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Pesticide Action Network
	Logo of PAN International
Formation	May 1982; 42 years ago
Founded at	Penang, Malaysia
Type	International NGO, Nonprofit
Purpose	Pesticide regulation
Locations	Berkeley, Brussels, Dakar, Penang, Santiago;
Key people	Anwar Fazal
Website	https://pan-international.org

Pesticide Action Network (PAN) is an international coalition of more than 600 NGOs in 90 countries which advocates for less hazardous alternatives to pesticides.^[1] It was founded in May 1982 with its first meeting in Penang, Malaysia.^[2]^[3]

Origins

The origins of PAN have been linked to the start of the "global anti-toxics movement".^[4]^[5] In 1981 journalist David Weir of The Center for Investigative Reporting, published the book The Circle of Poison focusing on pesticides, followed a year later by A Growing Problem: Pesticides and the Third World Poor by David Bull of Oxfam. In 1982, Anwar Fazal, a Malaysian activist who at the time was the first person from a developing country to head the International Organization of Consumers Unions (IOCU; later known as Consumers International), organized a meeting in Penang, Malaysia to explore the possibility of an international network of activists focusing on pesticide regulation.^[2] The meeting included Weir and Bull, that represented their respective organisations, as part of 14 participants from consumer and environmental organisations in developed nations, as well as 25 participants from developing nations.^[4] It was hosted by the IOCU and the Friends of the Earth, Malaysia.^[2] They decided to call "for a halt to the indiscriminate sale and misuse of hazardous chemical pesticides throughout the world"^[2] and proposed a model that would be based on an international communication network with regional nodes.^[4] By the mid-1990s, PAN operated as a decrentalised regional network with offices covering Africa, Asia-Pacific, Europe, Latin America and North America.^[6]

Activity

Within two years of its founding, PAN organised several international meetings and engaged in negotiations with the UN’s Food and Agriculture Organization on the development of the International Code of Conduct on the Distribution and Use of Pesticides that was approved in 1985.^[7]

PAN lobbied international institutions to regulate pesticide trade by drawing on the concept of "prior informed consent".^[8] PAN led a civil society campaign that gained the support of the chemical industry in the early 1990s, after their initial opposition.^[9] This concept, was adopted by the Rotterdam Convention on Prior Informed Consent and the Cartagena Protocol on Biosafety.^[10] Prior to the Rotterdam Convention’s entry into force, an interim Chemical Review Committee was established and the Pesticide Action Network coalition participated as representatives of non-governmental organizations, alongside representatives from intergovernmental organizations (such as the World Health Organization) and several industry associations.^[11]

PAN has lobbied for the regulation of persistent organic pollutants (POPs). On 5 June 1985 it launched the international “Dirty Dozen” campaign, with actions that included protests at plants manufacturing chemicals on the list such as the Dow plant in New Zealand that produced the herbicide 2,4,5-T.^[7] In 1987, it called for the insecticide chlordimeform to be removed from the US market due to being a potential human carcinogen.^[12]^[13] Starting in 1995, PAN participated with other NGOs to the intergovernmental forums on persistent organic pollutants.^[14]^[15] This activity culminated with the Stockholm Convention on Persistent Organic Pollutants signed in 2001.^[16]^[17] To follow PANs activity on POPs, it spun off a new organisation known as the International POPs Elimination Network (IPEN).^[7] IPEN became one of the most prominent nongovernmental organisations in negotiations over the Stockholm Convention.^[7] During the late 1990s, PAN was involved in efforts to reduce the use of methyl bromide which caused ozone depletion.^[18]

In 2000, Genetically Engineered Food Alert was launched by multiple organizations, including Pesticide Action Network North America, to lobby the FDA, Congress and companies to ban or stop using GMOs.^[19] On 18 September 2000, Genetically Engineered Food Alert announced it had identified StarLink, a GMO not approved for human consumption, in some Taco Bell-branded taco shells, leading to the StarLink corn recall.^[20]

Citations

^ Carpenter (2011).
^ ^a ^b ^c ^d Rothschild (1982).
^ UIA (2022).
^ ^a ^b ^c Zavestoski (2010), p. 261.
^ Zavestoski (2014), pp. 131–134.
^ Mourin (1998), p. 449.
^ ^a ^b ^c ^d Zavestoski (2010), p. 263.
^ Wolf (2000), p. 498.
^ Hough (2021), p. 221.
^ Wolf (2000), p. 486.
^ Kohler (2006), p. 299.
^ Gillette (1987).
^ New York Times (1987).
^ Baldwin (1997), pp. 865–866.
^ Yoder (2003), p. 133.
^ Yoder (2003), pp. 125–126.
^ UNEP (2019).
^ Andersen & Sarma (2012), pp. 339, 399.
^ Roosevelt (2000).
^ Kaufman (2000).

