Pesticide Action Network UK (PAN UK) is the only UK charity focused solely on addressing the harm caused by chemical pesticides, dedicated to:

• Eliminating the most hazardous pesticides;
• Reducing dependence on chemical pesticides; and
• Promoting sustainable and equitable food systems and increasing the use of alternatives to chemical pest control in agriculture, urban areas, public health and homes and gardens

Mission and strategy

PAN UK works with governments, regulators, policy makers, industry and retailers to reduce the impact of pesticides. PAN UK has a successful track record of contributing to a safer and more sustainable world, such as introducing tighter controls on available pesticides, the introduction of global bans of the most hazardous pesticides, and working with major retailers to remove pesticides from their supply chains.

Alongside this, PAN UK has also helped clear up thousands of tonnes of hazardous obsolete pesticides from the African environment, whilst also managing programmes across the developing world to train and support farmers to use safe, sustainable and economically viable alternatives to chemical pesticides. PAN UK have, for example, trained thousands of smallholder cotton farmers in Benin, West Africa, in organic farming methods, allowing them to escape the ill-health and poverty caused by chemical pesticides.

PAN also manages projects to protect wildlife and the environment. In the Ethiopian Rift Valley, which is a major migratory flyway for over 400 species of birds, PAN UK are, for example, helping to train local officials to monitor pesticide impacts and put in place policies to protect biodiversity.

PAN UK in the project

PAN UK will be contributing it’s expertise to this project in three areas of activity:

• Providing a robust training programme which will build capacity in survey methodologies, particularly in relation to groups that are particularly vulnerable to the negative impacts of pesticides.
• Undertaking six baseline studies which will capture data concerning high risk practices and exposure scenarios. Farmers, women, children and seasonal farm workers, for example, are likely to be particularly vulnerable to exposure to hazardous pesticides and data will be collected in order to better understand how and when they are exposed to pesticides.
• The implementation of communications and awareness raising activites, informed by the baseline studies, to: promote safer practices; strengthen regulatory decision-making; and, to prepare for more in-depth studies of the most concerning problems identified.

This work, which contributes to FAO’s wider social objectives, is planned in close collaboration with the Secretariat of the Rotterdam Convention, with the aim of giving a voice to the needs and concerns of vulnerable groups in order to ensure that they are reflected in the decisions made by policy makers and pesticide regulators.

Contacts