Pesticide Menace

THOUGH some may argue that farmers in Nepal have seen their farm output grow when pests were controlled thanks to some chemical pesticides, it is nonetheless a fact of the farm life that wrong and overuse of chemical pesticides have made much adverse impact on public health and environment. Granted that compared to developed countries, the use of chemical pesticides in Nepal is not great, due to the low purchasing power of the small farmers in general. Nonetheless, the impact caused by its irrational use is not so insignificant. A seminar on the pesticide problem the other day, heard that Nepal consumes about one million dollars worth of chemical pesticides. No wonder, stories of farmers spraying pesticides in their fields without proper safety measures abound. Pesticides have been used even in fishing with fish killed by pesticides ending up on dinner plates. Farmers without sufficient knowledge about the required quantity of pesticides routinely give overdoses of chemical pesticides to their plants. According to a report, pesticides in Nepal are mostly insecticides which are highly persistent in the agro-products and vegetables. It is easy to imagine what consumption of these foodstuffs is doing to the health of the people, particularly the ever-vulnerable children. Then there is this fact that pesticides also kill beneficial microbes in the soil. Over time, soil gets weakened. Combine chemical pesticides with overuse of chemical fertilisers and you have the perfect recipe for sapping the nutrients of soil. The result is less and less farm output with each passing year.

Another aspect of Nepal’s pesticides story is the disposal of expired chemical pesticides. In a storehouse of Amlekhgunj lie about 74 metric tonnes of outdated pesticides and elsewhere there are some fifty tonnes of it waiting to be disposed of. The threat to public health and safety they pose does not need elaboration. The solution to the menace of pesticides is to wean farmers away from its use and promote organic pesticides. It is proven beyond doubt that organic pesticides are a healthy alternative to chemical pesticides. Then there is the tested and tried Integrated Pest Management that works on the principles of nature being used in dealing with harmful field pests. The key question here is whether the concerned governmental agencies sufficiently appreciate the extent of the pesticides menace in Nepal and want to do something about it. If they don’t realise it yet, it is time they did, before the public health and environment vitiates further.

Question of Principal

USE of anti-personal mine during wars has been a rising concern for the world. With its use and its consequences for the world to see, indiscriminate use of such devices has been seriously questioned for sometime now. However, the use of explosive mines by the Maoist in our country has so far gone unnoticed in the international arena largely because we have not raised it as an act of grave human rights violation being committed by the insurgents. Humanitarian law that deals with the War Conventions has, by now, evolved to the extent where if nations were serious, implementation of specific humanitarian laws at national levels is easy enough. Generally speaking, ensuring that human rights are respected during armed conflicts should not be so difficult even if nations individually have not ratified the international instruments as most of such instruments are self-executing in as much as they are unequivocal and complete and hence can be implemented by government agents. However, we still need specific national laws, regulations and directives that will facilitate the implementation of self-executing provisions of humanitarian laws.

As for the issue of indiscriminate use of explosive mines by Maoist in the Western Nepal that has maimed and crippled many lives, some technical questions remain. Whether it can be termed as a violation of humanitarian law in ‘armed conflict’ as distinct from ‘terrorist activity’ or ‘insurgency’, or whether the devices can be called ‘anti-personal’ mines is a very technical one. The explosive mines that are being used by the Maoist in Nepal are not sophisticated international editions, rather they are improvised devices used manually. This certainly does not, in any manner dwarf the gravity or consequence of the use of explosive mines that are taking place in our country. Questions of technicalities whether the activity and the devices used by Maoists fall under the jurisdiction of humanitarian law aside, principally it is undeniable that those who have suffered, lost limbs and have been maimed and they are living evidences of human rights violations being committed. Therefore, even while we condemn such activities, it is time we also began to do serious research to reach a unanimous policy on these issues.