{"id":2599,"date":"2020-07-10T13:31:19","date_gmt":"2020-07-10T13:31:19","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/threeworlds.campaignstrategy.org\/?p=2599"},"modified":"2020-07-10T14:50:59","modified_gmt":"2020-07-10T14:50:59","slug":"what-happens-when-issue-attention-moves-on-the-case-of-neonic-pesticides","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/threeworlds.campaignstrategy.org\/?p=2599","title":{"rendered":"What Happens When Issue-Attention Moves On: The Case of \u2018Neonic\u2019 Pesticides"},"content":{"rendered":"

\u00a0<\/strong>Chris Rose<\/strong><\/a> July 2020<\/strong><\/p>\n

pdf download<\/a><\/p>\n

In Europe, Neonic’ pesticides have dropped from the heights of the public agenda following a ‘ban’ in the EU in 2018. As anticipated in Anthony Downs’s 1972 ‘Issue Attention Cycle’, neonics seem consigned to a ‘twilight zone’, with the result that alarming new evidence of their impacts gets little attention.<\/h2>\n

This blog examines the neonic case and others, and proposes ways that campaigners (on any issue) might plan so that they stand the best chance of escalating issues where necessary, and getting around the public attention dynamic trap created by the Issue Attention Cycle. It also calls for bolder action on pesticides by well-established groups such as the RSPB.<\/h2>\n

Introduction<\/strong><\/p>\n

In 1972 Anthony Downs published Up and down with ecology\u2014the “issue-attention cycle\u201d<\/em><\/a>\u00a0 describing how public interest would become \u2018alarmed\u2019 on discovering a problem, \u2018euphoric\u2019 about solving it, then hit \u2018realisation\u2019 of the costs of action, lose momentum and see interest fade away before the problem was truly resolved. \u00a0This five-stage cycle became a popular idea in political science for some years.\u00a0 Is the current situation with \u2018neonics\u2019 (neonicotinoids<\/a>) best known as \u2018bee killing pesticides\u2019, now a case in point?<\/p>\n

Two truly alarming UK scientific studies have recently been published showing the levels of exposure to neonics among farmland birds, yet to no noticeable response.\u00a0 The distracting effect of Covid aside, the lack of obvious reaction to these studies made me wonder if this is because Neonics were \u2018banned\u2019 in the EU from 2018 (indeed while these studies were in progress) and so are now regarded in Europe as a problem solved: a validation of the Downs hypothesis.<\/p>\n

Back in April 2018, after a considerable struggle, NGOs campaigning in Europe declared victory, \u2018a historic day<\/a>\u2019, and told their supporters \u2018you did it\u2019.\u00a0 The \u2018bee-killers\u2019 were vanquished.\u00a0 Neonics were prohibited from outdoor use on all main crops and it was a real success but as Downs anticipated back in 1972, it wasn\u2019t really a problem resolved.<\/p>\n

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The Two Studies<\/strong><\/p>\n

Many studies have shown the ecological havoc wrought by \u2018neonic\u2019 insecticides but these two recent papers on birds bring detailed observational and sampling evidence to add key evidential links in the chain of cause and effect.<\/p>\n

The first, From seeds to plasma: Confirmed exposure of multiple farmland bird species to clothianidin during sowing of winter cereals<\/em><\/a>, was available in Science of the Total Environment on 19 March, and the second High prevalence of the neonicotinoid clothianidin in liver and plasma samples collected from gamebirds during autumn sowing<\/em><\/a>, <\/em>was available online in the same journal from 24 June.\u00a0 Both were by teams led by Rosie Lennon of York University, and included Will Peach from the major bird conservation group, the RSPB.<\/p>\n

\u2018Global Implications\u2019<\/strong><\/p>\n

The first paper reported that cereal seeds treated with neonicotinoids \u2018were found on the soil surface at all 25 farms surveyed\u2019 (shortly after sowing wheat).\u00a0 A much-repeated argument in the chemical industry\u2019s case that neonics cannot be causing harm to wildlife is that they are \u2018safe\u2019 if used according to instructions, or in American parlance, to \u2018the label\u2019.\u00a0 In practice that is usually impossible. In this case the Bayer Crop Science label specified that seed should be buried 4cms deep \u2013 in reality a lot was left on the surface.\u00a0 Essentially similar agricultural processes exist worldwide.<\/p>\n

