The global damage caused by synthetic agricultural chemicals is steadily increasing. Insects suffer the most, but the negative impact also extends to fish and terrestrial plants.
This is evidenced by the results of a study by the Technical University of Kaiserslautern, reported by The Guardian.
Back in 2022, world leaders promised to halve the danger posed by pesticides by the end of the decade. Last year, the UN approved a metric for tracking progress – "total applied toxicity" (TAT), which takes into account how much different chemicals harm different species.
Scientists analyzed data on 625 pesticides in 65 countries, covering almost 80% of the world's agricultural land. The study's lead author, ecotoxicologist Jakob Wolfram, expressed serious concern that countries with high biodiversity and regions where pesticide use is increasing are most at risk.
“This should serve as a strict warning, since the use of toxic substances continues to rise in many regions. It is especially dangerous for groups of species that perform vital ecological functions,” the scientist emphasized.
Regional and species differences in impact
Between 2013 and 2019, damage to insects increased by 42.9% and to soil organisms by 30.8%. Only aquatic plants and terrestrial vertebrates experienced a reduction in risk.
The results showed that toxicity decreased in Europe, which began to phase out neonicotinoids in 2013. The indicator also fell in China, which introduced a zero growth policy for pesticides in 2015.
In contrast, in many regions of Africa, as well as in the US, India, Brazil, and Russia, the level of damage from pesticides has increased.
Indiscriminate destruction
Synthetic pesticides are designed to destroy pests. They have achieved their goal—agricultural productivity has increased, so the same area now yields more than it did before the use of chemicals.
But there is a downside to agricultural success—the destruction of ecosystems. The use of pesticides kills not only species that harm crops, but also neutral or even extremely beneficial species.
Scientists chose the period from 2013 to 2019 as the one with the most complete and comprehensive data to study the problem. The researchers insist that applied toxicity continued to increase after this period. The reason is the enormous scale of chemical use. Every year, farmers around the world spray about 4 million tons of pesticides. This figure is almost twice the amount used in the 1990s.
“This is a key study that highlights the urgent need for significant actions at the global level, such as diversification of agriculture, less intensive soil management, a more rapid transition to organic farming, and the use of less toxic pesticides. This is crucial to achieving the United Nations biodiversity conservation goal,” said Monica Martinez Aro, a wildlife toxicologist at the Spanish National Research Council.
EcoPolitic previously reported that the ban on neonicotinoid pesticides in France led to the gradual recovery of wild bird populations.
