Jeff Waage
International Institute of Biological Control UK
Silwood Park, Ascot, Berks
UK SL5 7TA
I have been asked to present to this meeting a global perspective on biological control, which I will do as best I can from my vantage point in the International Institute of Biological Control. For those of you who do not know IIBC, we are a non-profit, inter-governmental, international organisation with a mission to support biological control as a component of sustainable pest management through assistance with research, training and information. We have been doing this now since 1927, and presently comprise about 40 scientists of 13 nationalities, distributed at Stations around the world in tropical America, Africa, Asia and Europe.
We are supported by grants, donations and contracts, and use these to carry out presently about 60 biological control and IPM projects with or on behalf of as many countries around the world. Most of our current work with the USA involves assistance to federal agencies, states and non-governmental organisations for classical biological control of alien pests of agricultural and conservation. We also assist US government agencies and foundations involved in international development with the design and implementation of policies and programmes for biological control and IPM. Finally, American scientists and institutions help us with projects on behalf of other countries around the world. I have been asked to talk today on international aspects of biological control.
In my title, I refer to the post-UNCED era, and so I will start with UNCED, the UN Conference on the Environment, held in Rio de Janeiro in 1991. At this conference, leaders of the world's governments, North and South, endorsed a blueprint for the environment and development in the 21st Century, Agenda 21. Let me quote from Agenda 21. Agenda 21 identifies integrated pest management (IPM) as the preferred approach to reducing dependence on chemical pesticides, and biological control as one of its principle components. In Agenda 21, Chapter 14 on Sustainable Development sets two ambitious objectives for IPM:
Since UNCED, governments and international institutions have made commitments to address these challenges - you will no doubt recognized the similarity between these objectives and President Clinton's target, announced in 1994, to have 75% of US land under biologically-based pest management by the year 2000.
Different countries have taken UNCED, IPM and the challenge for biological control in different ways. In the developing world, IPM adoption has been driven largely by economics. In tropical crops such as rice, vegetables, cotton, cocoa and coffee, pesticide treadmills have arisen in production areas, sometimes entire countries, leading to increased inputs, decreased yields and, sometimes, an overall decline in production, as has been seen in cotton in some parts of Asia in recent years. Governments have adopted IPM policies to protect and increase levels of production and to reduce the cost of protection to government and farmer. Since much of the problem here has involved the misuse of pesticides and the elimination of indigenous natural enemies, many of the initiatives have been aimed at understanding and restoring natural biological control.
Exciting IPM programmes focus on empowering farmers to understand and utilized the natural enemies of pests in their own crops, and to base IPM on that foundation of natural biological control. With the assistance of FAO, and more recently IIBC, national IPM implementation programmes involving training of trainers and farmer field schools, are underway in Asia on rice, cotton and vegetables. In 1995, a new global IPM Facility was established under cosponsorship of FAO, World Bank, UNEP and UNDP to help accelerate this process of IPM implementation through farmer-participatory training, and to help its development in Africa and tropical America.
In the developed world, interest in IPM has had a somewhat more environmental focus. National IPM initiatives in Europe, for instance, have involved setting targets of 50% pesticide reduction by the year 2000, independent of any production problems in particular crop systems. Pesticide-induced crises in crop production have been rare, and the concern is more for the effects of pesticides,even at low levels, on human health and non-target species. In the context of biological control, the emphasis has been less on utilizing indigenous, natural biological control than on intervention, particularly with biological control products and introductions.
This emphasis was driven home to me strongly when I served last year on an OTA Panel on biological control. Towards the end of that process, the Panel was engaged in reviewing a draft report and looking for gaps. To clarify my views, I volunteered a familiar icon - a graph of pest populations bouncing along below some economic threshold, occasionally crossing it. It appeared to me, and I think to others there, that the entire OTA process had focused on what you do with biological control when that population line crosses the threshold - what sort of biological interventions or products do you have and how do you make sure you have them. What had not been considered at all was the line below that threshold, where biological control was preventing the need for intervention, a region less in the hands of research programmes, companies and regulators than in the hands of farmers and the public.
I think that these different trends in IPM and biological control in North and South are interesting and significant, as they highlight a potential divergence in thinking on what we are trying to achieve with IPM and biological control. The post-UNCED biological control world is complex, but interesting and challenging as well.
Now let me narrow down onto an aspect of biological control, a form of intervention,which is of growing importance today, the introduction of exotic or alien biological control agents for classical biological control, for augmentation and as biopesticides.
