Say No Pesticides! - CCFC Cambodia

SAY NO PESTICIDES CAMPAIGN !

Introduction Concept

The agriculture sector in Cambodia is largely oriented towards subsistence and/or local trade and mostly as part of small household units. Traditional family farming systems were predominant in this country but in recent years a push for fast modernization and the increase of yields are creating aside affects on farms as productive units, farmers´ health, their local agroecosystems and on Cambodian consumers. These small crops and gathered items are fundamental to food security, considering recurrent unpredictable weather, droughts and other sources of crop loss, like nematodes, plant diseases, insects´ plagues and the storage problems, due to rats.

The recent over-use of new agrochemical inputs, like fertilizers, herbicides and pesticides are improving the yields and the abundance of cheap amounts of commodities that mostly are exported to Vietnam and Thailand like fruits, rice and other vegetables are creating no expected consequences, never predicted as desirable in this country. 30 years of political problems and economic delay kept a low use of these inputs. In this transition period and due to the rush of and on farmers to use these technologies many strong perverse effects have started to be developed in an alarming dramatic stage due to the inexperienced use of these farmers, the lack of consciousness of consumers and the depriving maladministration and particularistic exploitation use of national resources as a whole.

Despite infrastructural obstacles like weaknesses in transport services and weak access to market information and the fact that working capital is already poor in rural areas during last two decades, Cambodia has moved from a net commodities importer to a net commodities exporter position. The rise of pesticide imports is explained mainly by aggressive promotions by agrochemical companies and limited farmer education on other environmentally friendly pest management options (Bhutani, S., 2013). Cambodia also faces parallel problems regarding human capacities, experience, legal framework, and facilities and mechanisms for managing chemicals and information dissemination. Some current problems include:

1) Low level of chemical awareness on the part of workers, farmers and traders, who are directly using chemical products, due to their limited education;

2) Cambodia has no clear accurate accidental data and information for accidents caused by the misuse / wrong-use of chemicals.

3) The governmental institutions do not have sufficient ability for chemicals assessment and the identification of chemicals-related problems in the production, trade, storage, use, and disposal of such chemicals.

4) Cambodia has a lack of good cooperation among laboratories and those stakeholders responsible for managing emission sources of the chemicals and persistent toxic substances.

Non-regulatory mechanisms are focusing on the voluntary actions of private sectors. This kind of mechanism are very popular among developed countries, playing a very important role in contributing to the management of chemicals with low or poor support by the governmental institutions. But the situation changes when the same projects are developed in developing countries where rent seeking attitudes have been promoted during decades, spoiling the own initiative and sense of self commitment of their civil societies towards their requirements offered by their governments. Cambodia has established regulatory mechanisms for managing chemicals. But not much endorsement of these laws have been put into action but meanwhile using cosmetic and not regulatory mechanisms, left in hands of voluntary actions, trying to create public awareness raising, environmental protection through contributions of endowment funds, and meanwhile several relevant chemicals management campaigns.

PESTICIDES IN CAMBODIA

The most grave situation is that many imported pesticides are usually labeled in the language of the source country, which uses to be indecipherable to Cambodian farmers, and neither basic safety equipment nor control on the use or extension activities and spread of technical knowledge of the hazards are available to them (op. cit., vi). Also many pesticide residues exceed the maximum (allowable) residue limits (MRLs) raising food safety concerns and jeopardizing exports´ potential. MRLs are standards set by individual countries for traded agricultural commodities according to different types of pesticides. Pesticide residues result from: 1) heavy pesticide use on the growing crop; 2) insecticide used in post-harvest management to preserve food during storage; and 3) the persistence and carry-over effect of residues in the soil. Different survey studies of pesticide contamination of vegetables in Cambodian markets found products containing residues of organ chlorines (Wang et al. 2011), organophosphate and carbamates (Neufeld et al. 2010), exceeding the established MRLs (op. cit., iv). In only two decades Cambodia has ranked to first among 13 countries in the region with the highest pesticide residue on vegetables, particularly thanks to the production of leafy vegetables from Kandal (Wang et al. 2011). This is the result of the irresponsible and indiscriminate use of pesticides by farmers as well as a lack of understanding about pre-harvesting intervals. The lack of knowledge and wrong perceptions about pesticides, the underestimation of the risks and easy access to illegal and extremely hazardous chemical pesticides cause farmers serious problems, like reported symptoms of acute pesticide poisoning as a result of underestimating the health effects of exposure to pesticides during handling and spraying (Jensen et al., 2010).

CAMBODIAN RULES ABOUT PESTICIDES

The Cambodian Environment law and various other sub decrees regulate pesticide sales and their use, especially of Class I compounds. Cambodia is a signatory to the Stockholm Convention on Persistent Organic Pollutants, and is participating in the interim procedure of the Rotterdam Convention on Prior Informed Consent for Certain hazardous Chemicals in International Trade3. Unfortunately, even thought there have been a push in the creation of a plethora of laws about pesticides use and control in the last 10 years the situation is that Cambodia largely lacks the institutional capacity to effectively integrate these agreements into inter-ministerial effective policies. The government completely lacks the enforcement or judicial capacity to implement the current laws, due to the chaos installed about the definition of what agency must take care of these issues4. Although the Cambodian National Pest Management Program shows these efforts chronologically5 the reality is that most of these rules have been over passed by the reality and has pushed into an accelerated process of proclamations to cope the snowball of effects of this lack of concern and practical management during last decades, that will be discussed in this paper.

Why we say no pesticides ?

What are impacts regarding health and livelihood of the pesticide use on small-cale farmers, workers in sugarcan plantation, and locals who are living in Romeas Hek and Svay Chrom districts, Svay Rieng and Sam Roung district? CCFC is working with farmers who are affected by land issues and human harassment. Farmers have utilized pesticides to protect their crops and plantation from pests, including weeds by usning hurbicide and insectcide particular. Cambodia is not pesticide manufature. But Cambodia has imported large amounts of fertilizers and pesticides, particular, hurbicide and insecticide from neighboring countries, and encouraged farmers to use them for their feverable cultivative products. Farmers are usually aware of the short-term risks of using the chemicals but choose to gamble their health for what they believe to be a better chance of higher yields and greater profits. Back in 2002, as much as 90 percent of peticide in use were being illegally imported, skiting the Target pests can include insects, plant pathogens, weeds, mollusks, birds, mammals, fish, nematodes (roundworms), and microbes that destroy property, cause nuisance, or spread disease, or are disease vectors. Along with these benefits, pesticides also have drawbacks, such as potential toxicity to humans and other species. nausea, dizziness, rashes and difficulty breathing. Moreover, half of the pesticides used by growers were among those categorised by the World Health Organization as either “highly” or “extremely hazardous” to humans. with a 2017 United Nations report estimating that pesticides could cause 200,000 acute poisoning deaths each year.

What Objectives works?

To determine the health and livelihood impacts from the pesticide and herbicide on farmers and locals who are living in Romeas Hek and Svay Chrom districts, Svay Rieng province in order to build awareness raising and for futher advocacy work.

1. To calculate the level of understanding of farmers and locals on the negative impacts of pesticides over their health.

2. To identify the key reasons why small-scale farmers of Cambodia keep using pesticide on their plantation.

3. To document the impacts of pesticide in relation to insecticides and hurbicides, which farmers directly apply on their field, on the health of people such human nervous system, particularly women, elders and children effectively through, quantitative and qualitative research by using as sample size for advocacy work.