Poison Profits

The World Bank's Policy on Pest Management Since 1982, NGOs and consumer organizations have been putting pressure on the World Bank to improve its pest management activities and reduce pesticide use. In response, the Bank has released a series of policies on pest management, beginning in 1985, and in 1988 it convened a panel of experts to advise the Bank on pesticide issues.

The current pest management policy, issued in July 1996, is weaker than other international commitments and fails to incorporate two key ingredients of successful Integrated Pest Management (IPM) programs: a focus on farmer-led, ecologically-oriented approaches to pest management and a commitment to reducing reliance on chemical pesticides. Furthermore, this policy includes a dangerous new provision -- that some pesticides may be deemed safe on the basis of pre-existing environmental assessments and thus would not require study in the context of particular projects, despite the emergence of scientific evidence on the synergistic effects of pesticides in combination. This provision was added during the Bank's internal policy conversion process in which, according to Bank management, no policy was supposed to be altered.

As of mid-March 1997, World Bank staff have gone nearly 8 months without binding instructions on how to carry out the new policy. Based on a review of the staff instructions currently being drafted (Bank Procedures), to date they fail to address a fundamental flaw in Bank guidelines -- that pest management planning is tied to the Bank's problematic environmental assessment process. The Bank itself has found that only 1% of pest management projects approved between January 1988 and January 1995 received a full environmental assessment -- 99% of these operations were excused from such detailed scrutiny.¹

Support for Agrochemicals vs. the Environment Companies in G-7 countries clearly profit from the World Bank's agricultural lending, as do pesticide producers in other Organization for Economic Cooperation and Development (OECD) nations. For example, in fiscal years 1993 to 1995, the World Bank approved US$56.9 million (100%) worth of contracts for pesticides and agrochemicals to be supplied by France (38%), Germany (27%), the United Kingdom (15%), the United States (11%) and Japan (10%).²

World Bank Contracts Benefiting the G-7 Agrochemical Industry

This support for agrochemicals calls into question the Bank's commitment to environmentally sustainable development, which the Bank has institutionalized in part by its participation in the Global Environment Facility (GEF), a joint World Bank, United Nations Development Programme (UNDP) and United Nations Environment Programme (UNEP) financing mechanism. During the GEF's 1991-94 pilot phase, the 19 Bank borrowers purchasing this US$56.9 million in agrochemicals received a mere US$35.66 million of GEF funds approved for biodiversity protection and US$29 million to forestall climate change.³

Such a low level of support for global resources in those countries is clearly inadequate for off-setting the negative effects of Bank-financed agrochemical use, such as soil contamination and non-point source water pollution. In addition, the US$56.9 million going to the G-7 agrochemical industry over three years is close to two times the Bank's US$30 million investment in the core fund of its much-touted micro-credit facility, the Consultative Group to Assist the Poorest.⁴ Furthermore, about half of the contracts to be awarded to G-7 companies are associated with economic rehabilitation and emergency projects, which do not require environmental assessment and which are subject to relaxed preparation and appraisal standards.

In total, the Bank claims that from January 1988 to January 1995, it financed US$250.75 million worth of pesticide purchases from around the world. This same period of time, the Bank only invested about US$81 million in IPM, with US$52 million of that total going to only two projects.⁵

Padding the Pesticide Industry's Pockets Six companies names are associated with US$3 million or more in Bank-approved agrochemical sales over the three year period between FY 93-95: Rhone Poulenc (France), BASF (Germany), Zeneca (UK), Sumitomo (Japan), FMC Corp. (US), Helm (Germany). Another five were to receive US$1-3 million: Bayer (Germany), Roussel Uclaf (France), Cyanamid (US), Air Lloyd (Germany), and Hoescht (Germany).⁶

The company at the top of this list, Rhone Poulenc in France, was the big winner in terms of sales. In FY93-95 it stood to make US$18.6 million, or 33% of the value of all Bank-approved contracts benefiting the G-7 agrochemical industry _ over US$12 million more than BASF, the first runner up. In addition, the Bank recently hired, through its Executive Exchange program, a senior staff member from Rhone Poulenc.

The Bank has also often sought to create a role for the pesticide industry in the joint, global IPM Facility, which is sponsored by the UN Food and Agriculture Organization, World Bank, UNDP, and UNEP. The IPM Facility is meant to fulfill objectives of Agenda 21, Chapter 14, which focus on putting IPM -- not pesticides -- into the hands of farmers and establishing interactive networks between farmers, researchers and extension services.

Funding the Sale of Poisons

World Bank-approved contracts support many chemicals requiring the use of protective gear and separate storage facilities, yet the realities of life in developing countries mean that the poorest people don't have access to such protections. Furthermore, two of the Pesticide Action Network's "Dirty Dozen" pesticides appear in these contracts: paraquat and DDT.

Contracts to French and German companies support the procurement of almost US$120,000 of paraquat for two Bank projects in Nigeria. Paraquat is a highly toxic chemical that can cause death in moderate concentrations and which is used as an agent of suicide in developing countries. It is banned in nine countries; in the US, it is restricted to use by trained applicators or persons under their direct supervision.

DDT is banned for all uses in 49 countries, is severely restricted in 23 others, and has been found to disrupt the normal functioning of the endocrine system. Again, a French company stood to gain almost US$880,000 from the supply of 250 tons of DDT for use in a Bank-financed health sector project in Madagascar.

Who Pays, and How?

