National leverage points to reduce global pesticide pollution

There is an urgent need to reduce the environmental risk of pesticide pollution worldwide. We here explore national leverage points, using a novel dataset of 21.4 million georeferenced grid cells and a spatial regression discontinuity design. Our analysis lets us separate how much cross-country differences in the risk of pesticide pollution are caused by differences in countries’ agricultural systems and policies and how much is explained by other factors, such as environmental differences between the countries for example (e.g. pest pressures). We estimate that a third of the global cross-country differences in the pesticide pollution risk are caused by differences in countries’ agricultural systems and policies. The main explanations, and thus leverage points for policies, are differences in countries’ pesticide regulations, their share of organic farming, and type of crops that are grown. We find a trade-off between pesticide pollution risk and soil erosion only in the Americas and in Asia, but not elsewhere, and we do not find a trade-off between pesticide pollution risk and crop yield gaps.