By Yemi Olakitan
At a historic global conference, 373 organisations representing civil society and indigenous peoples from 74 countries urged leaders to take immediate action to phase out Highly Hazardous Pesticides (HHPs), a particular class of pesticides that is thought to be too dangerous to use and causes the most severe harm to human health and the environment.
At the opening of the Fifth International Conference on Chemicals Management (ICCM5), the Strategic Approach on International Chemicals Management (SAICM) presented a petition letter to governments and other stakeholders with the demand that the new SAICM Beyond 2020 framework include an ambitious target to phase out HHPs in agriculture by 2030.
The SAICM Beyond 2020 Framework, a legal document outlining the course of future international chemical policy, is something that the ICCM5 is hoping to endorse.
Other international policy forums and institutions, such as multilateral accords on climate change and biodiversity loss, have made important targeted political commitments on pressing issues that pose existential dangers to people and the environment. HHPs, however, have mainly gone unaddressed, according to the letter.
Pesticides harm about 400 million farmers and farmworkers every year, leading to around 11,000 fatalities, the most of which take place in the Global South. HHPs are involved in a significant portion of these acute poisoning episodes due to their high toxicity.
The organisations, which include trade unions, environmental and health experts, academics, victims of pesticide poisoning, farmers, farmworkers, indigenous peoples, and other rural peoples from throughout the world, also urged the ICCM5 to:
Set a goal for all nations to forbid the export of compounds they have banned domestically, many of which will be HHPs (or to stop the “double standards” in the trade of pesticides);
Include a goal for all nations to enact laws and plans to support non-chemical HHP substitutes that are safer and more environmentally friendly, including agroecology;
Encourage the creation of the Global Alliance on Highly Hazardous Pesticides as proposed by 54 African states.
“Everyone must work together towards eliminating the world’s most dangerous pesticides, and phasing-in and scaling-up safer agroecological alternatives,” the letter stated. “If the Sustainable Development Goals are to be achieved, ecological collapse is to be averted, and human rights are to be upheld — including the right to food and the right of future generations to a clean and healthy environment.”
The groups responded to concerns that eliminating HHPs would endanger food security by arguing that, on the contrary, HHPs’ damaging effects on ecosystems would reduce output.
“Several countries have phased out HHPs in agriculture without harming agricultural productivity. The World Health Organisation (WHO) and the Food and Agriculture Organisation (FAO) have both recognised this. Alternatives to HHPs that are safer currently exist. Particularly effective and sustainable alternatives have been agroecological techniques.
Agreements reached by governments and other stakeholders – including intergovernmental organisations, the private sector, and civil society – through SAICM shape the development and implementation of national policies, as well as the establishment of regional and international mechanisms, to address chemical-related issues. SAICM is hosted by the UN Environment Programme (UNEP) and endorsed at the highest political levels.
57 of the 192 highly hazardous pesticides still in use in South Africa are prohibited for use in the EU, where they were originally exported from, according to Anna Shevel, Network Coordinator for UnPoison South Africa.
These pesticides are highly dangerous, but they are primarily sprayed by uneducated, illiterate individuals who receive little to no protection. Farming areas have high incidence of disease and premature death.
“Pesticides that are harmful to a body in Europe are likewise harmful to a body in Africa. Acutely poisonous substances that hurt or kill shouldn’t be used in the manufacture of food. It is illogical and incomprehensible. The Global Alliance for African States and the UnPoison network both endorse the proposal for an international ban on all HHPs.
“As the South African Organic Sector (SAOSO) and PGS South Africa, we are firmly behind this campaign to ban these highly harmful agro-toxins from our food system and soils,” stated Colleen Anderson, the SAOSO Secretariat.
To the harm of our environment and the health of our population, the widespread use of toxic chemicals in our agricultural systems—which are prohibited in other nations—violates human rights.
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“With all the scientific evidence and documentation on poisoning cases, soil pollution, and water pollution caused by Highly Hazardous Pesticides, it is urgent to take ambitious decisions for the phase out of HHPs by 2030,” said Maimouna Diene, Chairperson of PAN International.
In order to phase out HHPs and replace them with healthy, sustainable agroecological practises, PAN International and its allies demand the creation of a global alliance.
PAN International and its partners also protest the agrochemical industries’ suffocating influence over international accords.
“By creating the Global Alliance on HHPs, SAICM stakeholders will agree with the need to phase out highly hazardous pesticides, prepare, support, and implement appropriate international and national measures to prevent harm from HHPs,” said Olga Speranskaya, Co-Director, Health and Environment Justice Support.
