ligning Drug Policy with Environmental Protection As the UN is seeking greater drug policy coherence, including via the implementation of the UN System Common Position, it is urgent that drug policy becomes better aligned with other crucial UN priorities, including protecting the environment, conserving nature, tackling climate change and upholding the rights of Indigenous Peoples. To date, only limited steps have been taken to illuminate the intersections between drug policy and the environment, and even less to bring global regimes into alignment. The UN drug control system is often found to operate at odds with UN regime complexes in other issue areas. This side event explored how punitive drug policies have empowered organised crime and accelerated environmental degradation, and proposed concrete recommendations to ensure that UN and national drug policies can support – instead of undermine – efforts made by the international community to protect the environment.

Speakers:

0:00 Clemmie James, Health Poverty Action
1:42 Jhon Alexander Rojas Cabrera, Governor of Nariño, Colombia
8:13 Kendra McSweeney, Ohio State University
15:56 Dave Bewley-Taylor, Global Drug Policy Observatory
23:43 Pedro Arenas, Corporación Viso Mutop
31:23 Sylvia Kay, Transnational Institute
39:33 Marta Machado, National Secretary for Drug Policy, Brazil
44:57 Video Nariño
46:26 Q & A

Organised by the Transnational Institute, the governments of Brazil and Colombia, the Global Drug Policy Observatory, Health Poverty Action, the International Drug Policy Consortium, Open Society Foundations, Viso Mutop and the Washington Office on Latin America