For many decades, public interest groups have been drawing attention to the horrific harm that chemical pesticides are causing to humans and nature. They have now received a powerful endorsement from the United Nations Special Rapporteur on the right to food in the report it presented this month to the UN Human Rights Council.

The unequivocal message of the report, set in bold type at the end of the document, is that:

“In the words of the Director-General of FAO, we have reached a turning point in agriculture. Today’s dominant agricultural model is highly problematic, not only because of damage inflicted by pesticides, but also their effects on climate change, loss of biodiversity and inability to ensure food sovereignty.”

This indictment of industrial agriculture, pointing to complex and deeply embedded structures that control global food production, presents the symptoms of a self-destructive economic system that is being perpetuated by a coterie of oligopolistic interest groups.

Thankfully, growing numbers of people worldwide are waking up to the insanity of pursuing this development path and have embraced sustainable living in a conscious choice to ensure a viable future for the human race.

At the core of the issue, there is a vital difference between the two approaches.

On the one hand, it is that of a predominantly mechanistic view of business, economics and society as systems that can be most efficiently organised by following a set of formulae that determine the relationship between profits and losses, supply and demand and needs and production systems.

On the other, there is the heart-centred approach that focuses on the underlying connectedness of all things as the guiding principle for promoting the well-being of all of nature, of which the individual is an intrinsic and indistinguishable part.

Taking the latter view means that growing food, for example, becomes a celebration of the fertility that is inherent in nature, in which the food grower engages as an enabling agent in the web of life.

In this relationship, the grower is keenly conscious of the inter-relatedness of all organisms and understands that it is counter-productive to eliminate pests since that would create an imbalance in nature, which can lead to disastrous consequences.

The global problem of “colony collapse disorder” affecting bee populations, which the UN report references, is a chilling example of the shattering impact of interfering with the natural balance.

The effects of pesticide residues on non-target organisms are hugely under-estimated, says the report. For example, heavy use of neonicotinoids, a commonly used class of systemic insecticides, has been blamed for the 50% decline in honeybee populations over 25 years in both the US and the UK.  “This decline threatens the very basis of agriculture, given that wild bees and managed honeybees play the greatest role in pollinating crops. According to estimates from the FAO, of some 100 crop species (which provide 90% of global food), 71% are pollinated by bees,” the report states.

It would seem that such an apocalyptic outcome would give pause to the global agrochemical industry, but as the UN report points out, positive change is frustrated by “industry efforts to downplay the harm being done as well as complacent governments that often make misleading assertions that existing legislation and regulatory frameworks provide sufficient protection”.

The challenge is exacerbated by a systematic denial, fuelled by the pesticide and agroindustry, of the magnitude of the damage inflicted by these chemicals, while aggressive, unethical marketing tactics remain unchallenged, the rapporteur states.

“Agricultural policies, trade systems and corporate influence over public policy must all be challenged if we are to move away from pesticide-reliant industrial food systems,” the report emphasises.

The good news is that a global shift towards ecologically sound, holistic, just and participatory lifestyles that can bring the world back from the brink of the precipice is well under way.

Movements like the Global Ecovillage Network, Transition Network and One Community demonstrate that visions of sustainable, wholesome and egalitarian human communities are not impractical utopian dreams but are already a living reality for a growing number of people around the world.

In place of the litany of harmful consequences arising from the global reach of the agro-chemical industrial complex, the Ecovillage movement, for example, focuses on translating the vision of a life in harmony with all of nature into reality.

An ecovillage, as the description on the movement’s website goes, “is an intentional or traditional community using local participatory processes to holistically integrate ecological, economic, social and cultural dimensions of sustainability in order to regenerate social and natural environments.”

The backdrop that provides the motivation for the organising of ecovillages is the commitment of its members “to reverse the gradual disintegration of supportive social/cultural structures and the upsurge of destructive environmental practices on our planet.”

With the demonstrable success of worldwide networks of communities that are putting the principles of sustainable living into practice, the number of people who will join movements that espouse responsible stewardship of the earth can be expected to multiply substantially in time.

As the upswell of change gains strength, perhaps the day when these movements can win the hearts of pesticides makers, who sell some US$50 billion of their toxic products annually, may not be that far off after all.

R B Bhattacharjee is associate editor at The Edge Malaysia. He is the co-author of The Politics of Paraquat (2006).

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