Removing Africa’s Obsolete Crop Protection Products (missing graph)

By Hans Dobson

When a community in rural Africa is plagued by mosquitoes that carry the deadly malaria parasite or its food crops are infested with pests that decimate yields, it will often use vector control products or crop protection products to tackle the threat. These products are essential in the daily fight to protect people from tropical diseases and maintain food production. But a combination of factors — including a lack of infrastructure, inefficient distribution, changing weather patterns and uncoordinated supplies from donors — have led to stocks building up, no longer being needed and ecoming out-of date: in a word, obsolete.

In 2005, the amount of obsolete crop protection products stockpiled across Africa was estimated at 50,000 tonnes. However, most African countries lacked the capacity to properly manage their destruction and to clean up contaminated sites.

African Stockpiles Programme

The Africa Stockpiles Programme (ASP) was created to remove obsolete crop protection products through a partnership between African countries, the World Bank, United Nations’ Food and Agriculture Organization (FAO), CropLife International, Pesticides Action Network in the UK and Africa, and the World Wide Fund for Nature. It was estimated that about $200-250 million USD would be needed to remove all 50,000 tonnes of obsolete stocks in Africa.

The ASP began with a 10- to 15-year timeframe with phase one launched in September 2005 in seven countries: Ethiopia, Mali, Morocco, Nigeria, South Africa, Tanzania and Tunisia. All had ratified the Stockholm Convention and Basel Convention on Transboundary Shipment of Hazardous Waste, which called for national implementation plans to get rid of Persistent Organic Pollutants (POPs) and prevent inappropriate disposal of hazardous waste. The Stockholm Convention listed nine crop protection products to eliminate: aldrin, chlordane, DDT, dieldrin, endrin, heptachlor, hexachlorobenzene, mirex and toxaphene.

In the first phase, country operations included national inventories; safeguarding, disposal and site clean-up; capacity building in the prevention, management and handling of obsolete stocks; project management; and monitoring activities. The FAO’s Pesticide Stock ManagementSystem, a web-based database, was used to store detailed information on the stocks in all inventoried countries, including the original donors, manufacturers and suppliers.

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Crop protection products are of course most widely used in agricultural areas, where distributors and small-scale farmers often have little knowledge of exposure risks and storage facilities are below internationally recognized standards. Obsolete crop protection products are often located in these poor rural areas so the primary beneficiaries of the ASP have been the farming communities themselves. Governments, namely the ministries of health, environment and agriculture in participating countries, benefit from the ASP through improved environmental protection and product management capacity. People, wildlife and ecosystems are global beneficiaries.

Steady Progress

By August 2013, of the roughly 6,000 tonnes of inventoried obsolete crop protection products across Africa, ASP projects led by the World Bank,FAO and CropLife International had disposed of 3,146 tonnes of stocks in the following countries:

• Tanzania – 700 tonnes

• Tunisia – 1,792 tonnes

• Ethiopia – 448 tonnes

• South Africa – 100 tonnes

• Kenya – 60 tonnes

• Malawi – 40 tonnes

• Cameroon – 6 tonnes

In addition to these obsolete stocks, a further 687 tonnes were safeguarded — repackaged to UN-approved containers and transported to a secure, central store pending disposal:

• Eritrea – 72 tonnes

• Nigeria – 6 tonnes

• Malawi – 389 tonnes

• Ghana – 170 tonnes

• Cameroon – 50 tonnes

Safeguarding the Future

CropLife International-led safeguarding projects were concluded in Malawi, Ghana, Kenya and Cameroon with disposal envisaged through the FAO and other follow-up projects. Planning is now underway to repeat such effective collaboration in several other countries, such as Benin and Morocco, over the coming years.

The FAO is also starting in other West African countries projects that include obsolete crop protection product disposal, prevention of accumulation, sustainable container management and regulatory reform.

Although there has been significant progress in the past 25 years in eliminating obsolete crop protection products, there is still much to do. The FAO is the appropriate organization for the global coordination of obsolete stock management but it continues to collaborate closely with crop protection product manufacturers who are most familiar with their active ingredients and formulations. CropLife International and its members, with the support of these critical partners, remain dedicated to the removal and disposal of obsolete stocks to promote sustainable agriculture and healthier communities. Good product stewardship is as essential as crop protection itself.

Hans Dobson is a crop protection specialist at the Natural Resources Institute of the University of Greenwich in Kent, U.K., and a consultant for CropLife International’s obsolete crop protection product activities.