Pesticide Risk Assessment in a Changing World
Mathilde L. Tissier, René S. Shahmohamadloo, Laura Melissa Guzman
Abstract
Pesticide risk assessments currently rely on surrogate species and focus primarily on acute lethality metrics, failing to capture the broader impacts on non-target organisms and thus biodiversity. Under the directives of regulatory agencies worldwide, this traditional approach overlooks the complex interactions between multiple stressors, including climate change, land-use shifts, and pesticide transformation products. Pesticide risk assessments must therefore undergo a paradigm shift to account for these complex interactions, which disproportionately affect insect pollinators, other non-target species, and biodiversity at large. While prior work has highlighted the need to move beyond single-species models, emerging evidence on nonlinear stressor interactions and the ecological consequences of transformation products highlight critical gaps in current frameworks. Here, we synthesize insights from recent research to propose a holistic approach for environmental risk assessments that integrates ecological and evolutionary complexities in the context of global change.