The International Traffic in Pesticides

摘要

The general problem of environmental equity is examined in terms of the flow of pesticides from the developed countries (DCs) to the less developed countries (LDCs). Five facets of the problem are examined. The nature and scope of the international pesticide flow is first examined. Political-economic forces characterizing relations between (and within) DCs and LDCs that have increased the pesticide flow to the LDCs are discussed. The extent to which this stream has contributed to health, environmental, and other risks in LDCs is discussed. Major policies that have been proposed and enacted as solutions to the problem are critically reviewed. The article concludes with the argument that the adoption of sustainable techniques of pest control is the best means for dealing with the problem. . . . pesticides are an ideal product: like heroin, they promise paradise and deliver addiction [1, p. xv]. We stand now where two roads diverge. But unlike the roads in Robert Frost's familiar poem, they are not equally fair. The road we have long been traveling is deceptively easy, a smooth superhighway on which we progress with great speed, but at its end lies disaster. The other fork of the road-the one "less traveled by"-offers our last, our only chance to reach a destination that assures the preservation of our earth [2, p. 277].