The 2024 Protect Our Children from Toxic Pesticides (POC) campaign is a call to protect our pollinators by phasing out Highly Hazardous Pesticides (HHPs) and advancing agroecology. Under the theme “Pollinators Matter! A pesticide-free future for children and the environment” this campaign aims to empower young people to advocate for their right to a clean and toxic-free environment, highlighting the importance of adhering to the principles outlined in the UN Convention on the Rights of the Child (CRC) – ensuring children’s rights to a healthy environment, even 35 years after its ratification.
PAN Asia Pacific, in collaboration with its partners and allies, will launch its annual POC campaign on May 20th in conjunction with World Bee Day and continue throughout the year, culminating during No Pesticide Use Week, from December 3rd to 10th, 2024. Through these efforts, we ensure food security, protect farming communities, and fight against the decline of biodiversity!
The FAO World Bee Day 2024 campaign theme is on “Bee Engaged with Youth” emphasising the crucial role bees and other pollinators play in our survival. The theme underscores the importance of international collaboration in involving youth in the protection of these essential species. Moreover, World Biodiversity Day, which is celebrated every year on May 22nd, commemorates the adoption of the Convention on Biological Diversity (CBD). Thirty-two years after, governments are not doing enough to halt the devastating loss of biodiversity. With the adoption of the Kunming-Montreal Biodiversity Framework and the target to reduce (by half) pesticide risks to biodiversity by 2030, there is a unique opportunity to push governments to significantly reduce their pesticides load and phase out the most hazardous ones to bees and other pollinators.
A healthy future starts with children
The widespread use of pesticides presents a grave danger to a particularly vulnerable and often overlooked group: children. Pesticides are commonly used in agriculture, public health, and even in household products, resulting in significant exposure for children through various pathways such as contaminated food, water, and air.
Children, especially those in rural agricultural communities, are particularly susceptible to pesticide exposure due to their developing bodies, higher intake of food and water relative to body weight, and proximity to areas where pesticide use is widespread, such as in Vietnam and India. A report produced by PANAP and partners in 2023 reviewed data on unintentional acute pesticide poisoning (UAPP), finding that rural children in Vietnam are exposed via direct contact and drift, and data pertaining to the situation in India where deaths are reported, often caused by inadvertent ingestion of pesticide stored in the house. Another report by PANAP and partners highlights the pesticide usage conditions in four Asian countries – Bangladesh, India, Laos, and Vietnam – and documents that children are exposed to pesticides, including highly hazardous ones. Additionally, while schools should be a safe environment for children to learn and grow, many schoolchildren are exposed to pesticides both in rural and urban areas. Establishing pesticide-free buffer zones around schools is vital for protecting the health of children.
Children’s exposure to pesticides can have severe consequences on their health, including developmental disorders, respiratory problems, neurological impairments, and even an increased risk of certain cancers. Moreover, the environmental damage caused by pesticide use includes soil degradation, water contamination, and harm to biodiversity, further underscoring the urgency of addressing this issue. Despite these risks, children often lack agency and voice in decisions regarding pesticide use, making them disproportionately affected by the negative impacts of these toxic chemicals.
The Right to a Clean Environment
When examining the consequences of pesticide exposure to children and youth, it becomes evident that multinational agrochemical corporations, along with domestic pesticide producers and distributors, have infringed upon human rights, including the rights a safe and healthy environment. Article 24 of the CRC clearly outlines children’s rights to clean food and environments, yet much remains to be done to recognize, ratify, and adhere to these rights.
Children’s right to a clean environment is constantly challenged. Pesticides present a significant hazard to biodiversity owing to their toxic impact on various organisms, including crucial pollinators such as bees. Neonicotinoids, a category of systemic insecticides frequently applied in agriculture, have proven especially harmful to bee populations. These chemicals impede bee navigation, foraging patterns, and reproductive capabilities, thereby disrupting the essential pollination services necessary for food production and the functioning of ecosystems. Around three-fourths of food crops are dependent on bees and other pollinators. Moreover, other pesticides such as organophosphates and pyrethroids also present dangers to pollinators and other non-target species, as they accumulate in soil, water, and plant tissues, contaminating food sources and exposing organisms to harmful concentrations over time.