Using camera traps, \u201815 species of bird were observed consuming clothianidin-treated seed at seed piles\u2019. As I read it, the study effectively calculated the amount of neonic that birds feeding on the left-over seed (and seedlings) would consume over several weeks.\u00a0 After catching birds and taking samples, \u2018Clothianidin was detected in the [blood] plasma of 10\/11 farmland bird species sampled. Birds consumed up to 65% of a chronic toxicity estimate for clothianidin\u2019.\u00a0 This included two birds (Yellowhammer and Tree Sparrow) which were exhibiting signs of acute poisoning when caught.<\/p>\n

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Tree Sparrow \u2013 Creative Commons Stefan Berndtsson<\/a><\/em><\/p>\n

A third of the species and half the individual birds examine had been exposed to the neonic chemical and levels in their bodies were \u2018among the highest recorded for wild birds to date\u2019.\u00a0 The study does not directly tell us anything about what would happen to birds exposed over several seasons but the authors state:<\/p>\n

\u2018Overall, these data are likely to have global implications for bird species and current agricultural policies where neonicotinoids are in use\u2019<\/em><\/strong> (in 120 countries).<\/p>\n

The second paper found 89% of gamebirds analysed after autumn seed-sowing (from carcasses of shot birds, including red-legged and grey partridges and pheasants) contained clothianidin, whereas only 11% sampled before sowing had the chemical.\u00a0 Birds with higher levels of the pesticide in their livers also had more internal parasites, which the authors suggest may be due to interference of the immune system by the chemical.\u00a0 (Bees affected by neonics can have increased parasite burdens).<\/p>\n

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Aside from robbing insect-eating birds of food by being very efficient at killing insects and in the case of bees, increasing their vulnerability to parasites and interfering with their ability to navigate, so reducing their chances of survival, at high enough levels neonics can kill birds directly and at lower levels, impair their ability to migrate<\/a> and navigate.\u00a0 A Dutch study<\/a> published in Nature<\/em> found a pattern of fast declining bird populations in areas with significant levels of imidacloprid, a \u2018pattern of decline [which] appeared only after the introduction of imidacloprid to the Netherlands, in the mid-1990s\u2019.\u00a0 Another very recent study in Nature found<\/a> \u2018alarming\u2019 effects on ants (ants are related to bees), which like bees are a huge part of the natural ecosystem.<\/p>\n

\u2018Problem Solved\u2019 in EU Would Delight The Chemicals Industry<\/strong><\/p>\n

If the European public is largely in Downs\u2019s \u2018declining interest\u2019 phase following the breakthrough \u2018ban\u2019 of 2018 and thus not responding to new signals that neonics area problem, the chemicals industry will be delighted, because outside the European Union, neonics are in massive and increasing use around the world.\u00a0 The EU is the only significant market in the world where the chemicals industry has been \u2018defeated\u2019 over neonics.<\/p>\n

A blog by science analytics company SciEx states<\/a>:<\/p>\n

\u2018Given the concern about the impact of pesticides, you would expect their use to be strictly governed globally. The reality is that<\/em>\u00a0<\/em>35 percent of the world has zero pesticide legislation<\/em><\/a>, and restrictions on neonicotinoids are only just emerging\u2019.\u00a0<\/em><\/p>\n

It\u2019s not easy even to get firm data on neonic use unless you are prepared to pay sums of around $3,000 for market reports and forecasts, which is one of many reasons why campaigning on pesticides is a niche activity.\u00a0 But one market analyst forecasts \u201crobust growth<\/a>\u201d in neonics to 2025, and another notes that<\/a> \u2018Asia Pacific dominates the global market in terms of value and volume\u2019.\u00a0 \u00a0An argochemicals industry insider told me not long ago that the industry, or at least the Europeans, thought they had \u2018lost\u2019 the battle over neonics.\u00a0 It is true that there is increasing investment in alternative \u2018biologicals\u2019<\/a> but in a way similar to the fossil fuel companies investing in renewables and hydrogen while still pushing petrol, disesel and gas: the chemical companies are also expanding their existing product portfolio wherever they can.<\/p>\n

