The Drug–Conservation Interface: Coca, Campesinos, and Double Illegality in Colombia’s Protected Areas

The Government of Colombia has enacted protected area and counter-narcotic policies to produce a “triple win”: promoting conservation, combating drugs, and fostering peace. Combining qualitative fieldwork with geospatial analysis, we analyze the Drug–Conservation interface in Alto del Fragua Indi-Wasi National Natural Park in Caquetá (Amazonia). We argue that the convergence of two independent but overlapping policy regimes, conservation and anti-drug enforcement, produces “double illegality”—a structural condition wherein the legal order produces precarity as it constitutes campesino identities simultaneously as forest invaders and illicit producers. We further demonstrate how this convergence amplifies feedback loops that foreclose legal land access, pushes campesinos deeper into protected areas, and perpetuates deforestation and coca dependency. Double illegality thus reproduces the very conditions both policies seek to prevent. We contend that it manifests ecologically in a vicious cycle of deforestation as campesinos seek to escape structural marginalization emerging at the drug–conservation interface. Ultimately, these dynamics have profound implications for peasant livelihoods, conservation outcomes, and long-term peace.