Bibliography

Andersen, Stephen O.; Sarma, K. Madhava (2012). Protecting the Ozone Layer: The United Nations History. Earthscan. ISBN 978-1-84977-226-6.
Baldwin, Elizabeth (1 January 1997). "Reclaiming Our Future: International Efforts to Eliminate the Threat of Persistent Organic Pollutants". UC Law SF International Law Review. 20 (4): 855–899. ISSN 0149-9246.
Carpenter, Susan (19 June 2011). "Cotton that's kinder to the planet". Los Angeles Times. Archived from the original on 7 February 2023. Retrieved 20 October 2023.
"Environmental Groups Urge Ban on Pesticide". New York Times. 23 January 1987. Archived from the original on 2 November 2017. Retrieved 17 October 2023.
Gillette, Robert (22 January 1987). "Pesticide Ban Urged; Firm Partly Agrees". Los Angeles Times. Archived from the original on 19 October 2023. Retrieved 17 October 2023.
"History of the negotiations of the Stockholm Convention". Stockholm Convention. United Nations Environment Programme. Archived from the original on 7 October 2023. Retrieved 21 October 2023.
Hough, Peter (2021). "Rotterdam Convention on the Prior Informed Consent Procedure in Trade". In Morin, Jean-Frédéric; Orsini, Amandine (eds.). Essential concepts of global environmental governance (2nd ed.). Abingdon, Oxon New York: Routledge. ISBN 978-0-367-81668-1.
Kohler, Pia M. (2006). "Science, PIC and POPs: Negotiating the Membership of Chemical Review Committees under the Stockholm and Rotterdam Conventions". Review of European Community and International Environmental Law. 15 (3): 293–303. doi:10.1111/j.1467-9388.2006.00531.x. ISSN 0962-8797.
Kaufman, Marc (18 September 2000). "Biotech Critics Cite Unapproved Corn in Taco Shells". Washington Post. Archived from the original on 29 September 2016. Retrieved 21 October 2023.
Mourin, Jennifer (January 1998). "Finding Alternatives: The Pesticide Action Network (PAN) in Asia and the Pacific". Gender, Technology and Development. 2 (3): 449–456. doi:10.1080/09718524.1998.11909901.
"Pesticide Action Network". uia.org. Union of International Associations. 2022. Archived from the original on 14 October 2023. Retrieved 21 October 2023.
Roosevelt, Margot (31 July 2000). "Inside The Protests: Taking It To Main Street". Time. Archived from the original on 11 May 2022.
Rothschild, Matthew (July 1982). "Consumers Take the Offensive Against Multinationals". Multinational Monitor. Vol. 3, no. 7. Retrieved 17 October 2023.
Wolf, Amanda (2000). "Informed Consent: A Negotiated Formula for Trade in Risky Organisms and Chemicals". International Negotiation. 5 (3): 485–521. doi:10.1163/15718060020848866. ISSN 1382-340X.
Yoder, Andrew (1 July 2003). "Lessons from Stockholm: Evaluating the Global Convention on Persistent Organic Pollutants". 10 Indiana Journal of Global Legal Studies 113 (Summer 2003). 10 (2): 113–156. doi:10.2979/gls.2003.10.2.113. S2CID 153673900.
Zavestoski, Stephen (2010). "Environmental health organizing in a globalizing world: The emergence of a global anti-toxics movement and its political, legal and economic challenges". In Kopnina, Helen; Keune, Hans (eds.). Health and Environment: Social Science Perspectives. Hauppauge, N.Y: Nova Science. pp. 255–272. ISBN 978-1-60876-216-3.
Zavestoski, Stephen (31 July 2014). "The Struggle for Justice in Bhopal: A New/Old Breed of Transnational Social Movement". In Armiero, Marco; Sedrez, Lise (eds.). A History of Environmentalism: Local Struggles, Global Histories. London: Bloomsbury. pp. 127–146. ISBN 978-1-4411-7051-4.