The Amazon rainforest in southern Colombia stretches lush and green across the horizon, but beneath its dense canopy lies a shifting reality. The southern province of Putumayo – a remote region bordering Ecuador, at the edge of the country’s Amazon – has long been dominated by coca plantations and burdened by the perennial shadow of the country’s armed conflict.
With its fertile ground for coca – the raw material for cocaine – the remote area has fostered a web of illegal activity that drives both local economies and the violent dynamics of armed groups vying for control.
For many in Putumayo, coca has remained an economic mainstay, a guaranteed income in a place where legal alternatives are scarce, infrastructure is limited, and state presence is intermittent at best.
In recent decades, successive Colombian governments have attempted to curb coca cultivation, yet eradication efforts have had limited success and production surged in 2023.
The human and environmental cost of this illicit crop is enormous: homicides, ongoing human rights abuses, child exploitation, deforestation, soil degradation and water contamination leave lasting scars on Putumayo’s social fabric, as well as its lush ecosystem, threatening the Amazon’s biodiversity.
Amid this landscape, a small group on the outskirts of the town of Puerto Caicedo has charted a different course. The El Progreso Association of Female Fish Farmers and Agricultural Producers, known by its Spanish acronym of ASOPPAEP, is a women’s collective of former coca farmers turning their resources towards a legal and more eco-friendly alternative: fish farming.
“Before we had a greater economic fluidity, but we lived in the fear of knowing that it was something illicit, that if you encountered the army or an armed group it would be a problem,” Aura Ruiz, a representative of the ASOPPAEP, tells Dialogue Earth, as she stands in the shade by one of the collective’s numerous pools.
The group’s 12 members cleared their terrain of the coca plantations that previously peppered the area’s hills. Where coca once flourished, ASOPPAEP now operates a series of aquaculture pools which are home to thousands of tambaqui and tilapia fish, producing nearly 4,000 kilograms every six months.
“Now, we can cultivate our produce without any law or entity preventing us from doing so. It strengthens us, it gives us peace of mind and, beyond that, we know that we are contributing to the family economy,” Ruiz explains.
The environmental toll of coca
Putumayo’s rich soil and isolated location make it ideal for coca plantations. While coca has served as a vital income source for rural communities in the absence of other options, the environmental cost is devastating. Farmers cut swathes of rainforest to make room for coca plants, stripping the land of native vegetation and the species that rely on it, thus intensifying deforestation in the area.
“Coca farming oftentimes is a subsistence economy, which attracts violence amongst armed groups and harsh state crackdowns,” says Bram Ebus, a consultant at the International Crisis Group think-tank. “We cannot make the argument that coca plantations enrich local communities, or are actually wanted by local communities, but due to the lack of other livelihood opportunities people are oftentimes forced to partake because they need to make ends meet.”
Land grabbing and industries such as cattle ranching also contribute greatly to deforestation across the region, and are known to have links to illicit economies and the armed groups present in the area.
Additionally, the processing of coca into cocaine releases toxic chemicals, often dumped into nearby rivers and streams, poisoning the area’s water sources.
For communities in Putumayo, the deforestation and contamination associated with coca cultivation mean more than environmental damage – they signal the erosion of local resources that are fundamental to their survival.
In this context, ASOPPAEP’s commitment to fish farming serves as a sustainable alternative that does not require the destruction of forests and results in more manageable levels of chemical waste. Through aquaculture, it is creating a new model of land use that prioritises ecological health while offering a viable income stream to rural families.
“We strive to make great use of everything in order to help conserve nature, trees, and water. We want to protect without destroying and razing everything, because we know that Putumayo is a part of the Amazon and therefore also part of the world’s lungs,” Ruiz says.
The cooperative is mindful of the impact its work has on its surrounding environment, and says it has implemented protocols to limit its waste and maximise production opportunities. Its members reuse fish scales to produce collagen, and turn fish entrails into organic fertiliser for crops in the area.
By making full use of their resources, ASOPPAEP’s members attempt to minimise their environmental impact, aiming to establish a circular economy that benefits both the community and the land. By prioritising self-sufficiency and a legal income, they are challenging the economic dominance of coca in Putumayo – and giving the region’s damaged environment a chance to recover.
An uphill battle
Fish farming is not without its challenges, though. The work comes with a high degree of financial risk, and the ASOPPAEP cannot fully overlook the security risks inevitably intertwined with rural work in an area like Putumayo.
“When transitioning to an economy that improves the conservation of biodiversity, there is no magic formula,” Luz Ángela Florez, Amazon region coordinator at WWF Colombia tells Dialogue Earth. “In terms of economic alternatives, there isn’t one that equals the income produced by coca. Transitions away from coca will always be related not to an economic issue, but to a matter of risk.”
Additionally, the cooperative relies on a six-month production cycle during which fish stocks mature before they can be harvested and sold.
This extended timeline means that members often seek supplementary income through small-scale agriculture or other side jobs to cover costs between harvests. The cooperative has also faced difficulties accessing larger markets, as rural infrastructure in Putumayo remains underdeveloped, limiting its ability to scale up.
The Colombian government’s National Program for the Substitution of Illicit Crops (PNIS), introduced in 2017, was designed to help farmers transition from coca to legal alternatives. However, implementation has been inconsistent, leaving many communities without the resources they need to break away from the illicit economy.
“In this peripheral Amazon region historically there is less, or no, state presence at all,” explains Ebus. “Looking at Putumayo, we find there needs to be a regional strategy to increase security for Amazon populations and the ecosystems they inhabit – but not from a military perspective, because, especially in Putumayo, increased military presence means increased human rights violations.”
In this gap, local initiatives like ASOPPAEP’s have emerged as examples of the possibilities offered by community-led action, even in areas where government support is limited.
But Florez offers a note of caution: “In order to promote the transition to other economies, there must be a way to minimise the risk that rural communities assume when they decide to move from coca to a different livelihood.”
Going forward, ASOPPAEP also hopes to use its land to harvest other crops, such as fruit and vegetables, and is even considering developing a local ecotourism project on its land.
“I am very much in love with fish farming,” Ruiz says. “Even though at times the economic reward has been very low, it is something that we must maintain over time because it is a very beautiful job and it has taught us to have our own autonomy. I do not intend to go back.”
Iñigo Alexander travelled to the Putumayo region at the invitation of the World Wildlife Fund.
