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The politics of glyphosate regulation: lessons from Sri Lanka’s short-lived ban
BACKGROUND: Glyphosate is the world’s most used herbicide and a central component of modern industrial agriculture. It has also been linked to a variety of negative health and environmental effects. For instance, the International Agency for Research on Cancer classified glyphosate as “probably carc...
Autores principales: | , |
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Formato: | Online Artículo Texto |
Lenguaje: | English |
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BioMed Central
2023
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Materias: | |
Acceso en línea: | https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC10644602/ https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pubmed/37957659 http://dx.doi.org/10.1186/s12992-023-00981-2 |
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author | Dorlach, Tim Gunasekara, Sandya |
author_facet | Dorlach, Tim Gunasekara, Sandya |
author_sort | Dorlach, Tim |
collection | PubMed |
description | BACKGROUND: Glyphosate is the world’s most used herbicide and a central component of modern industrial agriculture. It has also been linked to a variety of negative health and environmental effects. For instance, the International Agency for Research on Cancer classified glyphosate as “probably carcinogenic to humans” in 2015. This has motivated widespread political demands for stricter glyphosate regulation but so far few governments have followed through. METHODS: We conduct a case study of Sri Lanka, which in 2015 became the first and so far only country in the world to adopt and implement a complete glyphosate ban. But this ban proved to be short-lived, as it was partially reversed in 2018 (and later fully revoked in 2022). To explain the political causes of Sri Lanka’s pioneering glyphosate ban and its subsequent reversal, we employ process tracing methods drawing on publicly available documents. Our analysis is theoretically guided by the multiple streams framework and the concept of self-undermining policy feedback. RESULTS: Glyphosate regulation rose to the top of the Sri Lankan political agenda in 2014 when a local scientist linked glyphosate exposure to an epidemic of Chronic Kidney Disease of Unknown Origin (CKDu). A glyphosate ban was eventually adopted in June 2015 by the newly elected government of Maithripala Sirisena. The ban was a political commitment made to the Buddhist monk Rathana Thero and his party, which had supported Sirisena during his presidential campaign. The ban’s partial reversal in 2018, implemented through sectoral exceptions, was the result of continued lobbying by export-oriented plantation industries and increased political concerns about potential negative effects on the large and structurally powerful tea sector. The reversal was further aided by the scientific community’s failure to corroborate the hypothesized link between glyphosate and CKDu. CONCLUSIONS: The case of Sri Lanka suggests that strict glyphosate regulation becomes more likely when coupled with locally salient health risks and when decision-making authority is de-delegated from regulatory agencies back to the political executive. Meanwhile, the short-lived nature of the Sri Lankan ban suggests that strict glyphosate regulation faces political sustainability threats, as the apparent lack of cost-effective alternative herbicides motivates persistent business lobbying for regulatory reversal. SUPPLEMENTARY INFORMATION: The online version contains supplementary material available at 10.1186/s12992-023-00981-2. |
format | Online Article Text |
id | pubmed-10644602 |
institution | National Center for Biotechnology Information |
language | English |
publishDate | 2023 |
publisher | BioMed Central |
record_format | MEDLINE/PubMed |
spelling | pubmed-106446022023-11-13 The politics of glyphosate regulation: lessons from Sri Lanka’s short-lived ban Dorlach, Tim Gunasekara, Sandya Global Health Research BACKGROUND: Glyphosate is the world’s most used herbicide and a central component of modern industrial agriculture. It has also been linked to a variety of negative health and environmental effects. For instance, the International Agency for Research on Cancer classified glyphosate as “probably carcinogenic to humans” in 2015. This has motivated widespread political demands for stricter glyphosate regulation but so far few governments have followed through. METHODS: We conduct a case study of Sri Lanka, which in 2015 became the first and so far only country in the world to adopt and implement a complete glyphosate ban. But this ban proved to be short-lived, as it was partially reversed in 2018 (and later fully revoked in 2022). To explain the political causes of Sri Lanka’s pioneering glyphosate ban and its subsequent reversal, we employ process tracing methods drawing on publicly available documents. Our analysis is theoretically guided by the multiple streams framework and the concept of self-undermining policy feedback. RESULTS: Glyphosate regulation rose to the top of the Sri Lankan political agenda in 2014 when a local scientist linked glyphosate exposure to an epidemic of Chronic Kidney Disease of Unknown Origin (CKDu). A glyphosate ban was eventually adopted in June 2015 by the newly elected government of Maithripala Sirisena. The ban was a political commitment made to the Buddhist monk Rathana Thero and his party, which had supported Sirisena during his presidential campaign. The ban’s partial reversal in 2018, implemented through sectoral exceptions, was the result of continued lobbying by export-oriented plantation industries and increased political concerns about potential negative effects on the large and structurally powerful tea sector. The reversal was further aided by the scientific community’s failure to corroborate the hypothesized link between glyphosate and CKDu. CONCLUSIONS: The case of Sri Lanka suggests that strict glyphosate regulation becomes more likely when coupled with locally salient health risks and when decision-making authority is de-delegated from regulatory agencies back to the political executive. Meanwhile, the short-lived nature of the Sri Lankan ban suggests that strict glyphosate regulation faces political sustainability threats, as the apparent lack of cost-effective alternative herbicides motivates persistent business lobbying for regulatory reversal. SUPPLEMENTARY INFORMATION: The online version contains supplementary material available at 10.1186/s12992-023-00981-2. BioMed Central 2023-11-13 /pmc/articles/PMC10644602/ /pubmed/37957659 http://dx.doi.org/10.1186/s12992-023-00981-2 Text en © The Author(s) 2023 https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/4.0/Open Access This article is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution 4.0 International License, which permits use, sharing, adaptation, distribution and reproduction in any medium or format, as long as you give appropriate credit to the original author(s) and the source, provide a link to the Creative Commons licence, and indicate if changes were made. The images or other third party material in this article are included in the article's Creative Commons licence, unless indicated otherwise in a credit line to the material. If material is not included in the article's Creative Commons licence and your intended use is not permitted by statutory regulation or exceeds the permitted use, you will need to obtain permission directly from the copyright holder. To view a copy of this licence, visit http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/4.0/ (https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/4.0/) . The Creative Commons Public Domain Dedication waiver (http://creativecommons.org/publicdomain/zero/1.0/ (https://creativecommons.org/publicdomain/zero/1.0/) ) applies to the data made available in this article, unless otherwise stated in a credit line to the data. |
spellingShingle | Research Dorlach, Tim Gunasekara, Sandya The politics of glyphosate regulation: lessons from Sri Lanka’s short-lived ban |
title | The politics of glyphosate regulation: lessons from Sri Lanka’s short-lived ban |
title_full | The politics of glyphosate regulation: lessons from Sri Lanka’s short-lived ban |
title_fullStr | The politics of glyphosate regulation: lessons from Sri Lanka’s short-lived ban |
title_full_unstemmed | The politics of glyphosate regulation: lessons from Sri Lanka’s short-lived ban |
title_short | The politics of glyphosate regulation: lessons from Sri Lanka’s short-lived ban |
title_sort | politics of glyphosate regulation: lessons from sri lanka’s short-lived ban |
topic | Research |
url | https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC10644602/ https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pubmed/37957659 http://dx.doi.org/10.1186/s12992-023-00981-2 |
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