GBF-aligned NBSAPs series: Target 7: Reduce pollution to levels that are not harmful to biodiversity
GBF-aligned NBSAPS to ensure just, sustainable futures for all life to thrive: the role of African civil society
Target 7: Reduce pollution to levels that are not harmful to biodiversity FACTSHEET 5
The African Centre for Biodiversity (ACB) is committed to dismantling inequalities and resisting corporate industrial expansion in Africa’s food and agriculture systems.
PO Box 29170, Melville 2109, Johannesburg, South Africa
Tel: +27 (0)11 486-1156
Researched and written by ACB research consultant Linzi Lewis
Editorial oversight and input by ACB executive director Mariam Mayet
Design and layout: Katerina Sonntagova, Moss and Sea Studio
Cover art: Frozen ground by Jessica Hooft, https://www.jesshooft-art.com/
ACKNOWLEDGMENTS
The ACB gratefully acknowledges the financial support of several donors, though the views expressed may not necessarily reflect the views of our donors.
March 2026
EU European Union
FAO United Nations Food and Agriculture Organization
GFC Global Framework on Chemicals
GHS Globally Harmonized System on Classification and Labelling of Chemicals
HHPs Highly hazardous pesticides
IPBES Intergovernmental Science-Policy Platform on Biodiversity and Ecosystem Services
KM-GBF Kunming-Montreal Global Biodiversity Framework
NBSAPS National Biodiversity Strategies and Action Plans
SAICM Strategic Approach to International Chemicals Management
WHO World
Pollution is devastating Africa’s biodiversity and undermining communities’ rights to healthy food, clean water, and a safe environment.
While Target 7 addresses contamination from industry, mining, waste systems, energy production, transport, and light pollution, this fact sheet focuses on agriculture and the food system within a broader pollution landscape. Toxic fertilisers, hazardous pesticides, and plastic waste are not just environmental issues – they are symptoms of a food system shaped by corporate power, weak regulation, and extractive agricultural models that sacrifice people and nature for profit. Across the continent, soils are contaminated, rivers are poisoned, and ecosystems are pushed toward collapse, while rural communities bear the heaviest burden.
Target 7 of the Kunming-Montreal Global Biodiversity Framework (KM-GBF) provides a critical rallying point: a global commitment to slash pollution to levels that no longer harm biodiversity by 2030. Achieving this in Africa will require bold organising, stronger regulation, and a decisive shift toward agroecology. This fact sheet calls on civil society to intensify pressure on governments, expose harmful industry practices, and champion just, pollution-free food systems that protect both people and the planet.
Background to pollution and biodiversity loss
The world faces multiple, interacting, and accelerating global crises: biodiversity loss, climate change, and pollution (IPBES, 2025). According to IPBES (2019), the five primary direct drivers of biodiversity loss are land and sea-use change, overexploitation, climate change, pollution, and invasive species. Pollution is a major, accelerating driver, with nutrient runoff, pesticides, and plastic waste severely impacting ecosystems. These drivers often interact and accelerate damage to biodiversity, representing an existential threat to our life-supporting systems.
Pollution refers to the presence of harmful substances or contaminants in the environment, which can have detrimental effects on living organisms, including plants, animals, and humans (Manisalidis et al., 2020). Pollution is a significant threat to biodiversity, leading, inter alia, to habitat loss, poisoning of organisms, ecosystem alteration, climate change, and reduced reproductive rates (Malhi et al., 2020), and has resulted in increased global recognition and initiatives to reduce pollution. Pollution can come in many forms, including air, water, and soil pollution (Edo et al., 2025). These forms of pollution can have a range of negative impacts on biodiversity, both directly and indirectly.
Industrial farming relies heavily on chemical inputs, such as fertilisers, pesticides, and antibiotics, that may boost productivity yields in the short term but also pollute soils, waterways, and air, drive climate change and soil degradation, strain natural resources, fuel antimicrobial resistance, and accelerate biodiversity loss and health crises – ultimately threatening food production and food security (CGIAR, 2025). For example, chemicals such as pesticides, including herbicides and fertilisers, can enter rivers, lakes, and oceans, leading to the death of aquatic plants and animals. This can have a ripple effect throughout the food chain, as the loss of one species can knock on to others (Webster et al., 2023). Soils contaminated with heavy metals or toxic chemicals can make it difficult or impossible for plants to grow. This can result in the loss of habitat for many species as well as the loss of food sources for animals that rely on those plants (Alengebawy et al., 2021).
