Pesticide Action Network
The food and agricultural system promoted by a handful of agrichemical corporations as ‘the industrialization of agriculture’ has failed to deliver on ending hunger and stimulating prosperity. It has also left a tragic legacy of damage to human and environmental health through the dangerous use and disposal of synthetic pesticides. Increasingly, the same companies that manufacture and promote pesticides have secured global corporate control of food and farming—displacing resilient traditional farming practices with industrialization, land loss and contamination. A handful of agrichemical companies, seed companies, and grain traders threaten food sovereignty for nations and peoples the world over.
Pesticide Action Network (PAN) is a network of over 600 participating nongovernmental organizations, institutions and individuals in over 90 countries working to replace the use of hazardous pesticides with ecologically sound and socially just alternatives. PAN was founded in 1982 and has five independent, collaborating Regional Centers that implement its projects and campaigns. PAN is one of the original Greengrants advisor organizations, and has consistently connected us with innovative and committed groups working towards sustainability. Together, we are building and strengthening a growing network of organizations focused on environmental health and justice in food, agriculture, and pesticide control.
Learn more about these issues and how our grantees are tackling them in Food and Agriculture.
Board Priorities
Food sovereignty
Community–based monitoring
Supporting people’s movements
International policy
Ending global trade of extremely toxic pesticides
Protecting traditional farming from genetic engineering
Challenging corporate globalization & control over seeds, farming and land
For more on Pesticide Action Network, visit their website: www.pan-international.org
You can also find out more about their regional centers on their websites:
Centro Mexicano de Derecho Ambiental, AC
Grant #: 53-625
Amount: $3,000
Country: Mexico
Focus: Indigenous PeoplesCEMDA is an NGO that seeks to improve the defense of Mexico's environment and natural resources by strengthening and expanding enforcement of existing environmental regulations. With this grant, CEMDA will raise awareness among international policy makers about the negative environmental impacts of the use of DDT as an anti-malaria agent. It is hoped that these presentations will lay the groundwork for the formation of an international network of professionals.
Society for Rural Education and Development
Grant #: 53-412
Amount: $500
Country: India
Focus: WomenTamil Nadu Dalit Women's Trust works to promote the rights of Dalit women throughout India's Kollathur region by uniting sub-castes and raising awareness about environmental and human rights. Today, a large aquaculture farm is threatening health and livelihoods as it dumps chemicals upstream from local fishing and shrimping areas. The trust aims to mobilize affected women in these areas. The women will come together at a public hearing to speak out about their situation and gain media attention in order to raise awareness about the effects the chemical pollutants have on their health and environment.
Woiyo Kondeye
Grant #: 53-747
Amount: $3,500
Country: Mali
Focus: SustenanceWoiyo Kondeye will campaign to reduce the use of obsolete, discontinued, and stockpiled pesticides. A workshop will be organized to bring together farmers and NGO representatives that will seek out alternatives to the current pesticide practices. The organization hopes to recruit more activists to the anti-pesticide movement in Mali and to equip these women with the knowledge and capacity to share information on alternatives to pesticides with other farmers in their communities.
Katheryn Gilje
Coordinator
Kathryn is the Executive Director of the Pesticide Action Network (PAN). She has been with Pesticide Action Network North America for four years, bringing fifteen years of organizing, campaigning, fundraising, inter-group conflict resolution and organizational development experience with food/agriculture and social justice organizations in the United States. For eight years Kathryn was co-founder and co-director of Centro Campesino, a membership organization of migrant agricultural workers, rural Latino/as and allies in southern Minnesota. She was a senior associate with the Institute for Agriculture and Trade Policy working on marketing sustainable agriculture and farm policy reform. Kathryn worked on a variety of local foods projects in Minnesota - where she also lived and worked on small farms. Her organizing training comes from the Organizing Apprenticeship Project, Center for Third World Organizing and Farm Labor Organizing Committee. She received management training at the Kellogg School of Management in Chicago. Kathryn has a B.S. from the University Of Minnesota College Of Agriculture.
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WHAT IS ENVIRONMENTAL HEALTH?
Feb, 2012: It intersects nearly every other area of environmental work, especially from an international perspective. It's about the way our actions affect the environment, and how those changes impact our ecosystems and our own wellbeing. -
Poisoned by Pesticides in Pakistan
Nov, 2011: Pesticide use is in Pakistan is 14 times higher than in countries like neighboring India, but many farmers and families aren't even aware of the hazards.