Several countries in Eastern Europe, the Caucasus and Central Asia will start working with the European Union (EU) and FAO to manage their vast stocks of obsolete pesticides , following the announcement of a new partnership, launched at FAO's headquarters in Rome on Thursday.

It is estimated that around 200 000 tons of obsolete pesticides, nearly half the world's stockpiles, can be found in twelve former Soviet Union republics. Kept on tens of thousands of unprotected sites, these chemicals pose a serious threat to the health of the people around them and to the environment.

Over the next four years, the EU and FAO will invest €7 million to assist twelve countries, Armenia, Azerbaijan, Belarus, Georgia, Kazakhstan, Kyrgyzstan, Moldova, the Russian Federation, Tajikistan, Turkmenistan, Ukraine and Uzbekistan, in managing obsolete pesticides and reducing the risks of current stocks. At the same time, the project will build capacity to reduce risks from pesticides used in agriculture and avoid build-up of additional stockpiles in the future, the FAO said on Thursday.

José Graziano da Silva, Director-General of FAO, which has called for a ‘truly’ green revolution and a paradigm shift in agriculture towards more equitable and sustainable production, said, "In the past decades, we were able to increase food production significantly, but at a huge toll on the environment, one of the consequences of this chemical-input, intensive agriculture we adopted are the barrels of obsolete pesticides lying abandoned around the world.

"Pesticides may be an important input for farming, but they need to be used responsibly while protecting human health and the environment from their adverse effects. In our quest for sustainability and to meet the challenge of feeding a growing population while preserving our environment, we also need to take a good look at the different options we have to protect crops and improve productivity. This includes using natural means to protect and improve crop yields through sustainable crop intensification, or 'save and grow' techniques as we call it at FAO."

The announcement comes as the European Ombudsperson, P. Nikiforos Diamandouros, has launched an investigation into whether the European Commission has been negligent in failing to act on new information linking commonly used neonicotinoid pesticides to mass bee die-offs in Europe. The investigation was launched following a complaint from an Austrian ombudsperson and follows concerns expressed by the European Parliament.

The new initiative aims to act as a catalyst for the development of obsolete pesticide and hazardous waste management in the region, by helping provide the resources needed for technical and policy support to enable countries to help themselves.

Although activities will include the actual disposal of stockpiles, the priority lies in building capacities, for example in the areas of legislative reform, pesticide registration processes, the promotion of alternatives to the most hazardous chemicals in use and the development of communication strategies to raise awareness among farmers and the public.

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