North America has imported much of its agriculture and a substantial urban flora and fauna, and this has led repeatedly to problems caused by alien species. A hundred years ago, the US pioneered a solution to such problems in the biological control of the alien cottony cushion scale on citrus in California through the introduction of a specific ladybird beetle, Rodolia cardinalis, from its native Australia. Based on this success, many programmes have been undertaken over the last century to introduce specific alien natural enemies - mostly insect predators and parasites, but also pathogens, against alien insect pests.
Similar early success with biological control of the alien cactus plant in Australia led to a similar growth of programmes of introduction against alien weeds. In this case, the agents were plant feeding insects, and it is for these that much of the safety measures we have today for biological control were developed, because of the obvious risk which introducing a plant-feeding insect may pose to crops.
To date, of the over 6000 introductions of alien natural enemies to control insects, weeds and other pests, only a proportion, perhaps 25-30% have led to substantial success, but those that do. because the control is permanent, yield enormous returns on investment to governments and communities - typical benefit to cost ratios for successful classical biological control are in the order of tens to one up to hundreds to one. Of equal importance is that few if any of these programmes, successful or unsuccessful, have led to environmental problems because the alien natural enemy becoming a pest itself.
Thus, today, the introduction of alien natural enemies is a proven methodology, with a moderate success rate but enormous value and a high level of safety. Its future will be influence by a number of issues and trends - I suggest there are three important trends:
The net effect of these trends is that many more alien biological control agents are being introduced into countries today, and that the community involved in these introductions is much larger and more diverse than before. It is also often less well informed, and capable of making mistakes with biological control introductions, or of restricting biological control because of fear of mistakes. For this reason, there is an need now to build first a responsible level of awareness of biological control, its benefits and risks, and secondly a regulatory environment which will realise the full potential of biological control introductions as alternatives to environmentally damaging pesticides, while ensuring that such introductions are themselves environmentally safe.
With respect to safety, the need for acceptable, international protocols for biological control introductions led international organisations like my own, the FAO and the International Organisation of Biological Control (IOBC) to develop a basic Code of Conduct for the Import and Release of Biological Control Agents, to serve as a starting point for national regulations, where this was absent or needed improvement.
The objective of the Code is to:
It was conceived to help a growing number of developing countries to mount effective and safe biological control programmes. Being a voluntary code, or soft law, it does not oblige countries like the US to follow its suggestions, but it has involved the US government in its development, along with other countries currently undertaking biological control introductions. Finally, as a Code it does not give useful details on how to undertake biological control, only broad principles. Guideline for the Code are required, and we are presently preparing some with certain developing countries - the US already has a wide range of guidelines in operation or under discussion.
Two elements I would like to draw from the Code for this presentation are firstly its suggestion that all introductions should involve a dossier on the agent to be introduced, prepared for the national authority, which evaluates the potential value of the introduction and its possible impact on non-target species. Secondly, the Code quite rightly applies to the introduction of all alien species for biological control, including the living components of biological pesticides such as BT, because these too have the potential to establish and spread in a new ecosystem. However, the Code recognises that, once cleared for introduction, subsequent introductions of a species or formulated product may not need to go through the same screening and quarantine procedures. Presently, most biological pesticides being moved around the world are not treated as the alien introductions which they clearly are.
The Code suggests a responsible and not a restrictive level of regulation. And we feel there is a particular need for this today.
Most traditional classical biological control has been undertaken by government agencies for the public at large - often the same government organisation would both make biological control introductions and regulate them, so that there was an awareness and internal responsibility for avoiding mistakes. Today, as commercial biological control dominates new introductions in many countries, there is the risk that public interests and private interests may differ and that importers of biological control agents, now motivated by commercial rather than public factors, may not be as responsible in regulating their own actions. Add to this the fact that introductions for commercial biological control are frequently general predators rather than the specific natural enemies of traditional classical biological control programmes, and we have a strong basis for concern about the regulation of biological control introductions.
A second important issue arising from recent trends in biological control is the concept of ownership. As IPM becomes more popular, biological control agents will become increasingly important genetic resources, just like the wild plants which may provide us tomorrow's crops or medicines. This is recognised by those interested in the conservation of biological diversity. A recentrecent advertisement from an American magazine illustrates a number of reasons to preserve Amazonian rainforests, including relatives of important crop plants, sources of pharmaceuticals, wild animals of aesthetic value and a biological control agent for a water plant which has escaped from the Amazon to become are serious weed in other parts of the world. All of our countries support in their biodiversity the biological control agents of tomorrow.
