Expected Effects of Transforming Agricultural Pest Management across Global Scales

Abstract

Ambitious policy goals to reduce pesticide use and risk and transform agricultural pest management have been set on global and regional levels. However, global estimates on the effects of such a transformation, and their heterogeneity across important regions and production systems, are currently missing. We here provide the first global assessment of the expected effects of a transformation of agricultural pest management - based on survey evidence from 517 experts from key disciplines and regions worldwide. We compare heterogeneity and assess drivers of expected effects across five different domains (economic, human health, food security, social, environmental) and the main agricultural production regions worldwide. Our study thus allows us to discern global differences and to identify leverage points for (i) advancing pesticide policies and (ii) focusing future research efforts - an important step in a field that is often limited by data scarcity. Results show that a global transformation to sustainable pest management could be an important nexus for simultaneously tackling multiple sustainability challenges. We find lower benefits and more trade-offs of a transformation for the economic and food security domains, especially in intensive production systems in Europe and North America. We generally find higher expected benefits for the environmental and human health domains, and for low-income regions. Controlling for important production system- and participant characteristics, our results suggest a different pathway for the intensification of pest management systems, especially in regions where pesticide use is currently still low. Finally, results indicate that advancing on sustainable pest management will require combinations of actions: delivering alternative pest management solutions, supporting the implementation of alternatives on the ground, and providing adequate political boundary conditions to make these solutions economically viable.