Deprecated (16384): The ArrayAccess methods will be removed in 4.0.0.Use getParam(), getData() and getQuery() instead. - /home/brlfuser/public_html/src/Controller/ArtileDetailController.php, line: 73
 You can disable deprecation warnings by setting `Error.errorLevel` to `E_ALL & ~E_USER_DEPRECATED` in your config/app.php. [CORE/src/Core/functions.php, line 311]
Deprecated (16384): The ArrayAccess methods will be removed in 4.0.0.Use getParam(), getData() and getQuery() instead. - /home/brlfuser/public_html/src/Controller/ArtileDetailController.php, line: 74
 You can disable deprecation warnings by setting `Error.errorLevel` to `E_ALL & ~E_USER_DEPRECATED` in your config/app.php. [CORE/src/Core/functions.php, line 311]
Warning (512): Unable to emit headers. Headers sent in file=/home/brlfuser/public_html/vendor/cakephp/cakephp/src/Error/Debugger.php line=853 [CORE/src/Http/ResponseEmitter.php, line 48]
Warning (2): Cannot modify header information - headers already sent by (output started at /home/brlfuser/public_html/vendor/cakephp/cakephp/src/Error/Debugger.php:853) [CORE/src/Http/ResponseEmitter.php, line 148]
Warning (2): Cannot modify header information - headers already sent by (output started at /home/brlfuser/public_html/vendor/cakephp/cakephp/src/Error/Debugger.php:853) [CORE/src/Http/ResponseEmitter.php, line 181]
Notice (8): Undefined variable: urlPrefix [APP/Template/Layout/printlayout.ctp, line 8]latest-news-updates/pesticide-will-go-eventually-by-raja-murthy-7527.html"/> LATEST NEWS UPDATES | Pesticide will go-eventually by Raja Murthy | Im4change.org
Resource centre on India's rural distress
 
 

Pesticide will go-eventually by Raja Murthy
The lush green Indian state of Kerala, advertised in travel brochures as "God’s Own Country", is at the center of a continuing battle in the country to secure an early ban on the use of the pesticide endosulfan.

The Kerala government and activists say the pesticide has caused 4,000 victims in the state, through cancer, crippled limbs and babies born with deformities; 496 related deaths have been officially recorded. No scientist, politician or activist has explained why few casualties have been reported elsewhere in India, as endosulfan has been used for more than 30 years on various crops, vegetables and fruits.

More than 80 countries have banned or are phasing out endosulfan, including the European Union, Australia and New Zealand, and some Asian and West African nations. It is being phased out in the United States, Brazil and Canada, but is still used in India, China, parts of East Africa, Argentina and Mexico.

Last week, anti-endosulfan protesters secured what they have long wanted, but the fruit of their efforts will come in slow motion - the United Nations-backed Stockholm Convention on Persistent Organic Pollutants on April 29 globally banned endosulfan in an 11-year phase-out period.

"The April 29 decision is the first step," prominent environmental activist Vandana Shiva said in an e-mail to Asia Times Online. "We need to strengthen the movement in India to get a national ban."

Shiva, among Forbes magazine's 2010 list of seven most influential women in the world, runs Navdanya International, which works with thousands of farmers to protect their rights, and promotes organic, ecologically safe and non-violent farming methods - where other creatures don't have to be killed to feed humans.

Farmer associations say endosulfan hazards to humans are not proven scientifically. They warn that banning endosulfan for more expensive substitutes could affect millions of farmers, and cause food prices to rise. The next cheapest available pesticide is said to be 10 times the cost of endosulfan.

A two-part study in 2009 titled "Endosulfan in China - emissions and residues", by the Dalian Maritime University in Liaoning province reported endosulfan residues in the soil, but did not conclude whether the pesticide damaged health and environment.

Leading farmer groups in India claim endosulfan protests are sponsored by multinational companies conspiring to peddle their more expensive pesticides in developing countries. Government-sponsored scientific studies in Gujarat, western India, claim that endosulfan use does not endanger human health.

