Linking rural African communities to international policy-makers:
PAN shows the way

To a mother in rural Africa the workings of the Basel Convention or the Stockholm Convention may seem impossibly remote, yet increasingly, the effective implementation of these conventions is vital for her health, and that of her family.

The Pesticide Action Network (PAN) is pioneering news ways to bridge the information gap between policy-makers and affected communities to better tackle the challenge of protecting peoples’ health and the environment from the harmful effects of obsolete pesticides.

Guide to Conventions

In recent years, several international policy initiatives and codes have sought to limit the damage caused by pesticides and other hazardous chemicals. These include the Stockholm Convention, Rotterdam Convention, FAO’s International Code of Conduct for the Distribution and Use of Pesticides, Agenda 21, International Labour Organization’s codes on protecting workers, the Convention on Biological Diversity, among others. This catalog of instruments – all designed to protect human health and the environment – can be confusing for individuals and organizations responsible for managing pesticide risks.

PAN’s new guide, International tools for preventing local pesticide problems: a consolidated guide to the chemical codes and conventions in English, French and Swahili, offers practical guidance on the whole spectrum of codes in an integrated way, analyzing the various obligations in terms of the life cycle of pesticides, and tracking progress using checklists on the status of implementation. This publication can be a useful tool to help regulators and civil society improve national pesticide management, and is available for ASP project management units to carry out their regulation assessments and in developing prevention action plans.

Field Stories

The work by PAN at the community level has highlighted some alarming misconceptions and practices in the handling of pesticides. In Mali, for example, hazardous pesticides were being applied to dried fish before sale for human consumption. In Ethiopia, a survey of 422 farmers found that DDT from a malaria campaign was being used by 121 farmers; DDT was cited as the third most commonly used pesticide. Farmers also reported giving cattle a dose of DDT as “medicine for parasites.” Such dire conditions of pesticide misuse found in many rural agricultural communities are the rule, rather than the exception, reflecting a near complete lack of awareness about the hazards pesticides pose.

The international conventions target the health and environmental consequences of these conditions of use. The Stockholm and Rotterdam conventions should be constantly expanded to reflect local concerns and problems found in the field, but this is hampered by the lack of information between conventions and pesticide users. PAN has been working to document and share information on pesticide impacts.

In Tanzania, PAN partner, AGENDA, trained farmers, community groups, academics and regulators in monitoring the health and environmental impacts of pesticides, and also raising awareness of pesticide hazards to human health, the environment and how international instruments can mitigate risks. During a follow up project, , a mechanism for notifying serious health or environmental incidents caused in villages or rural areas by pesticides was developed, marking the first reporting chain from community level (in Tanzania) to the PIC secretariat in Rome.