Africa’s drive to boost food security and to fight off locust swarms and yield-busting crop diseases has led to an unintended consequence: the build-up of obsolete but toxic pesticides and chemicals.
Across Africa, an estimated 50,000 tons of pesticides and other heavily contaminated materials have accumulated. Inadequate legislation and lax regulations have exacerbated the problem.
Recognizing the severity, the Africa Stockpiles Programme (ASP), a partnership between the World Bank, private sector and civil society, has launched a continent-wide effort to clean up these harmful chemicals, prevent future accumulations, promote safe-handling techniques by working directly with farmers, and strengthen African institutional capacities to tackle the issue.
“Without this project, pesticides not only contaminate local water supplies but also add to global chemical contamination and environmental degradation,” said Monique Barbut, chief executive officer of the World Bank’s Global Environment Facility (GEF), a leading ASP donor that provides funds to both World Bank and United Nations projects. “The challenge is also a long-term one: to help farmers properly control pests so that they not only minimize immediate risks from dangerous pesticides but also reduce the possibility of accumulating future stocks,” Barbut added.
The adverse impact of persistent organic pollutants, or POPs as many of the pesticides are known, on the environment and health are serious. POPs do not degrade easily, but remain intact in the environment for long periods of time. The pollutants disperse easily across wide geographic areas, retain their toxicity, and have a tendency to accumulate in the fatty tissues of organisms. They are harmful to both humans and wildlife, and plant life and the overall environment. For these reasons, use and misuse of POPs is an urgent problem confronting policymakers, particularly given the current stagnation of food production in Sub-Saharan Africa.The ASP emphasizes prevention measures and education of farmers, households and communities as key components of its projects.
The program has notched up some early successes. In its first phase, clean-up and prevention activities have started in six countries ( Mali, Morocco, Nigeria, South Africa, Tanzania, and Tunisia). On September 7, the ASP also launched in Ethiopia. In parallel, the U.N. Food and Agriculture Organization (an ASP partner) has started activities in Eritrea and Mozambique.
In an effort to get the word out, ASP partners recently have begun using radio programs, local theater sketches and mobile cinemas to bring their messages to farmers and communities in some of the remotest parts of rural Africa.The results and evaluation of first phase activities like these will be used to guide the launch of a second phase in 10 to 15 additional African countries.