Pollution takes many forms, but nutrient runoff, pesticides, highly hazardous chemicals, and plastics are among the most damaging to biodiversity and ecosystem functioning.1 Some of these pollutants persist, bioaccumulate, and biomagnify,2 leaving long-lasting scars on biodiversity and ecosystems (CGIAR, 2025).
1 See https://www.cbd.int/gbf/targets/7
2 Biomagnify means that certain harmful chemicals become stronger and more concentrated as they move up the food chain, from small organisms to fish, to bigger animals, and eventually to humans.
Target 7: Reduce pollution to levels that are not harmful to biodiversity
Target 7 aims to: reduce pollution risks and the negative impact of pollution from all sources, by 2030, to levels that are not harmful to biodiversity and ecosystem functions and services, considering cumulative effects, including: reducing excess nutrients lost to the environment by at least half including through more efficient nutrient cycling and use; reducing the overall risk from pesticides and highly hazardous chemicals by at least half including through integrated pest management, based on science, taking into account food security and livelihoods; and also preventing, reducing, and working towards eliminating plastic pollution.
Target 7 of KM-GBF, which builds on Aichi Target 8 and, like many of the Aichi Targets, was not achieved (Secretariat of the CBD, 2020), goes beyond Aichi Target 8 by specifying the need to reduce overall risks from pesticides and highly hazardous chemicals by at least half by 2030, and explicitly addresses explosive plastic pollution. Target 7 is intricately linked to targets 8, 10, and 17, in that agricultural and food systems, the primary driver of biodiversity loss, is also one of the main contributors of pollution to the environment. This occurs primarily because of agricultural intensification, through its over-reliance on synthetic fertilisers and toxic chemicals, which contaminate soil and waterways, causing, for instance, algal blooms and aquatic dead zones.
Pollution from agricultural and food systems threatens climate, biodiversity, and human health
Our food systems are failing to nourish the world’s population while simultaneously failing to safeguard the natural base on which we depend. Agricultural industrialisation over the last few decades has been extractive, operating through extensive deforestation, conversion to monocrops and industrial-scale feedlots, high chemical inputs, overuse of antibiotics, and heavy tillage (WWF, 2021). Beyond the farm, transportation, trade, processing, distribution, consumption, and waste disposal must also be addressed to tackle the extent and variety of pollution strangling our ecological systems.
Synthetic fertilisers
Both the nitrogen and phosphorus cycles are components of Earth’s biogeochemical flows and have severely exceeded their planetary boundaries3 due to excessive synthetic fertiliser inputs driven by the agri-industry. 4 Exceeding safe limits for nitrogen and phosphorus has wide-reaching consequences for ecosystems, climate, and human well-being. Since nutrient uptake is far lower than the applied amount, a large proportion remains in the environment (Jwaideh et al., 2022). Once released, these nutrients move through water, air, and soil, creating knock-on effects across multiple Earth system processes. They pollute waterways, alter species composition, and contribute to global warming5 and ozone depletion, with cascading effects across the Earth system.
This overload causes severe eutrophication, biodiversity loss, and atmospheric pollution, representing a critical threshold that Earth’s stability has exceeded. This, for example, has resulted in widespread aquatic dead zones (hypoxia). Fertilisers, namely nitrogen and phosphorus, account for 78% of global marine and freshwater eutrophication (Poore & Nemecek, 2018). This nutrient enrichment of waterbodies leads to excessive algal growth, deoxygenation, and biodiversity loss (Jwaideh et al., 2022: 1059).
Further to this, some chemical and organic fertilisers used in agricultural production across sub-Saharan Africa contain toxic by-products, such as cadmium, arsenic, lead, uranium, and radium, which originate in phosphate rocks (Faridullah et al., 2017). Phosphate rocks are the largest single source of raw materials for the production of phosphatic fertilisers worldwide (Faridullah et al., 2017). These naturally occurring rocks may contain varying amounts of toxic trace elements, depending on their source. When the resultant fertilisers are continuously applied to soils for crop production, the trace element concentrations build up to toxic levels, presenting a potential health risk to plants, animals, and humans (Gupta et al., 2014).
4 Both these nutrients, heavily applied in both mineral and organic fertilisers, are accumulating in ecosystems at levels far exceeding their capacity for absorption.
