The dark side of globalisation
10/12/14 17:38 Filed in: South-East Asia
The Golden Triangle: the territory formed by the great Mekong River on the borders of Laos, Burma and Thailand. The opium poppy grows well in the alkaline soil formed from the silt of this stretch of river and it is this fact that gives the region its name.
Today the Golden Triangle is a tourist destination attracting travellers in search of adventure. It's a reassuring image, almost a marketing strategy, especially where Thailand is concerned. In Laos and Burma, however, year-on-year opium cultivation is increasing. According to the Southeast Asia Opium Survey conducted by the United Nations Office on Drugs and Crime (UNODC) and released on 8th December, cultivation rose from 61,200 hectares in 2013 to 63,800 in 2014, the eighth consecutive year of growth and triple the amounted harvested in 2006.
The triangle has evolved into a graph - a set of interconnected points extending over the entire so-called “Greater Mekong Subregion”, which includes the Chinese province of Yunnan, Burma, Thailand, Laos, Cambodia and Vietnam and which, in turn, fits into the global market system.
The Golden Triangle imports the chemical products needed to transform opium into heroin, which is then exported to China, Southeast Asia and the rest of the world. The exchange is gradually facilitated by the developing infrastructure, and the reduced commercial barriers and frontier controls.
The Golden Triangle symbolises the dark side of globalisation, as defined by Giovanni Broussard, the Italian Programme Officer for UNODC's initiative on Border control and transnational organized crime, a 90 billion dollar business.
The enormity of that figure (which refers to all “Transnational Organized Crime”) confirms the last, macroscopic connection: that between the power of the traffickers and the impotence of the populations involved (especially in opium cultivation), who have no economic alternative and find themselves in the midst of ethnic or territorial disputes.
Southeast Asia Opium Survey 2014. Il Full Report
Border Control in the Greater Mekong Sub-region. Full Report
Today the Golden Triangle is a tourist destination attracting travellers in search of adventure. It's a reassuring image, almost a marketing strategy, especially where Thailand is concerned. In Laos and Burma, however, year-on-year opium cultivation is increasing. According to the Southeast Asia Opium Survey conducted by the United Nations Office on Drugs and Crime (UNODC) and released on 8th December, cultivation rose from 61,200 hectares in 2013 to 63,800 in 2014, the eighth consecutive year of growth and triple the amounted harvested in 2006.
The triangle has evolved into a graph - a set of interconnected points extending over the entire so-called “Greater Mekong Subregion”, which includes the Chinese province of Yunnan, Burma, Thailand, Laos, Cambodia and Vietnam and which, in turn, fits into the global market system.
The Golden Triangle imports the chemical products needed to transform opium into heroin, which is then exported to China, Southeast Asia and the rest of the world. The exchange is gradually facilitated by the developing infrastructure, and the reduced commercial barriers and frontier controls.
The Golden Triangle symbolises the dark side of globalisation, as defined by Giovanni Broussard, the Italian Programme Officer for UNODC's initiative on Border control and transnational organized crime, a 90 billion dollar business.
The enormity of that figure (which refers to all “Transnational Organized Crime”) confirms the last, macroscopic connection: that between the power of the traffickers and the impotence of the populations involved (especially in opium cultivation), who have no economic alternative and find themselves in the midst of ethnic or territorial disputes.
Southeast Asia Opium Survey 2014. Il Full Report
Border Control in the Greater Mekong Sub-region. Full Report
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