Couple working to weaken opium's grip  
Posted by ajones -- July 9, 2001
Reprinted from the Worcester Telegram & Gazette, by Emilie Astell
Clark University graduate Robert J. Bouvier likes to joke that he and his wife, Ioana, met over opium.
Their initial meeting wasn't quite that exotic, though their work has an international flair: The two share a deep understanding of the grim influence opium cultivation has on the lives of villagers in a northeastern region of Myanmar, formerly Burma.
If it were not for the need to grow a crop easily exchanged for food, Mr. Bouvier said, men in the Wa Special Zone of Myanmar would not become addicted to the opiate, and some women and girls would not have to turn to prostitution and sweatshops to survive.
“The Wa area accounts for 10 percent of all illicit opium on the world market,” Mr. Bouvier said.
Opium is an addictive drug prepared from the juice of unripe seed capsules of the opium poppy, Papaver somniferum, which has grayish-green leaves and large white or purple flowers. Powerful painkillers, such as morphine and codeine, are derived from opium.
Of the approximately 5,500 households in the Wa zone, about 2,513 grow opium poppies in the temperate climate and mountainous terrain of their Southeast Asia homeland. Myanmar is bordered by Laos, Thailand, China and India.
Mr. Bouvier, a Worcester native, and his Romanian-born bride met in 1999 at Clark after he returned from a six-month stay in Myanmar. Both received master's degrees this year from Clark in geographic information systems and international develop ment. Mr. Bouvier earlier earned a master's degree in biology from Humboldt State University in Arcata, Calif.
They were married in a civil ceremony on Valentine's Day and had a formal church wedding Saturday in Sterling, where Mr. Bouvier's parents live.
The couple took time out from their wedding preparations Thursday to discuss the opium market in Myanmar and the steps that need to be taken to change the region's economy. The couple sat at a dining room table at Mr. Bouvier's parents' home for the interview.
“The U.S. government spends trillions on the drug war,” Mr. Bouvier said, “yet there's an increase in opium and coca production in the last 10 years. Interdiction and policing other countries is not the answer.”
Part of the global problem, he said, is that there is little understanding of the Wa residents who grow opium.
In the Wa zone, which has about 25,000 inhabitants, those who grow poppies each produce about seven pounds of opium per year on their half-acre plots. A pound is worth about $40 on local Wa markets, so the average household earns about $140 per year in U.S. money.
But poppy farmers, who often live at a subsistence level, do not exchange their crop for currency. They usually barter their seven pounds of opium for about 1,400 pounds of rice, he said. If an opium farmer switched from growing poppies to harvesting rice, the yield per half-acre would be about 480 pounds.
Opium farmers also set aside some of their harvest for personal use, to treat ailments such as tooth pain. The practice appears to make sense for Wa villagers, who would otherwise spend days traveling to a health care facility for the same treatment.
Using opium in either its raw or refined form often leads to addiction. There are about 1,500 addicts in the Wa zone, Mr. Bouvier said. More than 80 percent of them are men.
That leaves the women and children to plant and harvest the crop and take it to market. Some of the females move to a larger community in hopes of finding work, he said, but many end up working for long hours at low wages, or in brothels. As a consequence, women often return to their villages infected with AIDS and other sexually transmitted diseases.
To seek a solution to villagers' dependence on opium, Mr. Bouvier and others in the U.N. International Drug Control Program studied opium yields and surveyed village residents.
After his six-month stint, Mr. Bouvier made a report to the U.N. program, then used the data collected to develop a plan for land-use change. Mrs. Bouvier, who had been in the United States for two years while a student, was interested in similar research at Clark when she and her future husband met.
The couple also collected information on the deforestation of Wa land for opium cultivation, using satellite images over several years to track farming practices.
The satellite images, taken from 1973 through 1999, showed that a 1995 ban on growing opium had devastating effects.
Mrs. Bouvier said that it was a political decision by the Wa military to ban opium crops in half of the area where poppies were formerly grown. The ban resulted in the reduction of forests because farmers had to clear the land to grow rice and other crops.
If the opium ban were implemented throughout the entire Wa zone without alternative development, she said, more farmers would cut down trees to make way for other crops. Deforestation also produces soil erosion, she added, which could have a disastrous long-term effect.
One possible alternative to opium farming is growing pigs for market, Mr. Bouvier said. While that switch sounds simple in theory, he said, it would take a great deal of work.
Myanmar farmers must compete with their largest neighbor, China, in the pig market. Chinese pigs are bigger and fatter than Wa pigs and the Chinese can get their animals to market faster, he said.
Roads need to be built to link villages to major markets, he said, so that Wa farmers can transport their animals faster. An improved infrastructure also could support another option, that of developing a handicrafts industry of Wa villagers making tapestries, quilts and other items for sale.
While those suggestions may take years to implement, Mr. Bouvier is hopeful that change will come about.
“We need to understand how opium figures into the economy and how to replace it,” he said.
The newlyweds have their home base in Washington, D.C., where they work for Development Alternatives Inc. in neighboring Maryland. They said their future travel plans include a trip to Bolivia for land-use research and to Morocco for water-management study.
Mr. Bouvier started his international career as an agriculture biologist for the Peace Corps in northeast Thailand, where he spent five years. His job there was to help develop dry-season agriculture alternatives for women and children living in impoverished areas.
He also has worked on refugee repatriation issues in Thailand, Afghanistan and Laos for the International Rescue Committee and Save the Children.
Mr. Bouvier said he credits Clark professors with helping him and his wife mold mountains of data into a cohesive whole.
To commemorate all that work, the couple decided to place a poppy flower in their wedding centerpiece. While the flower was not from an opium poppy, it was symbolic, nonetheless.
“Opium got us together,” Mr. Bouvier said, smiling.
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