MANAGING PESTICIDE USE IN DEVELOPING COUNTRIES

Safe use of pesticides is an increasingly difficult problem for developing countries in Asia, Africa, and Latin America. Although international institutions do not reach into the remote rural settings where this problem is most acute, they have nonetheless found ways to play a constructive role. For example, special agencies led by the UN Environment Programme (UNEP) have recently played a role in forcing governments to show greater concern for pesticide issues. In turn, UNEP was prodded into playing this role by nongovernmental organizations, such as the Pesticide Action Network, and by some developing country officials within its own governing board. One conspicuous result has been a joint effort by UNEP and the Food and Agriculture Organization (FAO) to tighten existing standards on international sales of pesticides. The prevailing standard for sales, favored by industrialized countries, had been a "notification only" approach. This has now been supplanted by a more demanding standard of "prior informed consent" (PIC). When UNEP adopted this change, previously disengaged governments---especially the U.S. government---began showing enough concern to endorse and join the process.

UNEP and FAO have also contributed to pesticide safety by enhancing the contractual environment for policymaking. The joint meetings between UNEP and FAO for the purpose of adding PIC to FAO's somewhat weak code of conduct on pesticides provided a unique setting in which normally antagonistic farm and environmental interests were able to bargain effectively. The expanded FAO code that emerged from these meetings is still unsatisfying to most environmentalists, in part because the code is still strictly voluntary. Nonetheless, these environmentalists were able to use the standards contained in the code to shame the private agrichemical industry into more responsible behavior. The PIC procedure now contained in the code is important because it promises to expand this informal accountability system by designating national authorities within developing countries to make better informed and more widely publicized decisions on pesticide importation policy.

Pesticide issues also confirm, somewhat indirectly, the key role international institutions must play in building national environmental policy capacity. Safe use of pesticides is difficult in the developing world, partly because these regions lack research, agricultural development programs and administrative and regulatory capacity. FAO and UNEP have tried to address these deficits, through publications, model national registration schemes, and field training programs. Unfortunately, however, these capacity deficits are too great to be corrected easily through the relatively small-scale programs of the UN special agencies. Only the larger and better endowed international development assistance institutions---particularly the World Bank can adequately address this problem. The World Bank's continuing reluctance to perform this role, however, is standing in the way of improved institutional effectiveness in pesticide use.