To start pagePhase Out Hazardous Pesticides!
A global call to end double standards in the pesticide trade and transform our food systems
According to current estimates, 385 million people around the world suffer from acute pesticide poisoning annually, primarily in Asia, Africa, and Latin America. Every year, some 11,000 of them die as a result. Yet to date, only circa 3 percent of the active ingredients in pesticides that are used and traded worldwide are subjected to binding regulations.
This means that the majority of trade in and application of pesticides is regulated by national laws and voluntary guidelines. Varying standards from country to country mean that when certain pesticides are banned in some places, such as the European Union, companies simply move their products to countries with laxer regulations. The fact that it has not yet been possible to prevent harm to people and the environment caused by the application of highly hazardous pesticides demonstrates that existing international agreements such as the Stockholm Convention do not go far enough.
Since 2009, the international Pesticide Action Network (PAN) has maintained a list of highly hazardous pesticides (HHPs) based on the criteria of the UN Food and Agriculture Organization (FAO) and the World Health Organization (WHO) — criteria that PAN has expanded and clarified. The individual criteria are divided into the following four hazard groups: acute toxicity, long-term (chronic) health effects, environmental hazards, and a list of pesticides to be regulated in line with international agreements. The current PAN list comprises more than 330 active ingredients.
Given the risks pesticides pose to human health, animals and the environment, the world urgently needs effective mechanisms of protection and regulation. Indeed, the FAO executive council indicated as early as 2006 that certain pesticides cannot be used in countries in the Global South without causing extensive harm to people and planet, and recommended a gradual ban on highly hazardous pesticides. Governments in the Global South have a responsibility to protect the rights of farmworkers, farmers, and indigenous communities in those countries – but in order to protect people and the environment from the consequences of harmful pesticides, legal regulations must be tightened.
Individual countries are already restricting trade in hazardous pesticides. Within the European Union, France passed a law that totally forbids the manufacture, storage, and export of pesticide products should they contain active ingredients that are not approved in the EU due to health or environmental concerns. In Tunisia, 22 HHPs were banned in July 2023, and civil society organizations continue to fight to ban more active ingredients. Other countries should follow these examples.
Pesticide bans are also being discussed at the European level, despite fierce opposition. A European ban would be particularly effective in countering double standards in the pesticide trade as long as both active ingredients and pesticide products are covered, and export rights are only granted for substances that were approved or authorized following a thorough assessment of their hazard levels. In this way, the same standards of health and environmental protection applicable for marketing pesticides within the European Union would apply to the export of such pesticides. In the long term, however, we need a global ban on the production, storage, and trade of highly hazardous pesticide active ingredients.
“Phase Out Hazardous Pesticides”, a new series from the Rosa Luxemburg Foundation and its partners, collects 20 testimonies from around the world, decrying the use of hazardous pesticides and calling for strong, binding regulations at the national and international level – for the sake of producers, consumers, and the planet we all share.