More than 700 other scientists from across European member states and scientific disciplines have deep concern about the recent turn of the political tide against the Sustainable Use of Pesticides Regulation, writes Jeroen Candel.
Jeroen Candel is an associate professor teaching food politics and European Union governance at Wageningen University and Research.
The heavy use of chemical pesticides in agriculture is strongly linked to declines in insects, birds, biodiversity in terrestrial and aquatic systems, and detrimental impacts on global public health.
Given the urgent need for mitigating these impacts, it is worrying to observe that a number of member state governments and MEPs have recently called for the delay or watering down of the new pesticides regulation.
Citing questionable ‘food security’ and ‘resilience’ concerns that echo the discourse of vested interests, politicians have called for an additional impact assessment to the thorough assessment performed by the Commission before the outbreak of the Ukraine war.
Let me be very clear: there is not a single, serious scientist in the field who would argue that the pesticides regulation would pose a risk to European food security.
Quite the contrary, there is a high degree of consensus that the rapid loss of biodiversity, together with climate change, constitutes the biggest threat to the sustainability and resilience of our food system, as once more corroborated by the European Commission’s recent staff working document on the drivers of food security.
It is precisely for this reason that both European citizens and scientists have high expectations of European political leadership.
It is highly questionable, whether the required additions to the thorough Impact Assessment performed by the European Commission would result in a gain in knowledge, as the long-term challenges facing the EU food system and state of biodiversity have not changed since the outbreak of the war in Ukraine.
Perhaps the unstable geopolitical environment has made these challenges and the need to act even more urgent. The time to act is now.
And, of course, new legislation will have an impact on the industry and at farm level. It is precisely the point of green legislation to steer the market away from unsustainable business models and production methods, while fostering a scale-up and cost reductions of cleaner alternatives.
A lack of binding targets is exactly the reason why investments in Integrated Pest Management have lagged behind since the adoption of the 2009 Pesticides Directive.
The adoption of binding targets and a reallocation of public resources, including CAP funds, is expected to accelerate innovation of non-hazardous pesticide alternatives.
Steering our agri-food system towards more sustainable outcomes is no easy political task. Transition processes are non-linear, uncertain and disruptive by definition, which make that current modes of impact assessment have limited predictive value.
Tomorrow’s solutions are not yet known today.
At the same time, the history of the European economy, including the agricultural sector, teaches us that disruptive innovation is possible, and can benefit both the economy and society at large, when politicians dare to take the leap and show seamanship.
When drafting the first European agricultural policy, Commissioner Sicco Mansholt aimed for a radical overhaul of the European agricultural sector, but even he may not have foreseen the sheer force of innovation that clear and consistent, long-term regulation and supportive incentives may bring about.
At the end of his political career, however, he also saw the downsides of the agricultural system that he helped to create. Already 50 years ago, he called for a transition toward “a production system without pollution and the development of a circular process”.
It is now up to EU political leaders to finally pick up on Mansholt’s calls and use their political craftsmanship to realize a truly green revolution of the European food system.
The undelayed realisation of the Farm to Fork and Biodiversity Strategies’ pesticides reduction objectives would be a crucial first step in that direction.
As scientific community, we will follow the legislative process with great interest, and we stand ready to provide you with advice where and when necessary.
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