EURAD
Alternative Development
A 2015 EURAD report on alternative development as a response to illicit crop cultivation.
Alternative Development: Providing viable alternatives to illicit drug cultivation (2015), produced for EURAD by Jack Grounds of Aalborg University, with a preface by Secretary General Fay Watson.
EURAD has long been concerned with the full drug trajectory — from the factors that influence illicit production and trafficking through to dependence and recovery. While social factors underpinning drug use in Western countries are well documented, far less attention has been paid to the social conditions of producing regions beyond simple demand-and-supply rhetoric.
The report argues that any sustainable response to the drug problem must include a valid answer to supply, addressing community-level challenges in producing regions as well as macro issues such as market structures, inequality, poverty and governance. That is where alternative development still has untapped potential — even though not every programme succeeds, and some approaches work better than others.
The aim was an honest reflection of alternative development programmes across the globe. Design and printing were supported by member organisation San Patrignano (Italy).