Government officials, farmers, and suppliers will become more aware of HHPs and their effects on human health and the environment thanks to the Alliance, which will also help put an end to unfair trade practises and export regulations for HHPs.
“For many years, the Rainforest Alliance has worked hand in hand with farmers and businesses committed to removing HHPs from their practises,” said Kim Schoppink, global advocacy lead at the Rainforest Alliance. For farmers, quitting these pesticides is difficult because of the many obstacles they must overcome, such as government regulations that encourage the use of agrochemicals and a lack of customer support. We are urging more businesses and governments to join us in our drive to completely banish these dangerous chemicals from the planet for this reason.
“It is a glaring double standard within the international human rights system that while some countries and businesses ban HHP on their own soil, they continue to export these toxic chemicals, poisoning millions of people, especially in the Global South,” said Razan Zuayter, Board Chairperson of The Arab Group for the Protection of Nature. Maintaining human health is a shared global obligation that transcends national boundaries and calls into question persistent double standards.
Pesticides injure not only ‘pests’ but also the environment, people, and human rights, according to Giulia Carlini, Senior Attorney, Environmental Health Programme, Centre for International Environmental Law (CIEL). HHPs must be phased out immediately. There are safer alternatives, and it is essential that nations commit to implementing them. We join the demand for group action to ban HHPs and adopt sustainable agroecology, acknowledging the urgent need to safeguard people and the environment.
The use of HHPs violates the rights to food, life, health, and a clean, healthy, and sustainable environment of millions of small-scale farmers and rural communities, according to Sofia Monsalve, secretary general of FIAN International. It is intolerable that the interests of the agrochemical sector are better safeguarded than the welfare and protection of people and the environment.
“Affiliates of the South African People’s Tribunal on Pesticides understand the lived reality of pesticide exposure in a context of unequal and unjust power relations,” stated Haidee Swanby, coordinator of the South African People’s Tribunal on Pesticides. We are collaborating to highlight the actual effects of corporate impunity on our health, our way of life, and our right to a safe environment and food.
“The lives of farmworkers and other workers in the global South who are exposed to pesticides are just as valuable as those in the North. We need to ban highly dangerous pesticides immediately since they are mutilating and murdering us. Profit over humanity and reprehensible double standards cannot be justified.
“We expect the new Strategic Approach to International Chemicals Management that will emerge from the ICCM5 to respect the objectives we are calling for. Otherwise, it would clearly violate both the international commitment to reduce the overall risk from pesticides affirmed in the 2022 Kunming-Montreal Global Biodiversity Framework at the 15th Conference of the P, as well as the right of everyone to live in a healthy environment,” said Corinne Lepage, Chair of Justice Pesticides.
The best way to protect farmers and farmworkers is to keep Highly Hazardous Pesticides (HHPs) off the market, according to Poguri Chennaiah, Chairperson of the Asian Peasant Coalition. In Asia, where plantations and large landholdings necessitate the use of numerous HHPs and where farmers have little access to information about and control over the chemicals they are compelled to use, this is especially critical.
The Maharashtra Association of Pesticide Poisoned Persons’ adviser, Dr. Narasimha Reddy Donthi, stated: “Farmers are made to believe that pesticides are the simple solutions to the issues they are having with crop production. Farmers are frequently led to believe that there is no other option as HHPs are promoted as technical solutions to societal issues. Governments must take the lead in helping farmers transition away from HHPs because they are actively looking for safer alternatives after being damaged by HHPs and losing loved ones to poisoning.
“Banning highly hazardous pesticides by 2030 is a public health priority,” stated Natacha Cingotti, Health and Chemicals Programme Lead, Health and Environment Alliance (HEAL). We urge European delegates to support global goals for the swift phase-out of the production and export of HHPs and to help the European Union contribute to the crucial transformation of the world towards an agriculture that protects human health.
“Viva Salud joins the call for global action to phase out HHPs as we ramp up our campaign to stop and demand accountability for the dishonest practise of exporting HHPs from EU member states to countries in the Global South,” said Nicky Gabriels, Campaign and Policy Officer at Viva Salud.
The export of these pesticides is a flagrant violation of people’s rights to life, health, and a healthy environment, as evidenced by research from our partner organisations in the Philippines and Palestine, the effects of which are disproportionately felt by poor and vulnerable groups and communities.
In liquid concentrate form, very dangerous pesticides cause biodiversity loss and human rights violations, according to Eoin Dubsky, senior campaign manager at Ek. It is past time to phase out and scale up safer agroecological options for farmers and communities in place of these harmful pesticides.
