{"id":31165,"date":"2022-06-17T00:01:49","date_gmt":"2022-06-17T04:01:49","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/beyondpesticides.org\/dailynewsblog\/?p=31165"},"modified":"2022-06-16T07:03:34","modified_gmt":"2022-06-16T11:03:34","slug":"groups-worldwide-tell-un-to-rescind-agreement-with-chemical-industry-for-human-rights-violations","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/beyondpesticides.org\/dailynewsblog\/2022\/06\/groups-worldwide-tell-un-to-rescind-agreement-with-chemical-industry-for-human-rights-violations\/","title":{"rendered":"Groups Worldwide Tell UN To Rescind Agreement with Chemical Industry for Human Rights Violations"},"content":{"rendered":"\r\n

(Beyond Pesticides<\/em>, June 17, 2022)\u00a0Hundreds of civil society groups and organizations of indigenous people worldwide have called on the United Nations (UN) Food and Agriculture Organization<\/a> (FAO) to end its nearly two-year-old partnership with CropLife International, the trade association for the world\u2019s largest pesticide manufacturers. The organizations\u2019 June 9 letter<\/a> to the Member State Representatives of the FAO Council was signed by 430 entities, from 69 different countries. The letter asserts that the UN agency\u2019s agreement with CropLife International (CLI) is incompatible with FAO\u2019s obligations to uphold human rights, and urges it both to review the partnership agreement on the basis of human rights concerns, and to \u201cconsider directing the Director-General of FAO to rescind the agreement.\u201d The call comes from this huge group of advocates, but it is also coming from \u201cinside the house\u201d: UN Special Rapporteur on the Right to Food<\/a> Michael Fakhri is one of the signatories; Beyond Pesticides is one among 65 U.S. signatories.<\/p>\r\n

CropLife International\u2019s corporate members<\/a> \u2014 BASF, Bayer, Corteva, FMC, Sumitomo Chemical, and Syngenta \u2014 are huge synthetic pesticide companies with global reach. CLI also counts as members<\/a> 11 subsidiary national associations in Asia, the Middle East, Latin America, Europe, Canada, and the U.S. (CropLife America). The trade organization bills itself as the \u201cvoice and leading advocates for the plant science industry . . . [that] champion the role of agricultural innovations in crop protection and plant biotechnology to support and advance sustainable agriculture.\u201d<\/p>\r\n

But Beyond Pesticides asserts that CLI\u2019s member companies make, promote, and sell chemical (and biotech) agricultural \u201csolutions\u201d that represent the antithesis of genuinely sustainable agriculture. The ubiquitous availability and use of toxic pesticides supports conventional, chemically intensive agricultural practices whose impacts are broad and complex, and include damage to the health of soil, ecosystems, humans, organisms, natural resources (clean water and air), farmworkers, and environmental justice communities. The use of pesticides is also a dominant factor in biodiversity loss generally, and degraded insect and pollinator populations, in particular. And, as Pesticide Action Network (PAN) International notes<\/a>, at least 385 million farmers and farmworkers suffer from acute pesticide poisoning annually.<\/p>\r\n

Consider the example of just one kind of pesticide damage: microbial communities<\/a>\u00a0in the soil contribute to plant growth and health, which is critical to the human and organismic food supply, to carbon sequestration, to insect and pollinator habitat, and more. In soil, those communities include bacteria, fungi, earthworms, and other invertebrate decomposers that break down organic matter and make nutrients available to plants; bacteria and fungi engage in reciprocal exchanges of nutrients with plants. Chemical destruction of these microbes with pesticides degrades soil health and all the services it can provide to ecosystems, growers, and all living things. According to advocates and scientists, It is the height of short-sightedness to use pesticides that destroy soil organisms when, in fact, these microbial communities \u2014 as happens in organic agriculture<\/a> \u2014 support and benefit agricultural production.<\/p>\r\n

In 2020, FAO issued an LOI (Letter of Intent) to cooperate with CLI<\/a> in multiple areas, as part of the agency\u2019s Private Sector Engagement Strategy. In its announcement, CLI wrote, \u201cThis new partnership with the FAO provides us with an exciting opportunity to work together and accelerate progress in areas where we share common ambitions.\u201d But as the advocate letter notes<\/a>, \u201cFAO deepening its collaboration with CropLife International directly counters any efforts toward progressively banning Highly Hazardous Pesticides [HHPs], as recommended for consideration by the FAO Council as early as 2006.\u201d Roughly 35% of the revenue of the corporate members of CLI is attributed to sales of HHPs.<\/p>\r\n

HHPs are defined by the UN Environment Programme (UNEP)<\/a> as \u201cpesticides that are acknowledged to present particularly high levels of acute or chronic hazards to health or environment. . . . In addition, pesticides that appear to cause severe or irreversible harm to health or the environment under conditions of use in a country may be considered to be and treated as highly hazardous.\u201d<\/p>\r\n

The mission of FAO<\/a> is to \u201cachieve food security for all and make sure that people have regular access to enough high-quality food to lead active, healthy lives.\u201d The FAO partnership with CropLife International undermines any modern and systemic understanding of what \u201chigh-quality food\u201d and \u201chealthy lives\u201d mean, and how truly sustainable, organic production<\/a> must be at the heart of that mission.<\/p>\r\n

In addition to the business of these corporations, which is inherently damaging, the letter from the 430 organizations says<\/a> that the six corporate members of CLI have \u201cinterfered in national policy and exert enormous pressure on governments that take measures to protect people and the environment from pesticide harms.\u201d\u00a0It adds that<\/a> the \u201cuse of hazardous pesticides is inconsistent with the rights protected by the United Nations to: health; [a] clean, healthy, and sustainable environment; safe working conditions; adequate food; safe and clean water and sanitation; a dignified life; and rights of indigenous peoples, women, children, workers, and peasants and other people working in rural areas. . . . We believe that FAO\u2019s agreement with CropLife International is incompatible with FAO\u2019s obligations to uphold human rights.\u201d<\/p>\r\n

Advocates added<\/a> that FAO\u2019s own due diligence process concluded that \u201ccompanies involved in human rights abuses can be excluded from potential partners[hip].\u201d PAN<\/a> International, a network of 600+ NGOs (nongovernmental organizations), institutions, and individuals across 90 countries, works to replace the use of hazardous pesticides with ecologically sound and socially just alternatives. In June 2022, the organization published a briefing to FAO Member States, Addressing the Conflict of Interest and Incompatibility of FAO\u2019s Partnership with CropLife International<\/em><\/a>. The briefing elaborates on examples of CLI\u2019s undue influence on policy and science:<\/p>\r\n