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Stories from the PAN North America Affiliates Network
The following profiles highlight the valuable work of three PAN North America Affiliates in Canada , Mexico and the United States towards eliminating the worst pesticides, advancing human rights and promoting just and healthy alternatives.
The Coalition for Alternatives to Pesticides—Quebec
Organizations ~ Join Pesticide Action Network!
In addition to thousands of individual members, PAN North America works with a broad network of Affiliate organizations. In fact, we are one of five regional centers throughout the world that coordinate the work of PAN International. This global coalition involves nearly 700 organizations in more than 100 countries working to reduce pesticide use and promote ecologically sound, socially just alternatives. PAN participants everywhere know that citizen action is essential to halt the global proliferation of pesticides and ensure a transition to healthy, ecologically sound and socially just practices in place of pesticide use.
What groups can affiliate with PAN North America?
Non-governmental public interest organizations in Canada, Mexico and the United States are invited to become PAN North America Affiliates. Affiliates share a commitment to collaborate towards eliminating the use of toxic pesticides worldwide, defending basic rights to health and environmental quality, and ensuring the transition to a just and viable society. They agree to host at least two PAN action alerts per year (if they have an alert system) and pay a sliding scale annual Affiliate fee. Volunteer organizations are encouraged to join through exchange of membership.
At last count there were 225 Affiliates participating as part of the PANNA network. They range from Alaska Community Action on Toxics to the World Wildlife Fund, from the Canadian Environmental Law Association to Red de Permacultura Mexico. They span the breadth of North America, from Nova Scotia Coalition for Alternatives to Pesticides to KAHEA: The Hawaiian Environmental Alliance. Affiliates’ work defines the diversity of the pesticide reform movement in North America. The sectors represented include consumer protection, public health, labor and worker safety, social justice and human rights, organic and sustainable agriculture, international trade and development, and corporate responsibility—among many others.
Affiliate today!
In summer 2006, we started a drive to add Affiliates to
strengthen the Network’s capacity to build power and
mobilize around key campaigns, including our effort to
reduce and phase out use of fumigant pesticides. Among
PAN’s 2006 renewing Affiliates are the Center for Race,
Poverty and the Environment, and the Midwest Organic &
Sustainable Education Service.
Qualifying organizations should contact Kathryn Gilje,
Campaigns Director, at kathryn@panna.org.
Michel Gaudet was outside, flame weeding hislarge vegetable garden, when we called to get an update for this article. As a co-founder with Rohini Peris, of Coalition for Alternatives to Pesticides (CAP), Michel was practicing what he preaches—using non-toxic and organic methods for lawn and garden pest management. Michel and Rohini understand the toll that pesticides can take, after suffering a serious incident of pesticide poisoning in their own home.
Montreal-based CAP has been central in winning and defending the groundbreaking Quebec Pesticides Management Code, which took force on April 3, 2003 and is being implemented in phases through 2008. The Code strictly controls the non-agricultural use and sale of pesticides in order to reduce harmful exposures to people and the environment. It spells out rules for pesticide storage, preparation and application in agricultural areas, forests, roads and transportation corridors, urban areas and public golf courses. The Code prohibits use of many dangerous pesticides containing twenty active ingredients, including the herbicide 2,4- D; insecticides carbaryl, DDT and malathion; and fungicides captan and benomyl. Except for a small list of biological pesticides, all pesticides are prohibited for use inside or outside schools and daycare facilities and in all public settings where children under fourteen meet and play.
CAP has also inspired pesticide bans in ninety-five municipalities throughout Quebec . Dedicated volunteer on-the-ground organizing and campaigning—with no financial support for political activities of any kind—has yielded widespread victories.
CAP began in 1999, when groups of people like Rohini and Michel, living in different cities and towns, shared their concerns about links between pesticides and cancer, asthma and genetic deformation. When the National Institute of Public Health and Ontario College of Family Physicians released well-researched reviews of pesticiderelated health threats, many communities began working together to protect themselves from pesticides.
And work they did. The Coalition faced of with the pesticide and lawn-care industry, which lobbied politicians heavily and met privately with governmental officials to sway their opinion. Industry scrambled to both postpone the Code and remove 2,4-D from the list of prohibited pesticides. However, a focus on health, common sense and community organizing won out. The Code went into effect uncompromised and on time, April 3, 2006.
