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Chemical production, use and disposal will continue to increase worldwide; assessments and forecasts predict that global chemical sales will grow by about 3 percent per year until 2050, the major part of which will take place in Asia. South-East Asian countries in particular have shown strong industrial growth in agriculture during the last two decades. Many countries in Southeast Asia lack the capacity to handle chemicals management issues and are in great need to develop institutions, legislation, knowledge and general awareness. The countries face many challenges in the area of chemicals management, in particular pesticide governance. The intensive and often insufficiently controlled use of pesticides in the large agriculture sector is a major part of the issue.

The programme “Towards a Non-Toxic Environment in South-East Asia” was designed and funded by Sida and coordinated by KemI. It was implemented in association with the FAO RAP; PAN-AP and TFA, which aimed to reduce health and environmental risks by monitoring, regulating and managing agricultural, industrial and consumer chemicals around the . This evaluation assessed the role and contributions of FAO against the programme outcome-level results: (i) strengthened regulatory framework for the control and registration of pesticides; and (ii) adoption and economic benefits of the community-level Farmer Field School (FFS) activities in all partner countries within Phase II (from 2013 to 2018. In addition, the evaluation assessed FAO’s work on gender mainstreaming,communication and follow-up actions taken in response to the 2016 mid-term evaluation.