Background-
In developing this new hypothesis of environmental impact in this era I call, ‘The Narcocene,’ I find that there are many facets to which develop from an industry so innately wrapped into the economies of countries world-wide, and illicitly. It can often be hard to find ways in which to track an industry so imbedded and hidden as this. However, being a $400+ billion a year industry (see Lab Ten) with an obvious need and whispered truth for land and natural resources, there is no way for it to go without some sort of impact. In beginning to unpack our library structured thus far, we are hoping to discover what sort of impact that this industry is making on current environmental fronts, specifically in Mexico.
Procedure-
1. Read
2. Read
3. Digest
4. Read
5. Repeat
This may sound redundant or even unequivocally irrelevant, but alas, that has been this current week’s studies. In order to unpack the immense amount of material we have collected in our library, we must read, digest, annotate, and unpack every piece, and perhaps break off into new research, for each article/book, in order to find correlations and causations forest loss and negative impacts in biodiversity due to the illicit drug industry.
5. Through a basic work through of the twenty sources in our library, we started to map possible ideas and relations between various important actors and actions. We started this by making lists of those roles in The Narcocene. We then grouped each into a category, situating framework and focus topics (as we did in our library with tags).
7. Using this, we began working through the information via a type of correlation map known as the actor-network theory, or ANT, which "focuses on the relations between issue-specific actors and processes that connect these agents in networks" (Jim Proctor). Through visual interpretation, created on the cmap program, we were able to display connections from the illicit drug industry to forest loss and biodiversity.
Results-
Using cmaps, we created an ANTmap that visually conveyed the results of forest loss and detriment to biodiversity due to the illicit drug industry (specifically the production and distribution of such).
This ANTmap creation helped us to organize and, through much deliberation, cut our some of the involved factors to narrow down the influences that need to be further researched to establish how a 'reduction in the illicit drug trade could reduce the impacts of deforestation.’
Discussion-
As we begin to delve into our research of ‘The Narcocene’ and its validity, I find that developing a connection between the entire drug industry and its environmental influences may be harder to differentiate from other influences than originally proposed. In order to begin to find this, we first must find attributes to base our findings of industrial influence and causal forest loss from such. In narrowing down our influence of the dug trade, we find that perhaps portraying, through ARCgis mapping, the influence of drug affiliated, violent interactions are associated with forest loss in Mexico. While there is still more data to be found and resources to dissect, we hope to connect and portray further correlations and causations as we progress. See here for more information on my situated research project.