FOOTPRINT Functional Tools for Pesticide Risk Assessment and Management A special focus on FOOTPRINT environmental risk indicators Igor Dubus, former FOOTPRINT coordinator, now Head of FOOTWAYS Working group meeting on "Pesticide Statistics", 14 October 2009, Poznan

What was FOOTPRINT? A 3.5-year project which was funded by the European Commission as part of FP6 Jan. 2006 - June 2009, 15 partners, 9 Member States A research project with very applied outcomes to support policy initiatives Water Framework Directive 91/414/EEC and the new regulation The Thematic Strategy Common Agricultural Policy (cross compliance)

What have we developed? 3 software tools ("the FOOTPRINT tools") which provide an assessment of the risk of transfer of pesticides to water resources (surface water and groundwater) for any location or territory in Europe which are based on state-of-the-art research models and science which can be deployed anywhere in Europe which can be used by all pesticide stakeholders, from policy- and decision-makers through to risk assessors and managers, right down to farmers Each of the 3 tools allow users to: i) identify the dominant pathways and sources of pesticide contamination in the agricultural landscape. ii) estimate levels of pesticide concentrations entering surface water and groundwater systems. iii) make recommendations on how to reduce the pesticide contamination in water resources.

3 tools, 3 scales, 3 user communities FOOT-NES National and EU scale EU and MS policy- and decision-makers, Ministries, pesticide registration authorities FOOT-CRS Catchment and regional scale ‘Water quality’ managers, i.e. regional/local authorities, water agencies, water companies FOOT-FS Farm scale Agricultural advisers and farmers All 3 tools share the same methodology and are coherent across scales www.eu-footprint.org

Methodology used 1. Development of agro-environmental scenarios Characterise all agro-pedo-climatic conditions for locations where pesticides are used in the EU (!) 1. Development of agro-environmental scenarios Deploy the best research models to estimate the fate of a hundred pesticides in these thousands of scenarios (!) 2. Modelling Integrate all modelling results in simple-to-use software tools 3. Tool development Start evaluating the tools at their scale of application 4. Evaluation www.eu-footprint.org

Developing agro-environmental scenarios for the whole of the EU27 Objective: to provide an extensive characterisation of European agro-pedo-climatic conditions in which pesticides are applied

FOOTPRINT agro-environmental scenarios FOOTPRINT climate zones CORINE 2000 + NUTS level 2 statistics European Soil geographic database 1:1,000,000 16 climates 264 FOOTPRINT soil types 42 crops ~ 100,000 FOOTPRINT agro-environmental scenarios Combined Climate/NUTS2/CORINE 2000/soil type polygons

Ca. 100 reference pesticides Environmental indicators The FOOTPRINT concept Ca. 100 reference pesticides MACRO drainage, leaching PRZM runoff, erosion Environmental indicators

Environmental indicators The FOOTPRINT concept Koc, DT50 Giant database of modelling results Environmental indicators

Some screenshots of the farm-scale tool

Some screenshots of the farm-scale tool

Some screenshots of the spatial tools

The issue of data availability The FOOTPRINT tools have been designed to be operational even if detailed cropping and usage data are not available (which is nearly always the case) If you have detailed cropping, usage or sales data, you can load them in the tools In situations where you have limited or no data, the tools allow you to adopt work-arounds Adoption of standard crop protection practices for crops (could be spatially referenced) Random spatial distribution of pesticide applications onto crops Percentage of crops treated

The FOOTPRINT environmental indicators

What do FOOTPRINT indicators account for? Climate Landscape elements Equipment Land management Products Crop Soil

The FOOTPRINT environmental indicators Important preamble: FOOTPRINT indicators only cover aquatic risks Groundwater (via leaching) Surface water (via drift, drainage, runoff and erosion) The FOOTPRINT indicators incorporate all possible influences on pesticide fate (climate, crop, soil, management options, landscape elements, pesticide properties) results from the deployment of the best research models The FOOTPRINT indicators originate from those used for years in registration they rely on a comparison between likely concentrations in the environment and (effects concentrations and/or legal thresholds) We've improved the approach by providing greater realism to the estimation of concentrations

FOOTPRINT indicators in practice GW Leaching Drinking water legal thresholds Average conc. <> Runoff Erosion Drainage Drift Look-up tables SW Percentile conc. FOOTPRINT PPDB Effects conc. for each pesticide OR Drinking water legal thresholds Percentile conc. <> Percentile conc. TER Percentile conc.

