Sustainability and the Failure of Ambition in European Pesticides Regulation

Sustainability, as a concept, is recognised as consisting of various complex but familiar elements. One would expect to find such elements in legislation purporting to adopt sustainability as its orientating goal. This is arguably so with the EU’s 2009 Directive that aims to achieve the sustainable use of pesticides (the Sustainable Use Directive). Legislation governing pesticide use built on the principles of sustainability could provide a powerful and sophisticated framework through which to consider, and respond to, the multiplicity of concerns pesticide use raises. This article examines sustainability in terms of its potential to regulate pesticide use. It articulates various elements of sustainability that one might expect to find in legislation designed to achieve sustainable pesticide use. It assesses the Sustainable Use Directive against the elements identified and argues that the Directive implements a narrow agenda of risk management rather than genuinely and ambitiously adopting the true principles of sustainability.