Abstract

Whichever way we look at it Alternative Development is at a crossroads: there is confusion over language and terms, concerns over the technical capacity of implementing bodies, and the growing view that the attribution of both drug control and development outcomes to alternative development projects remains opaque. The result is funding for alternative development projects continues to fall.

There are certainly many in the wider development community who question how alternative development differs from conventional rural development and whether the inclusion of key cross cutting issues such as poverty, gender, the environment and conflict have actually manifested in improvements in the lives and livelihoods of primary stakeholders. Without more robust evidence of the impact of these programmes on both human development indicators and illicit drug crop cultivation, as well as improved confidence in the effectiveness of those bodies that have traditionally designed and implemented alternative development programmes, it is unlikely that levels of funding for the kind of discrete area based alternative development projects of the past will actually recover.

More recently in Afghanistan, and increasingly in other source countries in Asia, the term ‘alternative development’ has been substituted with ‘Alternative Livelihoods’ with little recognition of the conceptual and operational differences. Elsewhere terms such as ‘Sustainable Alternative Livelihoods’ and indeed ‘Sustainable Livelihoods’ itself are sneaking into the rubric of drug control agencies as they search for a common language and legitimacy with the development community.

Even the term ‘Alternative Development’ still means ‘many things to many people’. For those whose performance is measured simply in terms of reductions in the amount of opium poppy and coca grown, alternative development is seen as simply as the ‘carrot’ to the eradication ‘stick’, and the provision of development assistance is contingent on reductions in illicit drug crop cultivation. For others, reductions in illicit drug crop cultivation are an externality of a development process (that includes extending good governance and the rule of law) aimed at achieving sustainable improvements in lives and livelihoods. In terms of both process and the primary goal there is still much disagreement with regard to alternative development.

However, there is a danger of ‘throwing the baby out with the bathwater’. Alternative development projects have achieved both development and drug control outcomes in specific geographical areas where more conventional development agencies are often not even present, despite the prevailing levels of poverty and conflict. For those who have experienced the low levels of literacy, high incidence of food insecurity, infant mortality and malnutrition that typically exist in illicit drug crop producing areas, as well as the lack of governance and prevailing levels of violence and intimidation from both state and non-state actors, arguments about the relatively high income of opium poppy and coca growing households seems rather inappropriate and ill informed. To this group the subsequent improvements in the income and quality of life of communities that often accompany alternative development projects at the same time as levels of opium poppy or coca cultivation fall are obvious, even if they might have been documented better or achieved more cost effectively.

Given the concentration of illicit drug crops in marginal areas where weak governance, conflict and poverty prevail it is clear that the current impasse on the role of the development community in improving the lives and livelihoods of those residing in illicit drug crop producing areas has to be overcome so that both development and drug control communities can meet their different but interrelated objectives. Yet, there is a need to recognise that greater engagement by the development community will not be achieved by launching a new marketing campaign and trying to sell what is already considered a faulty product more effectively, or simply tinkering with the name in the hope that non one notices the ‘alternative development’ product has actually passed its ‘sell-by-date’. Instead, there is a need for the proponents of alternative development to learn from the wider development community in terms of conceptual frameworks, understanding the nature of change in rural livelihoods, and in particular, to recognise that the more traditional project type intervention has its limitations and that a wider-sectoral approach is required to build an enabling policy environment for development efforts to have make a real impact. At the same time, there is a need for the development community to move way from what can be a rather unsophisticated and outdated model of the ‘profit maximising illicit drug farmer’ and further its understanding of the complex role that illicit drug crops play in the livelihoods of the rural poor.

This Discussion paper is aimed at promoting just such an understanding between both communities. Indeed, it is targeted at a wider development community that has often been at best suspicious of the illicit drug issues and a drug control community that has often proved insular and unable to draw on the lessons learned from the implementation of more conventional rural development interventions over the last decade. The paper is intended to provoke both communities into a more constructive dialogue: a dialogue that is aimed more at developing a deeper understanding of the considerable overlap between drug control and development agendas; and that promotes partnership – no longer based on the distinct and rather artificial discipline of ‘alternative development’ in which neither development nor drug control community have ownership – but based on agreed principles of integrating an analysis of the causes of illicit drug crop cultivation into conventional development programmes, a common understanding of how development outcomes can translate into drug control achievements, and an ethos of doing ‘development in a drugs environment’.