Although it's possible that Bank-approved pesticides could come back to G-7 citizens in the form of residues on imported produce, the most serious effects by far are felt in developing countries, where 99% of all deaths from pesticide poisoning occur.⁷ In 1990 the World Health Organization estimated that occupational pesticide poisonings may affect 25 million people worldwide each year and may include 3 million annual severe poisonings, with 220,000 fatalities.⁸

Nausea, headaches, skin irritations, tiredness and generalized muscle ache are among common symptoms experienced by farmers and agricultural workers. Severe cases of pesticide poisoning can lead to major nervous disorders, convulsions, or death. Furthermore, in addition to the well-documented carcinogenic effects of pesticides, data increasingly suggest that some pesticides may be responsible for reproductive disorders, endocrine disruption and mutagenic effects.

Adults and children both are involved in the application of pesticides; many mix pesticide formulations with their hands and must work the fields in bare feet. In addition to exposure during the direct application of pesticides, farmers and agricultural workers face exposure when they re-enter sprayed fields for crop management and harvesting activities. Moreover, contamination of water sources, proximity to aerially-sprayed fields, inadequate storage facilities, and the reuse of agrochemical containers can effect entire families or communities. Not even unborn children are safe; exposure to chemicals, especially endocrine-disruptors, during fetal development can cause permanent damage.

Under policy guidance from the World Bank and IMF, and with support through agricultural projects and structural adjustment lending, developing countries are increasingly emphasizing the production of non-traditional agricultural export (NTAE) crops over staple foods. Extensive documentation indicates that the use of all pesticides (insecticides, herbicides, fungicides, nematocides) is much higher in most NTAE crops than in traditional crops.⁹

Women make up a large proportion of NTAE workers and due to labor patterns in the production and processing of these crops, they are disproportionately exposed to pesticides. A 1991-1995 survey of 2,500 farmers and agricultural workers (mostly women) from Indonesia, Malaysia, Korea, India, Sri Lanka, Pakistan, and the Philippines, by the Pesticide Action Network Asia & the Pacific Regional Center recorded women's frequent, direct exposure to pesticides during application and again when entering fields to hoe, weed, thin plants and harvest.¹⁰ In addition, women are exposed when mixing pesticides, washing spray tanks, washing pesticide-soaked clothes, and disposing of pesticide containers.

Other gender specific inequities in education, literacy, and access to information and health care compound the risk to women, since most rural women farmers have limited ability to read or understand the written warning labels on pesticide containers, let alone the instructions for use and disposal of unused pesticides. Furthermore, as noted in Senegal, rural women are rarely -- if ever -- encouraged by their communities to identify and discuss the pesticide-related illnesses which they experience on a virtually on-going basis.¹¹

Despite these facts, government-sponsored, often internationally-financed training programs which teach men about the hazards of pesticides rarely reach women (not only in Asia, but throughout Africa as well).¹² Such programs mistakenly assume that only men need this information, or that men will pass their new knowledge on to the women who are applying pesticides, using the equipment or preparing and storing food in old pesticide containers.

While residents of developing countries bear the worst impacts of the pesticide trade, environmental and health effects of pesticide production in the North is also of concern. Only by working together can people in the Bank's borrower and donor nations break World Bank support for the international "Circle of Poison."

ENDNOTES

1. Draft "Integrated Pest Management: Strategies and Policies for Effective Implementation," Schillhorn van Veen, et. al., The World Bank, Environmentally Sustainable Development Studies and Monographs Series No. 13, September 1996, p. 36.

2. This total was calculated from information found in FY 93-95 editions of the World Bank Operational Policy Group's "Prior Review Contracts Approved by the World Bank" Contracts for 10% or US$5.8 million, of the US$56.9 million were described only as supporting "agrochemicals," which could include fertilizers as well as pesticides. Previous analysis shows that 96% of the total value of Bank-approved, identifiable fertilizer and pesticide contracts for projects in Europe and Central Asia went for the purchase of pesticides.

3. Totals of single country pilot phase projects taken from the GEFs November 1996 Quarterly Operational Report, p. 70-113. These totals do not include multi-country projects directed, in part, towards the 19 Bank borrowing countries in question.

4. Other bilateral and multilateral donors are to contribute another US$170 to CGAP.

5. Schillhorn van Veen, et. al., p. 36-37.

6. All entries bearing the same company name were pooled for each G7 country that supplied agrochemicals, and listed in descending order. For example, the total for Sumitomo includes contracts from Sumitomo Japan and Sumitomo Corp. Osaka. Therefore, more than one company may be realizing profits from the pooled totals.

7. J. Jeyaratnam, "Health Problems of Pesticide Usage in the Third World," British Journal of Industrial Medicine, 42:505-506, 1985.

8. WHO estimates in J. Jeyaratnam, "Acute Pesticide Poisoning: A Major Global Health Problem," World Health Statistics Quarterly, 1990, p. 139-144.

9. Thrupp, Lori Ann, with Gilles Bergeron and William Waters, Bittersweet Harvests for Global Supermarkets: Challenges in Latin America's Agricultural Export Boom, World Resources Institute, 1995.

10. Rengam, Sarojeni, "Women and Pesticides in Asia: Campaign for Change". Global Pesticide Campaigner vol.4, no.3, September 1994.

11. Sow, Mariam, "African Women and Pesticides: More Exposed to Risks, Less Informed About Dangers". Global Pesticide Campaigner vol.4, no.3, September 1994.

12. ibid.

Written April 1997 by Mimi Kleiner and Marcia Ishii-Eiteman, Pesticide Action Network, North America. PANNA is a member of the 50 Years Is Enough Network.