Mainly in the US but also elsewhere, the industry is still mounting a massive \u2018product defence\u2019 lobbying and propaganda campaign, as described by Lee Fang in a January 2020 article on neonics in Intercept<\/em> magazine: \u00a0The Playbook For Poisoning The Earth.<\/a> Fang details activities involving Syngenta, Dow and Bayer (now incorporating Monsanto), including the \u2018co-option\u2019 of science through their domination of research funding, and promoting the views of bee-keepers willing to stress the role of disease rather than chemical pollution, in bee declines.<\/p>\n

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From Lee Fang\u2019s Intercept article<\/em><\/p>\n

Even in the EU, the industry is still trying to mount a rearguard action against the \u2018ban\u2019.\u00a0 As Farmers Weekly<\/em> reports<\/a>, the British National Farmers Union and Bayer are currently challenging it in the European Court of Justice.\u00a0 Analysis by Client Earth and Pesticides Action Network also found that the EU\u2019s 2013 neonic restrictions had been circumvented 62 times by Member States exploiting an \u2018emergency use\u2019 provision, and Unearthed recently found<\/a>this loophole had been exploited 67 times since 2018.\u00a0\u00a0 As I was writing this blog, Britain\u2019s Wildlife Trusts published an excellent report Reversing The Decline of Insects<\/em><\/a>, calling for national pesticide use to be cut by at least 50% but neonics are hardly mentioned.\u00a0 (Neonics were covered in more detail in a 2019 Wildlife Trusts report Insect Declines and Why They Matter<\/em><\/a>).<\/p>\n

If you are at all concerned about biodiversity, neonics are a significant and literally systematic threat to whatever you are working on.\u00a0 This also includes bird organisations in Europe, even if the ban is maintained and properly implemented, because about half of \u2018European\u2019 birds spend part of their lives outside Europe, such as swallows, cuckoos, swifts and nightingales which spend most of their lives in Africa. \u00a0\u00a0\u00a0<\/strong><\/p>\n

\u2018Neonic\u2019 Back Story<\/strong><\/p>\n

Neonics are systemic insecticides, meaning they get into a plant and make it poisonous to insects.\u00a0 They were invented by a Japanese subsidiary of chemical giant Bayer in the 1980s<\/a> and at first were welcomed as a more targeted use of pesticide than aerial or general spraying of insecticides such as organophosphates.\u00a0 It has since turned out that neonics (a) don\u2019t stay in the target crop but get into soil, water and thus other plants such as in hedgerows, where they also kill insects, and (b) as much as 95% of neonics applied to treat seeds sown by farmers, goes straight into the environment and not into the crop.<\/p>\n

The first neonic, imidacloprid, was launched<\/a> by Bayer in 1991, followed by a dramatic crash in zooplankton and fish in Lake Shinki from 1993.<\/p>\n

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Graphic from National Geographic article<\/em><\/a>.<\/p>\n

Neonics nevertheless spread quickly around the world and a further six types have been put on the market by companies including Syngenta, Bayer, Mitsui, Sumitomo and Nippon Soda.\u00a0 By 2008 neonicotinoids had taken a 24% share of the total insecticide market of\u00a0 \u20ac6.330 billion.\u00a0 Widespread \u2018collapse\u2019 of bee colonies began in France in 1994, as the chemical \u2018Gaucho\u2019 was introduced by Bayer and used on sunflowers.\u00a0 It was Imidacloprid.\u00a0 By 1999 honey production in France had been halved.<\/p>\n