The FOOTPRINT indicators are already validated The concentrations in water are estimated using state-of-the-art models which have been improved over the last 25 years The TER approach used in FOOTPRINT has been used by DG Sanco, EFSA and all MS registration authorities for ca. 20 years are the results of discussions between leading experts in the field of risk assessment FOOTPRINT has facilitated the use of the TER approach by providing a comprehensive database of pesticide properties by enabling the detailed prediction of pesticide environmental fate for any location in Europe

The key strength of FOOTPRINT Functional software tools to calculate all the indicators will be made available in the near future For different scales For different end users For all Member States

How can FOOTPRINT support the Thematic Strategy ? Regulation on the placing of PPP on the market (revising Directive 91/414/EEC) COM(2006) 388 final Framework Directive on the sustainable use of Pesticides COM(2006) 373 final Revision of Directive 2006/42/EC on Machinery COM(2008) 535 final Regulation on the collection of statistics on PPP COM(2006) 778 final Work done by the FP7 TEAMPEST project on how FOOTPRINT indicators can support the Thematic Strategy in practice -> Workshop on Monday in Uppsala, Sweden

Beyond FOOTPRINT FOOTPRINT finished on 30 June 2009 The support of methodologies and tools developed in European projects after the end of the funding is a key issue The matter has been resolved in the case of FOOTPRINT The FOOTPRINT coordinator and the leading scientist created the company FOOTWAYS on 1 June 2009 To provide long-term support, training and maintenance of the FOOTPRINT tools (subject to project partners' approval) To propose new tools which go beyond FOOTPRINT and which meet the exact needs of stakeholders and end-users in all MS FOOTWAYS Pro a new online risk assessment platform which can be fully customised to your needs Ideally suited to support policy implementation in the MS

FOOTWAYS objectives To be a common reference for risk evaluators AND risk managers for the agricultural AND environmental sectors for all European countries To provide turn-key solutions which serve all actors (policy- and decision-makers, risk assessors, risk managers, water specialists and the farming community) To support all EU and MS policy initiatives in the field of pesticides Framework Directive on the Sustainable Use of Pesticides Regulation for registration WFD and its daughter directives To bring together in one group the expertise of European leading experts in the field of pesticide risk assessment, environmental indicators and decision-support tools

Where are we going? FOOTPRINT Nationally-resolved tools Fr. Dir. Sust. Use Pesticides FOOTPRINT National registration Thematical tools registration, indicators, water bodies, catchment management, research, farm DSS Cross compliance WFD REACH Other threats to EU water resources Integration of FOOTPRINT technology in other tools Other risk aspects and associated indicators Farm DSS, link with databases, link with existing national and EU systems soil, human exposure, birds, bee, food consumers Nitrate, biocides, human pharmaceuticals, veterinary medicines

In summary The European funded project FOOTPRINT has developed 3 software tools which allow all stakeholders to undertake pesticide risk assessments in a simple way As part of this work, state-of-the-art aquatic risk indicators have been developed and are used to drive the FOOTPRINT evaluations The FOOTPRINT initiative will be actively supported by FOOTWAYS which proposes new turn-key tools adapted to policy implementation in all Member States

Acknowledgements www.eu-footprint.org The funding of the FOOTPRINT project by the European Commission through its Sixth Framework Programme is gratefully acknowledged www.eu-footprint.org i.dubus@eu-footprint.org