Sustainability transitions in the global south: Insights from the emerging cannabis agroindustry in Colombia

Abstract

The use, production, transformation and commercialisation of cannabis for medical and scientific uses was legalized in Colombia in 2016. Since then, a called ‘green bonanza’ has peaked and rapidly fallen below the initial expectations. These spanned from rapid and large economic gains, all the way to modernise agroindustrial practices and become a first step towards the emancipation of historically marginalised communities, victims of the war on drugs. Based on the analysis of documents, observations and 19 interviews carried out during May, June and July 2022, this paper pinpoints two fundamental flaws in the development of the medicinal cannabis industry in Colombia, hoping to contribute to wider discussions about sustainability transitions and sustainable development. First, the emancipatory role of transitions (which includes discourses such as the bioeconomy, sustainable development, and green growth) in the Global South. Second, the need for integral strategies that focus on path development and draw away from extractivism and technological fixes.

Regarding the first point, sustainability transitions in the Global South (and most possibly, in the peripheries of the Global North) do accomplish (or are expected to accomplish) an emancipatory role for communities that have been excluded from the ‘benefits of development’. Despite of the medicinal cannabis regulation not aiming to deliver reparations to communities victims of the war on drugs, this is exactly what was expected. However, illegal and informal cannabis growers are effectively excluded from the legal and formal market. The access barriers are too high and most of the established firms are located nearer core regions, far from the peripheries where illegal and informal growers live and produce.

Regarding the second point, sustainability transitions do not occur in isolation, neither depend solely on the creation and diffusion of innovation and technology. Approaches closer to technological fixes are detached from socio-economic realities, preventing a potentially successful strategy to foster path development. The regulation and the development of the medicinal cannabis industry, first thought as an opportunity for innovation, economic and sustainable development, is finding difficult to steer away from path dependencies and shows characteristics closer an extractive agroindustry. These include the exclusion and continued marginalisation of rural and indigenous communities, and the creation of contradicting narratives between entrepreneurs – criminals, patients – drug addicts, medicinal cannabis – marihuana.