The global decline in populations of pollinators and beneficial insects leads to further biodiversity loss by disrupting ecological processes and diminishing ecosystem resilience. The indiscriminate use of pesticides contributes to biodiversity decline by degrading habitat quality, reducing species diversity, and ultimately altering ecosystem structure and function.
Preserving youth voices for a sustainable future
Overall, health impacts and biodiversity loss caused by pesticides profound implications to our children’s future. As such, we will emphasise biodiversity-preserving efforts and ramp up our efforts to protect bees and other pollinators as a crucial part of our campaign to Protect Our Children from Toxic Pesticides.
By prioritising the protection of children from pesticides and promoting healthy alternatives such as agroecology, we not only fulfil our obligations under international law but also contribute to children’s overall wellbeing and future prospects.
In 2024, the UN Summit of the Future will be held, with pacts to promote sustainable development and providing youth with a nurturing environment for the full realisation of their rights and capabilities. This provides a timely platform to address the intersection of children’s rights to a clean healthy environment and the need for radical transformation of food systems.
Together, let us commit to building a world where every child can thrive in a safe and pesticide-free environment!
The 2024 POC campaign aims to:
- Raise awareness among parents, educators, policymakers, child rights advocates, and children on the impacts of pesticides on children and the environment, including effects on biodiversity of pollinators;
- Encourage schools and governments to uphold children’s rights to a clean, healthy, and sustainable environment by ensuring pesticide-free spaces for children;
- Advocate for local and national phase-outs of Highly Hazardous Pesticides (HHPs) and programs to promote and support agroecological alternatives as part of governments’ commitments to phase-out HHPs by 2035;
- Involve children and youth in efforts to preserve the environment through the protection of pollinators and the promotion of agroecology and biodiversity
You have a role to play!
Here are some ways to get involved in the 2024 POC campaign, with the theme of “Pollinators Matter! A pesticide-free future for children and the environment”: 
- Use and share resources to raise awareness on pesticide impacts on pollinators, such as PANAP’s upcoming publication on bees, PAN North America’s honeybee haven and Save the Bees campaign or PAN United Kingdom’s resource page on bees and pollinators.
- Organise youth-centred or youth-led activities focused on protecting bees and pollinators. Tell us about your planned activities! (Suggested activities: creating a bee haven, storytelling, arts and crafts, biking, etc.)
- Write to your policymakers to encourage them to ban chlorpyrifos and neonicotinoids in your country. You can use PANAP’s policy brief on chlorpyrifos and PAN Europe’s factsheet on biodiversity and pesticides.
- Advocate for schools and governments to institute pesticide-free buffer zones around schools (see sample petition that can be adapted locally);
- Advocate to include education about pesticide harms and agroecological alternatives in the school curriculum or for pesticide-free school lunches
- Advocate for your governments to phase out Highly Hazardous Pesticides, replace them with agroecological alternatives, and honour commitments to the CBD to drastically reduce pesticides load and the Global Framework on Chemicals to phase-out HHPs in agriculture;
- Use our social media toolkit and tag us on Facebook, Twitter, Tiktok and Instagram in your social media posts.
Campaign highlights:
| May | · Release of PANAP Social Media Toolkit |
| · World Bee Day (May 20) | |
| · International Day for Biological Diversity (May 22) | |
| · Launch of PANAP’s publication “Buzzing Bees: Our Ecological Lifeline” | |
| June | · World Environment Day (June 5) |
| August | · International Youth Day (August 12) |
| November | · World Children’s Day (November 20) |
| December | · No Pesticide Use Week (December 3-10) |
Our Calls
- Save pollinators, save our food! Stop bee-killing pesticides!
- Protect children and pollinators, phase-out highly hazardous pesticides!
- Biodiversity for our children’s future! Agroecology Now!
Contact us at poc@panap.net for more information or if you are interested to join our 2024 POC Campaign!
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