India, March 17 -- Pesticide use is rising not just in volume but also intensity, posing major threats to ecologically important species as well as to human health. And this pesticide toxicity is driven by just four countries: India, China, Brazil and the US. These are the results of a February 5 study published by researchers with the University of Kaiserslautern-Landau, Germany in the journal Science.

The paper reviewed 625 pesticides used globally to understand progress in the goal to halve pesticide risks by 2030 (relative to 2010-20 levels). This goal was adopted at the 15th Conference of the Parties (COP15) to the UN Convention on Biological Diversity (CBD) in 2022, under the Global Biodiversity Framework. The study uses "total app...