Background-
In wrapping up my guided research of The Anthropocene and The Capitalocene as theories of explanation of the current era and environmental impacts, I now have the opportunity to shift my research to a third and final topic of choice. For this final situated project, my attention, and thus research, has been drawn to understanding how negative environmental impacts have occurred due to the illicit drug industry. This $400B+ a year global industry, while hard to track and keep informed data on due to its dubious and closeted nature, has inarguably caused environmental harm through its processes of production, distribution, and use. Various species and landscapes are being threatened, putting a strain on biodiversity and changing levels of overall Environmental Justice for many Indigenous peoples. Thus posing my framing question: “How do the production, distribution, and use of illicit drugs alter land use and cover change?”
In exploring this newly hypothesized era that we refer to as The Narcocene, one of my partners found a particular interest in the illicit drug industry in Mexico due to her planned Study Abroad trip there. Thus, while we are framing this global issue in hopes of better understanding, we will be focusing on the situated occurrences in Mexico. Through the use of various reputable sources and libraries, we are hoping to delve deeper into the forest loss, biodiversity, and pollutants associated with the illicit drug industry in Mexico to learn more about these various drivers of environmental degradation.
Procedure-
In beginning to research any new topic of which I have little understanding, sources of information are crucial. Our first step (my two partners and myself) in confronting our concept of a new hypothesized era was to narrow down the type of sources that we would be using for research. We agreed that any sources we used must be either published books, or peer reviewed articles/ highly cited publications (at least 200 or recent and relevant). Our two starting sources/search engines were Google Scholar and the Lewis and Clark Watzek Library, each providing us with a multitude of reputable sources for free access online. After establishing our source engines and types of sources to look for, we had to also decide where to begin our research in order to identify key references. Our focus was to find articles that referenced Mexico, illicit drug industry, and environmental crises, or as many of the three as possible, in order to connect our situated context in the broader light of our framing question.
In order to save and share our sources, we utilized an application called Zotero to create a virtual library that we could all access and edit. Titling our library, “The Narcocene” it stores twenty publications (articles, books, etc) that we believe are key resources in addressing and connecting our framing question and situated context. We then sorted our library using ‘tags,’ which label each reference as being more helpful in addressing our overall framing question that drives our research, or in addressing and formulating our focus question. In addition, we edited the abstract of each source to include not only a short summary, but a possible connection in how we will use in source during our research over the next few weeks.
Results-
While we have yet to unpack our sources and begin untangling the actions and reactions involved, our current library gathered proves an obvious correlation between the illicit drug industry and environmental degradation. We have found forest lost to be associated with drug production and distribution, and drug production and use to be a source of many pollutants. There seems to also be a strain on biodiversity in areas where a combination of production and trafficking are more prevalent. As we further connect our sources, I hope to find direct connections and causations out of these correlations.
Discussion-
In light of our opening research to begin building on the concept of The Narcocene, many of our sources seem to portray a strong urgency for legislative change and further action in regards to combating forest loss, biodiversity shifts, and pollutants. We have found that globally, there are many hot spots where this is occurring, Mexico being one, where these forms are affecting many minorities and Indigenous groups. In order to begin to grasp a better understanding, I will need to follow this research with a breakdown /analyzation of all actors involved, and how their actions result and connect to these environmental reactions. In doing this, I may be able to finalize my overarching (framing) question, in addition to my focus question situated in Mexico.