Daniel is a Colombian researcher specializing in global drug policy, focusing on environmental degradation, indigenous rights, and the failures of "alternative development". With fieldwork experience in Colombia, Mexico, and the Golden Triangle, he integrates ethnography with policy research, advocating for evidence-based policies that benefit the worst affected by the Drug-War.

The "War on Drugs" not only perpetuates colonial and epistemic violence against Indigenous communities but also severely impacts planetary health and ecological sustainability. Grounded in my research question, "Why can’t 'we' learn from 'them'?", this presentation explores the intersections of climate, planetary health, and ecological harm reduction through the lens of the International Drug Control Regime (IDCR). The IDCR not only separates non-Indigenous from Indigenous people, but it also drives a deeper wedge between humans and nature, as well as between our rational selves and those aspects of our being that are considered "irrational."

The criminalization of medicinal plants and fungi, central to some Indigenous cultures, reflects the broader colonial project of epistemicide, where entire knowledge systems are silenced. This suppression of Indigenous ecological wisdom perpetuates an anthropocentric worldview that justifies environmental degradation under the guise of “progress” and “rationality.” The IDCR enforces a system where sacred plants are reduced to mere “drugs,” forcing both human and non-human beings into an othered, marginalized existence. By criminalizing these plants and their cultural use, we criminalize the relationships that Indigenous communities have with the natural world.

In separating “us” from “them,” the War on Drugs cultivates an estrangement not only from Indigenous knowledge systems but also from our own connection to the natural world. This alienation extends to the internalized suppression of our "non-rational" selves, as society delegitimizes altered states of consciousness and non-Western epistemes. The environmental devastation resulting from coca eradication programs, deforestation, and aerial fumigation is a direct consequence of this separation, reinforcing the need for an ecological harm reduction model that acknowledges the sacred relationship between humans and nature. To heal planetary health, we must first bridge the epistemic divides between ourselves and nature, between the rational and the intuitive, and between Indigenous and non-Indigenous knowledge systems.