Member profile
Ms. Diana Borniotto
Organization:
UCLouvain
Country:
Belgium
Field(s) of expertise:
I am working on:
A PhD on EU political objectives on biodiversity protection, and coherency across macro, meso and micro level decision-making process
Ms. Diana Borniotto
Assessing, communicating and acting upon hidden costs related to our agri-food systems is essential to pursue a trajectory towards the achievement of the SGDs at world-wide level. Yet, the heterogeneity of social, economic and political contexts, value chains, and production systems do not allow for a 'one size fits all solution'. Developing levers for internalising those hidden costs should therefore account for those context-specific dimensions, keeping nevertheless in mind global references of the SDGs.
Our case study contributes to both methodological aspects of the assessment of hidden costs, as well as specific insights in the context of pesticide use in France. The quantitative assessment hereby presented is conducted under a prospect of accountability of public budget spending, aiming at helping public authorities to identify financial flows of public funding linked to the effect of pesticide use, within a methodological framework based on the social norms at the core of the public system.
The results show that the cost paid by the public sector in France attributable to synthetic pesticide use amounted to 372 million euros, of which environmental costs are estimated at least at 291.5 million euros, health costs at least at 48.5 million euros, regulation at least at 31.9 million euros and public financial support to the sector at least at 0.4 million euros. For comparison, this total value of social costs represents more than 10% of the annual budget in 2017 of the French Ministry of Agriculture and Food (3,587 million euros). The analysis can be used as a monitoring indicator for the implementation of public policies in the context of the growing social and environmental issues they face.