Dutch toxicologist Henk Tennekes<\/a> became one of the leading scientific campaigners against neonics when he realised that their \u2018mode of action\u2019 had \u2018much in common with that of chemical carcinogens\u2019.\u00a0 \u00a0He has also pointed to<\/a> the pivotal discovery in 2001 by\u00a0 Luc Belzunces, a bee researcher at\u00a0 theFrench agricultural institute INRA, that \u2018an acute lethal dose of [neonic] imidacloprid\u2019 was only 40 nano-grammes, much lower than most other insecticides but \u2018his greatest discovery was that the lethal dose from chronic exposure \u2026 was 4,000 times less\u2019.<\/p>\n

Citing Rachel Carson \u201cknowing what I do, there would be no future peace for me if I kept quiet\u201d, Tennekes (not to be confused with a Dutch climate-sceptic of the same name) decided to write a book warning the world of their danger: \u2018The Systemic Insecticides: A Disaster in the Making\u2019<\/em><\/a>, <\/em>published in 2010. <\/em>\u00a0By that time neonics were widely implicated in disappearance of bees, birds, and later insect life in general.\u00a0 \u2018Silent Spring\u2019 was becoming a reality.<\/p>\n

Scientists at the US EPA warned about the ecological dangers posed by neonics in an internal memo released by Wikileaks in 2010: \u201c\u2026The proposed use on cotton poses an acute and chronic risk to freshwater and estuarine\/marine free-swimming invertebrates\u2026\u201d and \u201c..Clothianidin\u2019s major risk concern is to nontarget insects (that is, honey bees). Clothianidin is a neonicotinoid insecticide that is both persistent and systemic. Acute toxicity studies to honey bees show that clothianidin is highly toxic on both a contact and an oral basis\u2026.\u201d\u00a0<\/em><\/p>\n

\u00a0<\/em>In the UK, the area of land treated with neonics more than doubled between 2003 and 2013. Restrictions started to be imposed elsewhere in Europe, for example in Germany from 2008, and across the EU from 2013, leading to a \u2018complete\u2019 ban on outdoor use from 2018.<\/p>\n

There are few restrictions on Neonics in the US.\u00a0 In 2018 John Tooker of Pennsylvania University worked out<\/a> that an area of corn (maize), soyabean and cotton crops the size of Texas* was treated with Neonics, and noted: \u2018between 2011 and 2014 the\u00a0mass of neonicotinoids deployed in each crop doubled<\/a>, indicating that seed suppliers applied about twice as much insecticide per seed. Unfortunately, many farmers are unaware of what is coated on their seeds, while others like the peace of mind that comes from an apparently better protected seed \u2026 Unlike most insecticides, neonicotinoids are water soluble \u2026 But only a small fraction of the insecticide applied to seeds is\u00a0actually taken up by seedlings<\/a>. For example, corn seedlings only take up about 2 percent \u2026 \u00a0The critical question is where the rest goes\u2019. [Germany is 53% of the size of Texas].<\/p>\n

Polluting Pets<\/strong><\/p>\n

Within the EU, other uses of Neonics escaped the \u2018ban\u2019, including in veterinary pesticides such as cat and flea treatments for domestic pets such as cats and dogs.\u00a0 3.6m<\/a> individual British pet owners have pet insurance, and part of the insurance package often involves regular \u2018flea treatment\u2019.\u00a0 In 2018 The Daily Telegraph reported<\/a> that charity Buglife found over 60 pet \u2018flea treatments\u2019 contained neoniotinoids, and that rivers and streams were widely contaminated, even in areas with little arable farming.<\/p>\n

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UK freshwater pollution by neonics (from Wildlife Trusts report)<\/em><\/p>\n

Was Anthony Downs Right?<\/strong><\/p>\n

The Downs \u2018cycle\u2019 has been much discussed in academia (for example<\/a>).\u00a0 Downs originally wrote<\/a>:<\/p>\n

American public attention rarely remains sharply focused upon any one domestic issue for very long\u2014even if it involves a continuing problem of crucial importance to society. Instead, a systematic \u201cissue-attention cycle\u201d seems strongly to influence public attitudes and behavior concerning most key domestic problems. Each of these problems suddenly leaps into prominence, remains there for a short time, and then- though still largely unresolved\u2014gradually fades from the center of public attention. A study of the way this cycle operates provides insights into how long public attention is likely to remain sufficiently focused upon any given issue to generate enough political pressure to cause effective change.<\/em><\/p>\n