5 The emission of nitrous oxide (N2O), a greenhouse gas nearly 300 times more potent than CO2
Pesticides
Agricultural pesticides, such as herbicides, insecticides, and fungicides, are increasingly synonymous with conventional agriculture, yet are highly detrimental to biodiversity. Designed to kill agricultural pests and control weeds, their excessive use contaminates soils and waters, diminishes beneficial insect populations that control pests, and lowers the nutritional quality of food (Special Rapporteur on the right to food, 2017). The widespread use of pesticides, known for their persistence and bioaccumulation, poses significant risks to biodiversity, water quality, and food safety (Zhou et al., 2025). Pesticides can enter the soil in different ways, such as through spraying during foliage treatment, wash-off from treated foliage, or release from granules and chemically treated seeds. Pesticides can also enter the soil through direct application of pesticides and fumigants to control soil-borne pests and plants (Ferencz et al., 2010). With the advent of genetically modified crops that can withstand a range of toxic pesticides, pesticide use continues to rise, particularly herbicides. The pervasiveness and overuse of pesticides pose severe health risks to people, particularly farm workers and farm dwellers, as well as to consumers through food residues. In sub-Saharan Africa, pesticidecontaminated hotspots are scattered across the region due to injudicious pesticide use to control pests and to the disposal of obsolete pesticides by burying them in the soil, with longterm implications (Tindwa & Singh, 2023).
Even though the grave human health risks associated with numerous pesticides are well established, they remain widely in use. There are currently global calls to ban and phase out the most toxic of these chemicals, commonly known as highly hazardous chemicals/pesticides (HHPs), to address weak regulations on pesticide registration and use and the double standards that exist between Europe and Africa (Atieno et al., 2025). Even where pesticides have been banned or restricted, the risk of contamination can persist for many decades and continue to accumulate in food sources. In many cases, possible health impacts have not been extensively studied before pesticides are placed on the market. This is even more true for “inactive” ingredients that are added to enhance the effectiveness of the pesticide’s active ingredient, and that may not be tested and are seldom disclosed on product labels.
International guidelines and standards, phasing out our HHPs
International recognition of the impact of HHPs on human and environmental health is well established. The World Health Organization (WHO) Recommended Classification of Pesticides by Hazard was first published in 1975, classifying pesticides into five hazard classes based on acute toxicity. In 2002, the Globally Harmonized System on Classification and Labelling of Chemicals (GHS) was introduced, which, in addition to acute toxicity, also classifies chemicals according to their chronic and environmental health hazards (FAO and WHO, 2014).
Concerns about chemical hazards led to two key global agreements:
• The Stockholm Convention, which requires the phasing-out of persistent pesticides and other listed chemicals, and
• The Rotterdam Convention, which ensures shared responsibility and prior informed consent in the trade of hazardous chemicals to better protect people and the environment.
In 2006, the Strategic Approach to International Chemicals Management (SAICM) was adopted, calling for reduced reliance on pesticides, the phase-out of highly toxic pesticides, and the promotion of safer alternatives. That same year, the United Nations Food and Agriculture Organization (FAO) endorsed this approach, emphasising the reduction of pesticide risks and the progressive banning of HHPs. This led the Joint FAO/WHO Meeting on Pesticide Management (JMPM) to establish criteria for defining HHPs in 2007.6
The criteria and definition encompass a broader range of pesticides than those addressed by the Conventions. The International Code of Conduct on Pesticide Management (2014, p. 4) defines HHPs as:
Pesticides that are acknowledged to present particularly high levels of acute or chronic hazards to health or environment according to internationally accepted classification systems such as the WHO or the GHS or their listing in relevant binding international agreements or conventions. In addition, pesticides that appear to cause severe or irreversible harm to health or the environment under conditions of use in a country may be treated as highly hazardous.
6 Criterion 1: Pesticide formulations that meet the criteria of classes Ia or Ib of the WHO Recommended Classification of Pesticides by Hazard; or Criterion 2: Pesticide active ingredients and their formulations that meet the criteria of carcinogenicity Categories 1A and 1B of the GHS; or Criterion 3: Pesticide active ingredients and their formulations that meet the criteria of mutagenicity Categories 1A and 1B of the GHS; or Criterion 4: Pesticide active ingredients and their formulations that meet the criteria of reproductive toxicity Categories 1A and 1B of the GHS; or Criterion 5: Pesticide active ingredients listed by the Stockholm Convention in its Annexes A and B, and those meeting all the criteria in paragraph 1 of Annex D of the Convention; or Criterion 6: Pesticide active ingredients and formulations listed by the Rotterdam Convention in its Annex III; or Criterion 7: Pesticides listed under the Montreal Protocol; or Criterion 8: Pesticide active ingredients and formulations that have shown a high incidence of severe or irreversible adverse effects on human health or the environment.