The truth appears hazy in a fog of conflicting claims and counter-claims - from farmer associations, environmental groups, central and local governments and scientists.

The misuse and overuse of endosulfan could be the actual culprit, not its use. Victims in Kerala came from certain regions, like Kasargode village, where the pesticide was aerially sprayed illegally in the late 1970s. A government-backed study is investigating whether such use could explain its fatal toxic effects.
Anti-endosulfan activists and politicians have not prominently highlighted this crucial aspect of the debate.

"The tragedy is deeper in Kerala and Karnataka because of aerial spraying," Vandana Shiva said. "This contaminates water and also sprays poison on innocent villagers." But she did not mention other instances elsewhere in India of endosulfan-related deaths.

"All we ask for is some clarity and consensus among scientific organizations we have approached whether endosulfan is harmful," said Prabhakar Reddy, president of the New Delhi-based Consortium of Indian Farmer Associations. "Instead we find a lot of politicking among scientists and biotechnologists, instead of focusing only on science."

Reddy confirmed to Asia Times Online that Indian farmers had used endosulfan as insecticide for decades across the country. A committee under the Indian Council of Medical Research has yet to submit its report on endosulfan hazards, four months after the Ministry of Environment asked for an investigation.

At the fifth global conference on the Stockholm Convention on Persistent Organic Pollutants, from April 25 to 29 in Geneva, Switzerland, the Indian government backed down from its earlier stance of opposing a global ban. India agreed to a compromise of gradually banning endosulfan over an 11-year period while finding a cost-effective alternative.

Endosulfan was not part of the Stockholm Convention that came into effect in May 17, 2004. Persistent organic pollutants, or POPs, are hazardous chemical substances that accumulate through the food chain, risking health and environment.

The Geneva conference, attended by 700 participants representing 125 governments and non-governmental agencies, debated whether additions, such as endosulfan, are needed in the existing list of POPs that currently has 21 chemicals.

Like farmer groups, the Indian government says there is insufficient scientific evidence as yet to ban this pesticide. India is the world’s largest producer of endosulfan, including a government-owned facility to make the pesticide. The chemical is estimated to be a US$100 million industry in India.

The 11-year endosulfan phase-out allows the chemical to continue being used in India with the farming of rice, wheat, maize, gram, beans, tomato, eggplant, onion, potato, chilly, apple, mango, groundnut, mustard, cotton, jute, coffee, tea and tobacco.

Prime Minister Manmohan Singh in Geneva tried to find balance between the conflicting pressures for and against endosulfan. Farmer leaders warned him in a petition against "various misguided groups serving European Union interest, against Indian farming community and country’s food security". In contrast, Vandana Shiva asked him to sack Agriculture Minister Sharad Pawar for not banning the stuff.

Signatories to the farmers' petition to the prime minister included M J Khan, convener of the Federation of Indian Farmers Organizations; M I Sayyed, vice president of All India Vegetable Growers Association; Ravinder Singh Chauhan, president All India Apple Growers Association; Sudhir Agrawal of the Uttar Pradesh Seed Growers Association, and B S Verma of the Bihar Farmers Association.

Farmers pointed to two government-appointed committees, under Dr O P Dubey and Dr R B Singh, that "found no scientific evidence" to link endosulfan to health problems. The Indian Chemical Council has also reported insufficient scientific evidence for a ban.

While scientists globally do not agree unanimously that endosulfan is dangerous enough to be banned as a pesticide, all major parties to the dispute in India accuse the other side of being in the payroll of the pesticide industry.

In this clash of interests over food safety, food security for billions, and livelihood of farmers, this correspondent can only point to his own direct experiential evidence - he appears to be reasonably alive and healthy after more than three decades of consuming endosulfan-fed crops, vegetables, fruits, tea and coffee. How many millions of much-smaller beings pesticides such as endosulfan have killed in the process is a far less comfortable thought.

Raja M is an independent writer based in Mumbai, India.