The UK pesticide load indicator: development toward a policy tool

Pesticides perform a vital role in delivering profitable agriculture and global food security, but concerns remain with respect to impacts on the environment and human health. Consequently, there is an ongoing need for pragmatic techniques to assist pesticide policy development, evaluation, and communication. In 2020, the Danish Pesticide Load Indicator was applied to the UK, identifying several deficiencies with respect to UK environmental conditions and regulatory processes. The aim of this study was to address these deficiencies and develop the PLI methodology to better meet the needs of UK policy. A key decision was not to aggregate the individual load metrics into a single index, but to present the results as a suite of 20 metrics (four environmental fate, 16 ecotoxicity). Three examples are provided, highlighting how this approach reveals impacts on individual taxa and potential tradeoffs of pesticide withdrawals (or other policy decisions) which would have been hidden by aggregation. This presents additional communication challenges, but these are outweighed by a richer picture, and many challenges can be overcome with modern technology (e.g. online indicator dashboards). Further developments are expected including the addition of other taxa as data becomes available; and improvements for calculating uncertainty in pesticide usage data.