Ecological management for ecosystem services: What can be learned from failure of neonicotinoids

Forty-seven years after Rachel Carson’s “Silent Spring”, EU’s Sustainable Pesticides Directive 2009/128/EC of the European Parliament established “a framework for community action to achieve the sustainable use of pesticides”. Article 14 instructs that:Member States shall take all necessary measures to promote low pesticide-input pest management, giving wherever possible priority to non-chemical methods, so that professional users of pesticides switch to practices and products with the lowest risk to human health and the environment among those available for the same pest problem. Low pesticide-input pest management includes integrated pest management as well as organic farming …. The Directive is a positive step, but the question remains if pesticides can used sustainably? In his keystone book about biological control, Paul DeBach in 1974 listed seven critical questions for assessing the real need for chemical control. Since Carson’s questioning of ecological safety, and DeBach’s questioning of the essential need for pesticide use, evidence has accumulated that the pesticide approach may be fundamentally flawed. The case of neonicotinoids in EU serves as an example. The controversy over effects of neonicotinoids on honey bees resulted in 2013 regulations restricting certain uses of these pesticides on flowering crops. Dispute over scientific evidence extended to policy – eight member states opposing the regulation – and to legal controversy between the pesticide industry and EU. European Academies Science Advisory Council took the task to review current scientific evidence about ecological safety of the neonicotinoids. The key conclusions were that use of neonicotinoids has severe negative effects on non-target organisms that provide ecosystem services, such as pollination and pest control, and there are sublethal effects on non-target organisms with negative implications for farmland biodiversity. The use of neonicotinoids is inconsistent with the Sustainable Pesticides Directive, and this illustrates a fundamental flaw in the original IPM philosophy.