Options for environmental monitoring of pesticides & their impacts post EU exit

This project seeks to review some of the accepted approaches to the way we measure the impacts and risks in pesticide use, as well as the ways in which monitoring for those impacts is funded. There is currently heavy reliance on cross-EU mechanisms for approval of active substances in plant protection product. Whilst this is unlikely to change as we leave the EU, our exit from the EU does present risks and opportunities, requiring us to have a clear vision of how we will continue to authorise products to meet the needs of UK agriculture without causing unacceptable impacts on the environment. In broad terms, much of the effort currently in terms of pesticides research and investment is placed in understanding and quantifying environmental risks at the point of pesticides approval and authorisation, and much less is focussed on systematically understanding impacts of pesticides on the environment once authorised and on the market. Whilst surveillance programmes such as the Wildlife Incident Investigation Scheme (WIIS) and the Predatory Birds Monitoring Scheme (PBMS) provide data on some aspects of pesticide residues in wildlife in England, the former relies on reporting of mortality incidents, whilst the latter currently has very limited coverage of pesticides, so currently no systematic long term monitoring exists to assess pesticide residues in wildlife or in the terrestrial environment.