The Pesticide Policy Project (PPP)

The Pesticide Policy Project started in April 1994 as a project of the GTZ (Deutsche Gesellschaft für Technische Zusammenarbeit), sponsored by the BMZ (German Ministry of Economic Cooperation and Development) and carried out under supervision of Prof. Hermann Waibel, Institute of Horticultural Economics, University of Hannover.

The project started out designing guidelines for pesticide policy studies and carrying out country studies in Latin America, Africa and Asia.

The Pesticide Policy Project (PPP) became an acknowledged institution in the field of pesticide policy analysis and the evaluation of integrated pest management (IPM). The project presented and published numerous papers at scientific and development policy conferences as well as articles in international journals. Its project publication series has an excellent distribution report.

Today the main activity of the PPP is the publication of relevant studies in the field of pesticide policy and evaluation of IPM programmes in Asia, Africa and Latin America in through its Special Issue Publication Series.

The overall hypothesis of the project states that the current use of pesticides goes beyond a level which is acceptable from the society’s point of view. This seems largely a result of ignoring economic considerations in pest management and pesticides use. The objective of this project therefore is to augment the use of economic instruments in pesticide policy. This is expected to lead to increased productivity via ecologically benign pest management and to sustainability in agriculture.