Mama Coca

THE COCA PAPER

Executive Summary

The Coca Paper is a social business proposal by María Mercedes Moreno of Mama Coca. MamaCoca is a French Law 1901 Human Rights Defense Association, founded in 1998, online www.mamacoca.org in 2001, and legally constituted in 2003. The Coca Paper is a sustainable, profitable and Human Rights-abiding formula for eliminating the dependency of Colombian peasants on growing coca-for-cocaine for a living. This productive project is proposed as a manual/mechanical, voluntary, mass and permanent eradication formula for the extensive coca currently grown for illicit purposes.

The Coca Paper is proposed as a means to put an end to the intensive use of herbicides to grow and eradicate coca for cocaine. The millions of gallons of herbicides used on and against coca in Colombia are destroying Colombians’ health, the nation’s privileged mega-diversity and the country’s agricultural future. The extensive growing and intensive aerial spraying of coca have generated, and still cause, an unending scope of health, social, environmental, political and economic hazards. Chemically grown, destined and fumigated coca constitutes one of the most serious obstacles to peace in Colombia. Firstly, because it fuels and finances the war system economy and, secondly, but not lastly, because the coca economy is still the most resorted to livelihood of Colombian agriculture and peasants. Thus, the principal goal of The Coca Paper is to achieve coca eradication through the production of coca-paper products and to make this one-time eradication permanent, by way of a nationwide large-scale organic paper and pulp production industry. The whole coca bush (roots and all) dealkylized (freed of its cocaine alkaloid) immediately after uprooting, will serve to start up the paper industry. This business proposal responds to appraisals by the UNODCP regarding the need to find sustainable eradication measures which include greater social justice support policies and measures for Colombian farmers.

The use of this coca to produce paper products will guarantee its manual/mechanical, voluntary, non-chemical and permanent eradication. Firstly, because, by using this coca (once and for all), coca peasants can be ensured immediate income, thus surmounting one of the main obstacles to successful voluntary and permanent eradication; namely, the time gap between the moment the peasant eradicates and the time he starts earning a substitute income. Secondly, this one-time use of the coca already planted would allow the Indigenous peoples and International Community to effectively measure and control the amounts of coca leaf used and eradicated. This coca, once eradicated, will be substituted by other of the country’s many fiber-rich plants which can be used to make paper, paper pulp and varied paper products. One-time production volumes, plus these alternative crops which involve the peasants in the productive process, serve as proof of substitution of coca. Thirdly, using the country’s many fiber-rich plants (diverse genus and species, depending on the region), will not only serve to recover the seeds of biodiversity —lost to sole-crop policies and extensive cattle breeding tendencies—, but will also ensure the continuation and expansion of this organic-farming commercial venture. \

The Coca Paper is an Alternative Development Project seeking to address the “drug” issue in Colombia from a global perspective:

1. Economic alternatives to empower and free coca and non-coca growing peasants from the control of the diverse armed groups which occupy their territories.

2. The studies and knowledge needed to take Colombia beyond its conditioning by the narcotics traffic and

3. The programs needed to address drug-use issues in Colombia.

ÍNDICE DOSSIER:

BUSINESS PLAN

2. Presentación general

3. Bases investigativas

4. Marco legal

5. Tregua Química

6. Metodología de consolidación

7. Producción y costos estimados proyecto a escala

8. Producción estimada del proyecto piloto

9. Costos proyecto piloto (tarjetas artesanales estrategia Navidad 2007)