Protect Children’s Rights To A Clean And Healthy Environment, Phase-Out Highly Hazardous Pesticides!

To commemorate World Environment Day 2023, PAN Asia Pacific (PANAP) and its partners launched its annual Protect Our Children from Toxic Pesticides campaign, calling for a global phase-out of Highly Hazardous Pesticides (HHPs) by 2030.

The United Nations Committee on the Rights of the Child recently adopted the fundamental human right of all children to a clean, healthy and sustainable environment, including the important principle of “intergenerational equity,” or the recognition that children have the right to inherit a healthy and sustainable environment.

While all pesticides can be dangerous, HHPs are of particular concern due to their severe adverse effects on human health and the environment. HHPs are pesticides that present particularly high levels of acute or chronic hazards to health or environment according to internationally accepted hazard classification systems, their listing in relevant binding international agreements or conventions, or under conditions of use in a country.

To kick off its year-long campaign to highlight the call for a phase-out of HHPs as an integral part of ensuring children’s rights to a clean and healthy environment, PANAP and its partners in the Philippines, led by Agroecology X, held a children’s bike ride and Agroecology Fair in Quezon City Memorial Circle on June 4.

Children and advocates urged the Philippine government to ban HHPs and support agroecological alternatives, in light of the recent pesticide poisoning case of dozens of schoolchildren from the province of Maguindanao del Norte. This was followed by an Agroecology Fair where various organisations sold organic local produce, disseminated educational materials, and held various activities such as an art workshop and collective cooking of indigenous Lumad recipes.

“Children are more vulnerable to pesticide impacts because of their still developing bodies. They also breathe more air per unit of body weight than adults, so exposure to even small amounts of pesticides via inhalation can cause a lot of harm. Many countries have banned HHPs without affecting agricultural productivity. We encourage governments around the world, including the Philippines, to ban HHPs in their countries and support a global phase-out of HHPs in the upcoming International Conference on Chemicals Management 5 (ICCM5),” said Ilang-Ilang Quijano, PAN Asia Pacific communications officer, in a public forum.

In September 2023, the ICCM5 will convene to adopt a new framework for chemicals and waste. PANAP joins governments and other civil society groups in pushing for the adoption of the target to phase-out HHPs and an effective mechanism to do so.

Alfie Pulumbarit, national coordinator of MASIPAG and spokesperson for the alliance RESIST Agrochemical TNCs, said that Filipino children’s health and well-being are compromised by lack of effective regulation, not just on HHPs but on other hazardous technologies such as genetically modified Golden Rice. Earlier this year, the Supreme Court issued a writ of kalikasan vs the commercialisation of Golden Rice, with petitioners hoping that a Temporary Environmental Protection Order will also be granted.

“We have received reports that children are being experimentally fed Golden Rice, which was approved without adequate safety testing. The hunger and malnutrition faced by millions of Filipino children cannot be solved by these ‘techno-fixes’ being peddled by agrochemical transnational corporations with dubious claims and huge potential for harm. The problem is more basic: landlessness, destruction of local agriculture by importation and other neoliberal policies, and reliance on expensive seeds and hazardous chemical inputs when agroecological alternatives to produce healthy and nutritious food are available,” said Pulumbarit.

Cecile Rapiz, a farmer leader from the province of Bulacan, meanwhile spoke on the impacts of pesticides use and why their community decided to transition to agroecology. “We thought that by using chemical inputs, we would get higher yield. That was true at first, but in the end, the soil became too acidic and yields went down. I also noticed my immune system getting weaker, and a lot of farmers getting sick” Rapiz shared. With farmers practicing agroecology, children and youth are also more actively involved in production, helping the community produce organic fertilisers.

Cathy Estavillo, Secretary Generalof AMIHAN and Vice Chairperson for External Affairs of the Asian Peasant Coalition (APC) stressed that women and their children are among those most severely impacted by pesticides use and climate change. “Chemical inputs are made from fossil fuels and drive climate change. It is estimated that industrial agriculture is responsible for around one-third of global greenhouse gas emissions,” she said.

Estavillo also announced that the APC, together with other groups, is co-organising the Global People’s Caravan for Food, Land, and Climate Justice, an awareness-raising and mobilisation campaign of rural communities and advocates around common demands to end hunger, dispossession, and environmental destruction. Demands of rural peoples will be brought to the COP28 climate talks this year and the UN Summit of the Future in 2024.

“What right do big corporations and rich governments have to determine our future? It is the voices of rural peoples who feed the world that must be heard. We are the ones who most acutely feel the impacts of capitalist greed. We hold them accountable for environmental destruction and call for climate justice now for the sake of our children’s future,” Estavillo said.

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