In 2015, the SAICM International Conference on Chemicals Management recognised HHPs as a major concern and called for concerted action, including promoting agroecological alternatives and strengthening national regulatory capacity for risk assessment and risk management (SAICM, 2015). In 2023, the Fifth International Conference on Chemicals Management (ICCM5) adopted the Global Framework on Chemicals (GFC) as a successor to SAICM and committed to phasing out HHPs by 2035. Resolution V/11 of the GFC agreed to establish a Global Alliance on HHPs to progress towards the phase-out of HHPs (GFC, 2024). In March 2024, the UN Environment Assembly (UNEA) supported this engagement by adopting a resolution calling for the phase-out of HHPs globally by 2035 (UNEP, 2024).
From a regulatory perspective, the European Union (EU) made a significant shift in 2009, moving from a purely risk-based pesticide assessment to one that also considers the intrinsic hazards of chemicals.7,8 Regulation 1107/2009 prohibits authorising active ingredients that are carcinogenic, mutagenic, toxic to reproduction, or endocrine-disrupting. (PAN, 2024). Yet despite this progress, double standards persist, with the EU continuing to export pesticides banned within its own borders. Globally, however, most regulatory systems still rely largely on traditional risk assessment approaches, leaving the broader hazard-based paradigm unadopted.
In Africa, South Africa committed in April 2022 to phase out and ban the use of active ingredients and their formulations that meet the criteria for carcinogenicity, mutagenicity, and reproductive toxicity (CMR) categories 1A or 1B under the GHS. Kenya has also taken significant steps toward phasing out and banning HHPs. In June 2025, Kenya escalated its regulatory action by banning 77 HHP products and restricting another 202.9 This is one of the most sweeping pesticide reforms in Kenya’s history, aligning with global best practice. These bans and restrictions must be enforced without delay – anything less risks rendering them symbolic rather than transformative.
7 Risk is the probability and severity of an adverse health or environmental effect occurring as a function of a hazard and the likelihood and the extent of exposure to a pesticide.
8 Hazard means the inherent property of a substance, agent, or situation having the potential to cause undesirable consequences (e.g. properties that can cause adverse effects or damage to health, the environment or property).
9 See https://farmersreviewafrica.com/kenya-moves-to-withdraw-and-restrict-harmful-pesticides-in-major-regulatoryshift/
Dietary patterns and waste
Pollution from our food system spans across the entire chain, from inputs and production to processing, distribution, and consumption, ultimately harming people and the planet. Real change requires transformation across the whole food system, including at the consumption end. This means adopting a more plant-rich diet based on whole foods, reducing reliance on packaged and ultra-processed foods, cutting food waste and loss, and building more circular food economies (Benton et al., 2021; Rockström et al., 2025).
Plastic waste poses a severe threat to biodiversity, with countless animals dying from plastic ingestion or entanglement every year, and many more are affected by the toxicity of plastic compounds and additives leached into the environment (Xu et al., 2019; Li et al., 2020; Azevedo-Santos et al., 2021). Plastic pollution negatively affects soil and marine life, as well as food safety (Yuan et al., 2022). Plastics also present a risk to human health, with micro- and nano-plastics now present almost everywhere, including in table salt (Karami et al., 2017), honey and sugar (Liebezeit & Liebezeit, 2013), tap water (Kosuth et al., 2018), and even air (Rist et al., 2018). Research has linked plastic production, use, and pollution to various serious diseases, including cancer (Wang et al., 2020), endocrine system disorders (Darbre, 2020), reproductive hazards, obesity, diabetes, and cardiovascular diseases (Yin et al., 2021). Packaging for ultra-processed foods may contain additional compounds with carcinogenic or endocrine-disrupting properties that can leach into foods before consumption (Seferidi et al., 2020).
