This is a red line for green NGOs. Environmental organizations, involved in ongoing consultations on the revision of the Ecophyto plan, declared this Monday, February 12 that maintaining the main indicator for measuring the use of pesticides in France was a non-negotiable condition, before an important meeting in The Minister of Agriculture.
“Challenging the Nodu indicator”, the reference tool of the Ecophyto plan, “is calling into question the very objective of reducing the use of pesticides”, say eight environmental NGOs in a joint press release. “The Nodu must remain the reference and monitoring indicator of the plan: it is a red line for our NGOs”, according to this press release signed in particular by Générations Futures, WWF France, the Foundation for Nature and Man or the LPO.
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These NGOs must participate this Monday afternoon at the Ministry of Agriculture in a Strategic Orientation and Monitoring Committee (Cos) with the government, elected officials and representatives of farmers, industry, on the future of ‘Ecophyto. This plan, which aims to halve the use of pesticides by 2030 (compared to 2015-2017), was suspended by Gabriel Attal “the time to put in place a new indicator” which would replace Nodu, main French measuring tool.
The Nodu, expressed in hectares, takes into account the quantities of active substances sold and their reference dose – or “unit dose” – specific to each substance. It evaluates “our dependence on pesticides, avoiding biases linked to large differences in approved doses between molecules”, explains the Inrae Research Institute on its site.
The FNSEA and the chemical industry strongly contest Nodu, which they criticize for not reflecting the efforts of farmers, who claim to have already reduced their use of pesticides by 46% in 20 years. “Our organizations cannot condone either this denial of democracy, nor this 15-year flashback, sweeping away in a few days months and even years of collective work where many stakeholders worked for the success of the plan,” continue the NGO in their press release.
The invitation to the Cos on Monday “contained neither agenda nor working documents transmitted in preparation for this meeting”, accuse the NGOs: “How can we envisage in these conditions, in two hours with nearly 80 participants and four ministers, that Is this a desire to work in peaceful conditions?
