Risk reduction in pesticide development in developing countries ‐ challenges and opportunities

Abstract

Abstract Despite the great concern over the continued use of pesticides there is a steady increase in the use of pesticides and this increase is more in the developing countries during the last decade. The industrialized countries having reached the saturation point in the rate of use of pesticides and getting the maximum yield of crops per unit area they are now planning risk reduction in pesticides by reducing the volume of pesticides used and some countries have committed reduction in volume by up to 50% by the year 2000. Most of this reduction is done by moving towards low volume/high activity pesticides. In addition risk reduction is also promoted by moving towards user and environment friendly pesticide formulations and using specific active stereoisomer. The use biopesticides is also on the increase. In the case of developing countries, they still rely on high volume/low value/low activity pesticides and their risk reduction will have to take into account increase in pesticide consumption, lack of available technology to move towards low risk pesticides and their applications. While there is a great awareness and support for IPM the impact has so far been minimal both in the developing and developed countries. The multinationals are spending billions of dollars every year for R&D on pesticides and their major effort is still on synthetic chemicals and newer and more effective formulations. All these advances will take a long time to reach the developing countries. Under these circumstances the developing countries will have to adopt risk reduction in pesticide development based on existing circumstances. UNIDO has classified the developing countries into four categories and the paper describes the challenges and opportunities that exist for risk reduction in developing countries which have the formidable task of feeding the population which depends on agriculture for its livelihood. The paper also refers to examples of projects in developing countries promoting risk reduction in pesticides development.