultimately, such an improved understanding may motivate a shift from ‘supply-side’ drug policy, which can accelerate forest loss, to ‘demand-side’ strategies that can alleviate pressure on Mesoamerican landscapes.
Research Team
Kendra McSweeney (PI, The Ohio State University), Erik Nielsen (PI, Northern Arizona University), Jennifer Devine (Texas State University), Nicholas R. Magliocca (UA), Zoe Pearson (University of Wyoming), Steven Sesnie (U.S. Fish & Wildlife Service), Beth Tellman (University of Arizona), David Wrathall (Oregon State University)

Funding:  ​National Socio-Environmental Synthesis Center (SESYNC) under funding received from the National Science Foundation DBI-1052875 (2016-2018).

Publications
  • Magliocca, N.R., McSweeney, K. Sesnie, S.E., Tellman, E., Devine, J.A., Nielsen, E.A., Pearson, Z. Wrathall, D.J., Dávila, A. (2019). Modeling cocaine traffickers and counterdrug interdiction forces as a complex adaptive system. Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences USA, 116 (16): 7784-7792. DOI: https://doi.org/10.1073/pnas.1812459116
  • Tellman, E., Sesnie, S., Magliocca, N.R., Nielsen, E., Devine, J., McSweeney, K., Jain, M.., Wrathall, D., Benessaiah, K., Aguilar-Gonzalez, B. (2020). Illicit Drivers of Land Use Change: Narcotrafficking and Forest Loss in Central America. Global Environmental Change, 63: 102092. DOI: https://doi.org/10.1016/j.gloenvcha.2020.102092.
  •  Wrathall, D.J., Devine, J., Aguilar Gonzalez, B., Benessaiah, K., Tellman, E., Sesnie, S., Nielsen, E., Magliocca, N.R., McSweeney, K., Pearson, Z., Ponstingel, J., Rivera Sosa, A. (2020). The impacts of cocaine-trafficking on conservation governance in Central America. Global Environmental Change, 63:102098. DOI: https://doi.org/10.1016/j.gloenvcha.2020.102098.

Media Coverage
"All coked up: The global environmental impacts of cocaine." Mongabay, April 4, 2022

​Making the Hidden Visible: Accelerated Land-Use Change and Degradation Caused
by Narco-Trafficking In and Around Central America’s Protected Areas

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Around the world, illicit economic activities have profound impacts on land-cover and land-use change (LCLUC). Crimes that exploit the environment are highly lucrative, having reached an estimated global economic value of US$91 to $259 billion per year. One such landscape that has been targeted by various environmental crimes is the Mesoamerican Biological Corridor (MBC) in Central America. The MBC is a patchwork of protected areas, conservation schemes, and wildlife corridors containing an estimated 7-10% of the world’s species, and was established with more than $500 million of domestic and foreign investment. Despite its conservation importance, forest loss rates along the MBC were among the highest in the world over the last two decades. Accelerated deforestation throughout the MBC coincided in space and time with a shift to Central America as the preferred ‘transit zone’ for narco-trafficking, accounting for more than 80% of all U.S.-bound cocaine flows since 2010. This project uses narco-trafficking in the Central American MBC as a case study for how to render illicit activity spatially and temporally explicit – in other words, make the hidden visible. We will use a novel combination of remote-sensing multitemporal-data fusion, counterfactual land change modeling, and synthesis of criminal activity datasets to characterize and predict the impact of narco-traffickers on LCLUC in and around protected areas across the MBC.

Research Team
Senior Personnel: Nicholas R. Magliocca (PI, UA), Matthew Fagan (co-I, University of Maryland Baltimore County), Beth Tellman (co-I, University of Arizona), Jennifer Devine (co-I, Texas State University), Kendra McSweeney (co-I, The Ohio State University), Erik Nielsen (co-I, Northern Arizona University), Steve Sesnie (co-I, U.S. Fish & Wildlife Service), Emil Cherrington (Collaborator, UA Huntsville)

Student Researchers​: Carter Sink

Funding: NASA Land-Cover and Land-Use Change (LCLUC) Program (2021-2023), ​NASA Grant # 80NSSC21K0297

Publications
  • Murillo-Sandoval, P. J., Sesnie, S. E., Armas, M. E. O., Magliocca, N., Tellman, B., Devine, J. A., Nielsen, E., & McSweeney, K. (2024). Central America’s agro-ecological suitability for cultivating coca, Erythroxylum spp. Environmental Research Letters, 19(10), 104068. https://doi.org/10.1088/1748-9326/ad7276
  • ​Magliocca, N. R., Carter, N. H., Devine, J. A., Nielsen, E. A., & Sesnie, S. E. (2024). Jaguar conservation is caught in the crossfire of America's' War on Drugs'. Biological Conservation, 296, 110687. doi.org/10.1016/j.biocon.2024.110687
  • Rodewald, A. D., Lello-Smith, A., Magliocca, N. R., McSweeney, K., Strimas-Mackey, M., Sesnie, S. E., & Nielsen, E. A. (2024). Intersection of narco-trafficking, enforcement and bird conservation in the Americas. Nature Sustainability, 1-5. doi.org/10.1038/s41893-024-01365-z
  • Magliocca, N.R. (2023). Intersecting security, equity, and sustainability for transformation in the Anthropocene. Anthropocene, 43, 100396: https://doi.org/10.1016/j.ancene.2023.100396.
  • Magliocca, N.R., Dhungana, P.*, Sink, C.D.* (2023). Review of counterfactual land change modeling for causal inference in land system science. Journal of Land Use Science, 18(1): DOI: https://doi.org/10.1080/1747423X.2023.2173325.
  • Magliocca, N.R., Dolliver, D.S., Curtin, K.M., McSweeney, K., Price*, A.N. (2022). Shifting landscape suitability for cocaine trafficking through Central America in response to counterdrug interdiction. Landscape & Urban Planning, 221: 104359. DOI: https://doi.org/10.1016/j.landurbplan.2022.104359.
  • Fagan, M.E., Kim, DH., Settle, W. et al. (2022). The expansion of tree plantations across tropical biomes. Nat Sustain 5, 681–688. DOI: https://doi.org/10.1038/s41893-022-00904-w.
  • Magliocca, N.R., Torres, A., Margulies, J.D., Carter, N.H., Gore, M., Arroyo-Quiroz, I., Curtin, K.M., Easter*, T.S., Hübschle, A., Massé, F., McSweeney, K., Rege, A., Tellman, E. (2021). Comparative Analysis of Illicit Supply Network Structure and Operations: Cocaine, Wildlife, and Sand. Journal of Illicit Economies and Development, 3(1): pp. 50–73. DOI: https://doi.org/10.31389/jied.76.
  • Tellman, B., McSweeney, K., Manak, L., Devine, J.A., Sesnie, S., Nielsen, E. and Dávila, A. (2021). Narcotrafficking and Land Control in Guatemala and Honduras. Journal of Illicit Economies and Development, 3(1), pp.132–159. DOI: http://doi.org/10.31389/jied.83.
Presentations
  • “Narco-Trafficking Caused Land-Use Change”. GIZ and UNODC Expert Meeting on Drugs and the Environment. Vienna, Austria (virtual). September 21, 2021.
  • "Making the Hidden Visible: Accelerated Land-Use Change and Degradation Caused by Narco-Trafficking In and Around Central America’s Protected Areas". Forest Hotspots - LCLUC Webinar Series (virtual). October 14, 2022.
Media Coverage