CAP is a network of individual and organizational members, ranging from a blue-collar union (7,000 individual members) to many “safer alternatives” companies. Visit: http:// www.cap-quebec.com. For details of the Quebec Pesticide Management Code, see: http://www.mddep.gouv.qc.ca/pesticides/permis-en/Code-gestion-en/Code-enbref.htm#schedule1.
Huicholes y Plaguicidas—Oaxaca
For two decades, “Huicholes and Pesticides” and Patricia Díaz-Romo, the group's founder, have worked tirelessly in the face of great adversity to expose the health effects associated with toxic pesticides and to advance human rights for indigenous communities throughout southern Mexico . Díaz-Romo and the many indigenous leaders and community groups that have worked with Huicholes y Plaguicidas have been vital to North American efforts to unravel the complex story about challenges to food security, human rights and cultural survival of indigenous groups.
While the vast majority of agricultural laborers in Mexico and the U.S. are of Mexican and Central American ancestry, Spanish is neither the first nor the common tongue among workers from indigenous communities, who speak languages thousands of years old. A crucial step in creating a fuller understanding of the exploitation of indigenous farmworker groups in the Americas was tackling the barriers of language that kept the story from reaching the world. Huicholes y Plaguicidas worked to remedy this situation by producing a widely circulated film about farmworkers from the Huichole tribe, who are routinely exposed to pesticides as they toil in industrialized commercial tobacco fields. The group has also provided training and support to many indigenous communities, and their work is now publicly availably online. Viewers can download these materials in Spanish and twelve major indigenous languages including wixárika (huichol), diidxazá (zapoteco del istmo), and batz'i k'op (tzotzil) directly from the group's website: http://www.huicholesyplaguicidas.org.
Other materials available from Huicholes y Plaguicidas include community-based radio spots, videos and DVDs on pesticides.
Organic Farming Research Foundation—California
The elimination of the use of toxic agricultural pesticides requires widespread access for farmers to information about growing non-toxic, safe food. Organic farmers, producing food and fiber without the use of synthetic pesticides or fertilizers, are leaders in the creation and implementation of healthy agricultural systems. The U.S.-based Organic Farming Research Foundation (OFRF) has been at the cutting edge of research, education and policy development related to organic agriculture since its founding in Santa Cruz , California in 1990.
Headed by a veteran of the organic certification movement in the U.S. and a long-time colleague of PANNA, Bob Scowcroft, OFRF was started by organic farmers to foster the improvement and widespread adoption of organic farming practices. OFRF sponsors research related to organic farming practices, disseminates research results to organic farmers and to growers interested in adopting organic production systems, and educates the public and decision-makers about organic farming issues.
Currently OFRF is inviting public participation in important opportunities where collective action will make a difference in increasing U.S. investment in organic agriculture. They are asking consumers and public interest groups to call their representatives and senators, urging them to join the bi-partisan U.S. Organic Caucus that monitors policies and funding for organic research and farming. To see if your congressperson is part of the Organic Caucus, go to OFRF's website. This website contains easy-to-use talking points and contact information, as well as basic information about numbers of organic farmers in each congressional district. OFRF is also inviting organic farmers to join the more than 500 farmers who comprise the Organic Farmers Action Network.
OFRF's work is paying off and their strategies are working. In May 2006, the House of Representatives voted to increase funds for the USDA Organic Transitions research program from $1.8 million to $5 million for the next fiscal year, as an amendment to the 2007 Agriculture Appropriations legislation. Discussions on the legislation have moved to the Senate. While this is still a tiny fraction of USDA investment in agricultural research, the rate of increase is encouraging.
OFRF will also be targeting components of the 2007 Farm Bill, directing policies and funding towards organic farming research, technical assistance and marketing support; improved design of conservation programs; and maintenance and improvement of national organic standards. Brise Tencer, Legislative Coordinator with OFRF, is convinced that widespread public action is making the difference: “The broad support for the 2007 appropriations amendment was likely a result of so many members of Congress hearing directly from constituents about the importance of investing in organic farming,” she said. It is crucial that all of us participate in the OFRF's valuable campaigns for a safer, less toxic agricultural system.
For more information and to get involved, contact: Brise Tencer at (+01) 831-426-6606 or visit the Organic Farming Research Foundation's website: http://www.ofrf.org.
For more information about becoming a PANNA Affiliate, contact Kathryn Gilje, Campaigns Director, at 415-981-6205 ext. 321 or kathryn@panna.org.