Pesticide Action Network (PAN) International released an updated version of its List of Highly Hazardous Pesticides (HHPs) to coincide with a key meeting in Stockholm of the Strategic Approach for International Chemicals Management (SAICM) process. The expanded list now includes 306 chemicals.
These hazardous pesticides (HHPs) threaten people and the environment around the world. The global community must act to stop the continuing exposure of people and the planet to these HHPs. PAN calls on the global community for an internationally binding treaty on pesticides.
Among the nine newly listed pesticides in the updated version of the HHP list are carbetamide for being classified as a presumed human reproductive toxicant according to the EU, cyanamide for its hormone disrupting properties and emamectin benzoate for its threat to the environment and bees.
Following the addition of a new criterion, the list now includes pesticides which are recognised by the UN Rotterdam Convention as meeting the Convention’s criteria for global trade restrictions. These pesticides have however not yet been officially listed in the Rotterdam Convention for political reasons.
Pesticides are the only toxic chemicals that are intentionally released into the environment. Today pesticides contaminate every environmental medium even in locations remote from their use. Susan Haffmans of PAN Germany says “These pesticides are having a devastating effect on biodiversity, including on beneficial insects. They are undermining the sustainability of food production systems and harm an unknown number of farmers, workers, children and animals every year.”
“We are deeply concerned about the negative impact of hazardous pesticides on the health of children around the world, especially from rural and farming communities. There is a critical need for global action to curtail the use of the worst pesticides to protect the wellbeing of children.” says Kristin Schafer of PAN North America.
Keith Tyrell from PAN UK adds “Though pesticides have been recognized as a global threat to health, development and the environment, and despite a variety of pesticide Conventions and agreements, global governance of pesticides is weak, leaving large gaps in overall management.”
In the Global South there is daily proof of the devasting effects of pesticides on families and their livelihoods. Maimouna Diene of PAN Africa says “If SAICM wants to fulfill its goal of achieving sound management of chemicals throughout their whole lifecycle and to protect human health and ecosystems, it has to intensify its actions on HHPs and provide trainings to farmers, including women farmers, on agroecological practices. The past few years have shown that the global pesticides problem cannot be tackled adequately with voluntary agreements.”
PAN Asia Pacific’s Sarojeni Rengam says “The Sustainable Development Goals, in particular to end hunger, achieve food security and promote sustainable agriculture; to ensure healthy lives and to halt and reverse land degradation and biodiversity loss cannot be achieved until the widespread use of HHPs is replaced by agroecological practices”.
From the experience of longstanding work in Latin America on agroecological practices, Javier Souza of PAN Latin America says “It is time for undertaking concerted efforts to phase out HHPs and replace their use with agroecology. In Argentina we have shown that by replacing HHPs with agroecology we can decrease costs of inputs, improve incomes and community health, bolster food security and climate resilience, improve gender equity, enhance biodiversity, and reduce pollution.”
The PAN HHP list includes pesticides with high levels of acute or chronic hazards to health or environment according to internationally accepted classification systems. With the HHP list, PAN provides authorities, cultivation organisations, advisers, farmers and other interested parties with a tool to identify highly dangerous pesticides and then to replace them with safer and more sustainable alternatives.
For more about PAN International and the 500+ organizations in more than 100 countries that have joined the global call to ban highly hazardous pesticides and replace them with agroecological alternatives, visit http://pan-international.org/.
Available for interview:
Maimouna Diene, PAN Africa, maimounadiene@pan-afrique.org, +221 775449689
Sarojeni Rengam, PAN Asia Pacific, sarojeni.rengam@panap.net
Susan Haffmans, PAN Germany, susan.haffmans@pan-germany.org , +49(0)40-3991910-25
Javier Souza Casadinho, PAN Latin America, javierrapal@yahoo.com.ar ,+11 15 3617 1782
Paul Towers, PAN North America, ptowers@panna.org , +10119165883100
Keith Tyrell, PAN United Kingdom, keithtyrell@pan-uk.org , +447588706224
