Europe
December 06, 2012
In the coming days all European Union Member States are supposed to hand in their National Action Plan (NAP) to the EU Commission to meet the deadline of December 14, 2012 stipulated in Directive 2009/128, writes Per Kudsk, one of ENDURE’s task leaders. The NAPs should contain an outline of targets, including quantitative targets if Member States adopt them, measures and timetables to reduce risks and impacts of pesticide use on human health and the environment.
Additionally the NAPs should also contain information on how Member States will “encourage the development and introduction of integrated pest management (IPM) and of alternative approaches or techniques in order to reduce dependency on the use of pesticides” to ensure that the eight principles of IPM stipulated in the directive are applied by all professional users of pesticides by January 1, 2014.
Recently I attended the ‘Integrated Pest Management (IPM) - National Action Plans in Nordic-Baltic countries’ symposium organized by the Nordic Association of Agricultural Scientists in Tallinn, Estonia. From the presentations (which can be found here) it was clear that all the countries in the EU’s Northern Zone had either finished their NAP or were currently working on it and intending to submit it on time. However, it was also very clear that confusion reigns when it comes to defining what IPM is and how it distinguishes itself from what is considered good agricultural practices in these countries, and I hear from colleagues that the situation in other EU countries is the same.
In ENDURE we are very aware of this situation and to guide Member States in their future efforts to transform general principles into specific actions, ENDURE is currently finalising a guidance document provisionally entitled ‘On the implementation of the eight principles of IPM’. We hope that this document will provide all stakeholders with relevant inputs and help in implementing IPM in their country.
In my country, Denmark, the government recently published a new pesticide strategy entitled ‘Protect Water, Environment and Health’ (my own unofficial translation of the Danish title). It very much reaffirms the targets, measures and timetables of the ‘Green Growth’ programme published in 2009 (for more information visit the National policy documents section of the website). However, it introduces a new quantitative target, a 40% reduction in the Pesticide Load Index (PLI) which will replace the Treatment Frequency Index (TFI) as the main indicator of pesticide impact on environment and health. The new strategy will form the core input to the Danish NAP.
The PLI consists of three main categories of indicators (human health (spray operators), environmental fate and environmental toxicity), each of which consists of several sub-indicators. Human health is based on the risk phases of the product. Environmental fate is composed of three sub-indicators: degradation, accumulation and leaching. Environmental toxicity has 11 sub-indicators: short and some long term effects on mammals, birds, bees, earthworms, fish, aquatic arthropods (such as daphnia), aquatic plants and algae. For environmental fate and toxicity the indicator draws on the data available from the freely accessible PPDB database. The inspiration for the PLI comes from Norway, where a very similar index has been in place for many years.
The Danish government has proposed linking the PLI to a new taxation system. The current tax is a value added tax but in the future the tax will reflect the PLI of each product. This will have a significant impact on the tax level on many pesticides, with some products experiencing a reduced tax while others will see significant rises in tax. Overall, the new tax is supposed to bring in an additional €20 million that will be used to cover the costs of a number of initiatives intended to tighten regulation and reduce the adverse impacts of pesticide use.
As the impact of a pesticide is very much linked to the chemical group that the pesticide group belongs to, the new tax will make groups of pesticides cheaper or more expensive. This could tempt farmers to increase the use of the groups of pesticides which become cheaper but amongst which, unfortunately, are several in which past experience has shown there is a very high risk of pesticide resistance developing. Hence, farmers, their advisers but also researchers in Denmark are faced with a challenging task to meet the overall goal of reducing pesticide impact on health and the environment and, at the same time, applying anti-resistance strategies as laid out in the general principles of IPM (principle number seven).
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