Towards spatially disaggregated cocaine supply chain modeling

Abstract

Despite the global reach and economic scale of cocaine trafficking, our best geographic understanding of the global trade remains coarse. A more spatially disaggregated understanding of how the cocaine supply chain embeds across multiple locations is necessary for informing security policies and anticipating the spread and intensity of social and environmental harms associated with the cocaine trade. In this research, modeling methods used for legal supply chains are adapted to spatially disaggregate illicit supply chain flows. Profit and supply maximization model versions were compared to elucidate key decision parameters cocaine traffickers might be facing. Cocaine flows to EU+3 (Norway, Turkey, and United Kingdom) markets were estimated based on the smuggling capacity of major Central American ports and bilateral trade volumes of selected commodities most often seized with cocaine shipments. The resulting estimates of cocaine volumes diverted to EU+3 countries from Central America ranged between 938 and 1526 metric tons (MT). Generally, easier concealment and storage in Central America led to less volume supplied to the United States (US) and increased shipments to EU+3 markets. Importantly, the value of this modeling approach is not in the quantitative estimates produced, but in the methodological approach that provides the ability to rigorously ground any quantitative estimates of clandestine phenomenon in the best available data.