A Paris court dismissed a lawsuit on Tuesday brought by Nicaraguan banana workers who say exposure to the pesticide Nemagon left them ill and infertile. Their lawyer, Raphaël Kaminsky, said the judges found the requested damages disproportionate; his team plans to appeal to France’s highest court.
Thousands of people living and working around banana plantations in the Chinandega region attribute decades of health problems — including male sterility, chronic kidney failure, skin disorders and various cancers — to prolonged contact with Nemagon during the 1960s through the 1980s. Nemagon’s active ingredient, dibromochloropropane (DBCP), was linked to sterility in male workers and was banned in the United States in 1977. Nonetheless, production and export of the chemical continued for years after the U.S. ban, and its use persisted abroad into the 1980s.
In 2006 Nicaraguan courts ordered the companies that sold Nemagon — Shell, Dow Chemical and Occidental Chemical — to pay victims roughly $805 million in damages and interest. Attempts to enforce that judgment in U.S. courts have so far failed.
Researchers and advocates who have interviewed victims say the human toll is hard to capture in monetary terms. Grettel Navas, an assistant professor at the University of Chile who spoke with affected people in 2017 and 2018, described long fights for recognition and compensation and said many victims died waiting for redress. She also criticised the weakness of public institutions in Nicaragua to protect people from pesticide exposure or to support contaminated communities.
The Nemagon story underscores a wider problem: chemicals banned in Europe, the United States and other high-income places are sometimes manufactured and exported for agricultural use in Asia, Africa and Latin America. Residues from these pesticides can persist in air, water and soil, harm non-target species, reduce biodiversity and pose long-term risks for human health — from infertility and miscarriage to respiratory, neurological illnesses and cancer.
European regulators pledged in October 2020 to stop the production and export of hazardous chemicals that are banned within the EU. But investigations by non-governmental groups indicate that trade in some prohibited pesticides has continued or even grown in certain markets since that pledge. Campaigners, including Friends of the Earth Europe, argue this practice effectively offloads risks onto countries with weaker protections and describe it as a form of neocolonialism.
Case studies from the region illustrate how persistent and widespread contamination can be. Soledad Castro Vargas, a postdoctoral researcher at the University of Zurich, has documented pesticide residues remaining in soils and drinking water years after use, including chemicals that had been phased out in the EU long before local bans were imposed. Small, rural communities frequently lack the resources to monitor pollution, clean up contaminated land or secure safe alternative water supplies.
Tropical growing conditions and the large-scale monocultures typical of many export-oriented farms create particular challenges. Warm, humid climates favour pests and disease, and monoculture systems can amplify outbreaks, increasing reliance on chemical controls. Research suggests synthetic pesticide use is common across both industrial and smallholder farms and is rising in many lower-income countries.
According to the Food and Agriculture Organization, global pesticide use has roughly doubled since 1990. Between 2013 and 2023 agricultural pesticide use rose by about 14%, though reporting gaps mean actual figures could be higher. Some analyses estimate that around two-thirds of the world’s agricultural land faces at least some risk of pesticide contamination.
Experts point to structural drivers that lock farmers and rural economies into heavy pesticide use: industrial agricultural models, global market pressures, debt burdens and corporate supply systems that make alternatives difficult to adopt. Still, a range of non-chemical approaches exists. Agroecology, crop rotation, practices that build soil health, and strategies that enhance biodiversity and natural pest control can reduce chemical dependence. Simple, locally adapted measures — such as using ducks to control snails and other crop pests — have been highlighted as practical components of integrated pest management.
A 2017 United Nations report on food systems identified agroecology as a feasible route to feed the global population sustainably. But researchers and advocates stress that moving away from the “pesticide treadmill” requires more than farmer goodwill: financial support, technical advisory services, stronger regulation and institutional commitments are needed so farmers can redesign production systems with lower chemical inputs. Where transitions have occurred, many farmers report reduced costs and improved profitability, but in many places these shifts have been undertaken without adequate public backing and at considerable personal risk.
Campaigners are calling for regulatory coherence: a chemical judged too harmful for use in the EU presents comparable risks elsewhere, they say, and export rules should prevent hazardous substances from being sent to countries that lack equivalent safeguards.
Edited by: Tamsin Walker