Downs conceptual model proposed five stages: \u2018Pre-Problem<\/strong>\u2019 when, he said, the problem is actually worse than by the time it is recognized; \u2018Alarmed discovery and euphoric enthusiasm<\/strong>\u2019 when in America, a \u2018combination of alarm and confidence results in part from the strong public prerssure \u2026 for political leaders to claim that every problem can be \u201csolved\u201d\u2019; \u2018Realizing the cost of significant progress<\/strong>\u2019; \u2018Gradual decline of public interest<\/strong>\u2019, and \u2018The post-problem stage<\/strong>\u2019, a \u2018prolonged twilight\u2019.<\/p>\n

The original article is still worth a read.\u00a0 Although writing mainly about the environment in the US, his examples were mainly drawn from other issues such as racism and poverty, some of which are very topical today.<\/p>\n

Some of Downs\u2019s explanations may have been overtaken in subsequent social research but there is little doubt that innate human tendencies combine to encourage individuals and groups to focus on the most acute threat perceived at any one time.<\/p>\n

This in turn combines with the crystallising, simplifying mor\u00e9s of news and social media and the limited space in a \u2018news agenda\u2019 and the herd-dynamics of common focus among media actors, to define \u2018the<\/em> threat\u2019 or \u2018the<\/em> big issue\u2019 of the moment.\u00a0 CEOs, Premiers or rulers convene to discuss \u2018the<\/em> issue\u2019, and while waiting in the wings are candidates for being the<\/em> next issue, the constraints of a \u2018summit\u2019 agenda and awareness of media appetitites are in themselves sufficient to create a single action focus.<\/p>\n

The same thing happens within any \u2018issue\u2019 sector: development will have it\u2019s top issue of the time, as will environment, human rights, and so on.\u00a0 Leaders and news editors are expected to know what that is, and maybe one or two things about it but no more. In so far as politicians and other leaders want to be seen to respond to \u2018public opinion\u2019 as manifest through \u2018media\u2019 these operating norms lead to a fix-one-thing-and-move-on effect, a scaled up version of single action bias<\/a>.\u00a0 In an earlier blog<\/a> on the history of the plastics issue I argued that happened in the early 1970s, when the popularising impact of Thor Heyerdahl\u2019s ocean voyage helped shoot ocean pollution up the international agenda but oil pollution rather than plastic was incorporated into UN plans for action.<\/p>\n

Once that happens, and the next issue heads the agenda, the \u2018done-with-it\u2019 effect creates a one-way valve resisting attempts to revisit the topic.\u00a0 In Europe, that may be happening right now with neonics, keeping scientific (Track 2 analytical) findings off the \u2018mainstream\u2019 agenda (Track 1, run on Kahneman\u2019s System 1 rules<\/a>).<\/p>\n

Implications of the Downs Cycle for Campaigns in General<\/strong><\/p>\n

Since Downs wrote his piece in 1972, the lines between public, media and politics have become considerably blurred, as we have moved from a mass-media world with a few channel controllers (newspapers, radio, tv etc) to a much more porous online and social media web.\u00a0 But the above dynamics still have an effect.\u00a0 At least in the Anglo world in recent years \u2018top issues\u2019 have included \u2018bees\u2019, rightwing political populism, Me Too, plastic, climate (at times synonymous with environment), Covid and Black Lives Matter.<\/p>\n

In some ways the \u2018onlining\u2019 of communications has made the Downs cycle effect even stronger because \u2018issue agendas\u2019 have themselves become more globalised.\u00a0 Online has made it easier for activists and campaigners to discuss and create calls-to-action internationally and even globally but that can then embed an assumption that \u2018messages\u2019 need to work globally and resolutions require global action.\u00a0 Both of these can make change harder to achieve.<\/p>\n

It may be worth campaign designers asking themselves:<\/p>\n