Columbia International Affairs Online: Policy Briefs

CIAO DATE: 07/2013

Pesticides and international environmental governance

Helle Munk Ravnborg

June 2013

Danish Institute for International Studies

Abstract

International environmental conventions may constitute a last resort when people and governments do not have the power to enforce existing national legislation. Unfortunately to the Nicaraguan farm workers who are still affected by earlier times’ use of the pesticide DBCP, this pesticide is not included under the Stock - holm Convention on Persistent Organic Pollutants. Their fate serves to remind us of the detrimental – and deathly – consequences of the inadequacy of international environmental governance.