Concern for the conservation of useful biological diversity is the basis for the international agreement known as the Convention on Biological Diversity, which has as its objective:
As of January this year, 138 countries had ratified the Convention. To the best of my knowledge, the USA, on of the original signatories, has not yet ratified the Convention. The Convention is implicitly favourable to biological control, in that the use of living organisms to manage other living organisms constitutes a sustainable use of biodiversity. Furthermore, the Convention requires signatories to:
Perhaps the most challenging part of the Convention for biological control is its position on access to genetic resources. The Convention recommends that countries make available their biodiversity for use by others, but that this is done with their prior and informed consent, that collaboration in this activity is encouraged, and that there is an equitable and fair sharing of the results of research and the benefits arising from use of the genetic resources in question.
At present, few programmes of classical biological control involve scientists in the country of origin of the alien pest. None, to my knowledge, have put in place mechanisms to share the benefits of biological control with the country of origin of the control agent.
These are complex issues, and we at IIBC have felt that the first step required is to raise awareness about biological control and its relevance to the Biodiversity Convention. For this reason, and at the request of the Secretariat to the Convention, we produced a booklet. entitled "Using Biodiversity to Protect Biodiversity: Biological Control, Conservation and the Biodiversity Convention". In it we outline for non-specialists scientific and safety aspects of biological control, particularly as it relates to the control of alien invasive species in conservation.
We also analyse past patterns of biological control and come up with some interesting results relative to the issue of fairness. Looking at programmes against alien insects, and starting at the end of the last century, 98 countries have to date been the source of biological control agents, and 121 countries have been the recipients - clearly many of the world's 180 odd countries are participating. If we look along a North-South dimension, the developing world has been the source of 57% of all introductions, and the recipient of 52% of all introductions. Specific countries have been substantial net contributors and donors, but the broad pattern is not too biased. A more recent analysis of weed programmes which we are doing gives similar results.
This is reassuring but no basis for complacency. Future use of biological control agents from around the world must be more responsible in recognising the rights of governments and peoples to their biodiversity, and therefore must involve more consultation with and participation of scientists and authorities in the countries of origin of biological control agents. In our view, this can only contribute to spreading the benefits of biological control and making it more sustainable.
Let me finish by sharing with you the results of a recent European meeting on biological control , organised by my Institute and the European Plant Protection Organisation on 26-28 March 1996. Sixteen European countries participated in this meeting, sending representatives from research and regulatory agencies responsible for such activities as the introduction of biological control agents and the registration of biological pesticides. Industry was also represented.
European issues in biological control are somewhat different from those of the USA. Europe does not have a long tradition of problems with alien pests or, consequently, of classical biological control. However, they do have a long tradition of commercial biological control for the glasshouse industry and this has created demand for importation of alien natural enemies. Further, European countries use and produce biological pesticides for regional and world markets.
This meeting gave its broad endorsement to the FAO Code of Conduct, and particularly its requirement for dossiers, which might be considered for Europe on a European-wide consultative. Imported predators and parasitoids should be considered as alien introductions and, while registration may not be necessary, certification of such products is necessary. Biopesticide development needs to be accelerated by providing, as in the USA now, a fast track approach relative to chemicals, but one which fully evaluates risks.. Overall, there is a concern to promote and accelerate biological control development. and to do this on a regional, not just a national level, recognising that many issues involved are international.
Thus, the developed world is responding to the IPM and biological control challenges arising after UNCED by developing a technological portfolio for biological control, comprising products of demonstrable safety, to replace at least some of the chemical pesticides of yesteryear. Elsewhere in the world, the emphasis in IPM is, perhaps by necessity, less on intervention but on understanding and utilization of indigenous natural enemies - if you will, a somewhat more ecological than technological approach to biological control and IPM.
However, what is most significant is not the differences but the trend. Biological control is no longer the marginal pastime of government quarantine services or minor crop protection companies, or small institutes like my own. It is the foundation of IPM and the concern of citizen and scientist and politician alike. I am sure that with this attention it can only thrive and make the contribution which was always waiting there to be made.
For more information about IIBC or activities mentioned in this paper, write to the author at the address above or e-mail to J.WAAGE@CABI.ORG
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