In Africa, approximately 85% of plastic waste is unregulated (Lebreton & Andrady, 2019). There is a trend across the continent to ban single-use plastics, but the effectiveness of policies on plastic production, use, and waste management needs improvement, as capacity and mechanisms for monitoring and evaluating outcomes are still in their early stages or nonexistent (WHO, 2023).
Considerations for realising Target 7 in Africa
Achieving Target 7 demands a rapid shift away from hazardous pesticides, a major expansion of organic and regenerative farming, and full public access to national pesticide-use data. (Wolfram et al., 2025). Protecting and restoring nature demands nothing less than a radical transformation of our food systems – ending waste, shifting to climate and biodiversityfriendly diets, and replacing extractive agriculture with practices that regenerate all managed ecosystems. It must be noted that progress on Target 7 requires transparent national monitoring, in line with its headline indicators, of nutrient losses, pesticide use, and environmental concentrations.
We therefore call on African civil society to ensure that governments embed Target 7 commitments into updated National Biodiversity Strategies and Action Plans (NBSAPs) with strong accountability mechanisms. In this regard, we call on African civil society to:
• Lead boldly and demand that governments phase out HHPs without delay, aligning national policies with global commitments to reduce risk from pesticides and HHPs by at least 50% by 2030, therefore protecting communities from toxic exposure. In this regard, approaches to regulation must include a shift towards hazard- and riskbased regulation, which is essential to the global policy transition away from simple risk assessment.
• Champion stronger pesticide regulations and widespread user education, ensuring that no farmer, farmworker, or consumer is left vulnerable to weak oversight or hazardous chemical use.
• Push for a decisive shift toward ecological farming practices – reducing dependence on pesticides, restoring ecosystem balance, and promoting integrated pest management (IPM), based on science and considering food security and livelihoods, while also prioritising health and biodiversity.
• Support the creation of clear national roadmaps to transition farmers away from chemical-intensive production systems toward just agroecological models that regenerate soils, revitalise ecosystems, and strengthen community resilience.
• Improve fertiliser management wherever programmes exist, advocating precise application practices and significantly expanding the use of organic inputs such as manure and slurry – valuable resources that reduce reliance on harmful synthetic fertilisers – thereby enabling countries to meet their commitment to reduce nutrient loss to the environment and the risk from pesticides and highly hazardous chemicals, respectively, by at least 50%, by 2030.
• Promote integrated cropping systems, including the wider adoption of nitrogenfixing legumes, such as peas, lentils, and beans, to rebuild soil fertility naturally and reduce dependence on mineral fertilisers, thereby enabling countries to meet their commitment to reduce the risk from pesticides and highly hazardous chemicals by at least 50% by 2030.
• Call for reconnecting crop and livestock systems, closing nutrient loops, and correcting both excesses and deficits to build healthier, circular agroecosystems, thereby enabling countries to meet their commitments to reduce nutrient loss to the environment and the risks posed by pesticides and highly hazardous chemicals, respectively, by at least 50% by 2030.
• Drive the development of waste-to-compost initiatives, transforming food waste into opportunities for livelihoods, local enterprise, and accessible organic compost that supports soil regeneration.
• Advocate for strong regulations to curb plastic production and use, and shift diets away from highly processed and ultra-processed foods towards healthier, low-impact, whole-food options.
Conclusion
The pursuit of ever-higher production through technological quick fixes has damaged our health and our ecosystems. Relying on HHPs is not progress – it is a harmful short-term techno-fix that erodes the fundamental rights of today’s communities and tomorrow’s generations (UN Special Rapporteur, 2017). There is an urgent need to confront the unchecked and accelerating pollution that is degrading our waters, soils, and air. Agricultural and food systems are major contributors, primarily through nutrient runoff, pesticides, and plastic waste, causing profound harm to human health and ecosystems. Pollution is a significant driver of biodiversity loss, yet biodiversity loss, in turn, undermines food security by weakening natural processes such as pollination and pest control. To break this cycle, Africa must transition to more sustainable agricultural practices, such as agroecology, which can enhance biodiversity while supporting resilient food production. This also requires the simultaneous banning of HHPs, strong regulations to curb packaged and ultra-processed foods, including bans on plastic, and the integration of biodiversity protection into all production systems to halt the accelerating pollution crises and their impacts on life across the planet.
We call on African civil society to hold governments accountable for implementing these measures with urgency, ensuring that commitments translate into real, transformative action on the ground.
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