For anyone who is not aware, bees play a critical role in agriculture by pollinating crops for us. There are now examples where fruit trees in China are having to be pollinated by hand, because the overuse of pesticides has eliminated the bees that once did this for them for free (1). One group of pesticides in particular seem to have a devastating effect on bee colonies: neonicotinoids. These are a relatively recent type of pesticide which affect the nervous systems of insects and do not seem to affect mammals and have become one of the more widely used pesticides worldwide. Neonicotinoids have been implicated in Colony Collapse Disorder by a number of studies (Buglife have a very informative website for more information: http://www.buglife.org.uk) and there have been a number of calls on the government to ban this pesticide, following bans in France and number of other European countries (2).
Sadly, the government in the UK has so far refused to ban this substance, but it seems that a recent study linking Colony Collapse Disorder with neonicotinoids (3)(due for release in June this year) may have changed the government's stance (4).
Now I am clearly very happy that there is a chance that this substance might finally be banned, but what I found interesting in reviewing the various reports and government responses into this was the level of abstraction and reliance on risk assessment models present throughout the documents I have seen (see 5, 6 and 7 below for examples). This was in sharp contrast with the short, reliable and highly persuasive chat I had this morning with our local beekeeper, who did not hesitate to condemn this (and other) type of pesticide.
Now, I am aware that generic medical and product risk assessments are a necessary part of our lives, but I was very interested that very comprehensive risk assessments compiled by a number of highly regarded and specialised scientists in a number of countries, using some fairly complex and well established mathematics failed to predict what our local beekeeper knew by instinct - that using pesticides which are highly effective at targeting insects generally would have the potential to seriously affect the insects that we depend on to pollinate our crops. I am further mystified when one considers that pollinators (i.e. bees) would be in as much contact with this pesticide as the pests we are trying to eliminate. Perhaps in their focus to produce a pesticide that only targets insects and not mammals they forgot how interconnected we all are.
So what lesson is there in all of this?
Well, for me it highlights the loss of context once again (surprise, surprise), with highly complex systems (i.e. the "risk assessments") taking the place of reality and instinct for decision makers. As we should know by now, human devised systems rarely have the ability to fully predict reality, and when they are able to approximate reality they encourage us to over-rely on them, potentially increasing the longer term risk as illustrated by the example above. To put it another way, it would seem that governments, manufacturers and their scientists are finding out the hard way what any expert local bee keeper could have told them for free: that the overuse of pesticides, in particular those as effective as Neonicotinoid, would have a detrimental effect on the health of bees, and ultimately undermine the purpose of pesticides, which is to protect crops.
Again, it isn't that people want to destroy bee colonies - in fact this will be the last thing any of the decision makers and other protagonists would want. It would seem that the world is now structured in a way which makes us think in this way: breaking a problem down into a multitude of disciplines and creating a system or complex procedure, which then forms the basis of further systems. Assumptions are passed from one to the next and eventually it becomes too big and complex for a single person or even a small group of people to handle and context is lost.
I'll be exploring this topic in more detail in future, but if you want to put pressure on the UK government to ban this here are a couple campaigns which might be of interest:
Neals Yard Bee Lovely Campaign Petition
Buglife Ban NeonicotinoidsCampaign
1. http://www.thedailybeast.com/newsweek/2008/06/14/stung-by-bees.html
2. http://www.epa.gov/pesticides/about/intheworks/ccd-european-ban.html
3. http://www.independent.co.uk/environment/nature/new-pesticide-link-to-sudden-decline-in-bee-population-7622263.html
4. http://www.independent.co.uk/environment/nature/government-to-reconsider-nerve-agent-pesticides-7604121.html
5. http://www.buglife.org.uk/Resources/Buglife/Documents/PDF/REVISED%20Buglife%20Neonicotinoid%20Report.pdf
6. https://secure.fera.defra.gov.uk/beebase/downloadNews.cfm?id=47
7. http://www.buglife.org.uk/Resources/Buglife/Documents/PDF/Reply%20to%20FERA%20response%20on%20Buglifes%20neonics%20report.pdf
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