2013, January: PhD Environmental Risks (Berhan Melese Teklu)

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Description of progress

The PhD on Environmental Risks at the university of Wageningen in the Netherlands has started by September 2011, major activities including taking relevant courses and developing the proposal under the title Aquatic Ecological Risk Assessment of Pesticides in Ethiopia had been accomplished and returned back to Ethiopia to undertake the lab and field works in collaboration with the Addis Ababa University.

Preliminary risk assessment of the Ethiopian registered pesticides to the surface water system using the combined PRIMET and FOCUS step 2 models has been done and results presented on a workshop held at Debrezeit Ethiopia, and the write up of the paper for this is on progress.

The lab activity on the Acute toxicity tests for the Ethiopian aquatic macro invertebrates and comparison of SSD with the European species, is on progress and so far activities starting from setting of the lab for the toxicity test and finding the standard pesticides to work with for collection and raring of the insect and crustacean species from an undisturbed local environments has been done; to come up with a trial and main toxicity tests on two insect and two crustacean species. Study plan for the study area level risk assessment for the FAO pesticide use data is ready for the future field activity of collection of Environmental scenario data.

Objectives achieved, deliverables

So far data collection and organization for one of the four objectives has been accomplished, one is on progress, while one is to be started soon.

  1. Preliminary Risk Assessment of the use of pesticides registered in Ethiopia and used in a study area for the environment with a special focus on aquatic ecosystems (Data accomplished, results presented on a workshop getting constructive comments, writing up of the paper is on progress).
  2. Acute toxicity tests for the Ethiopian aquatic macro invertebrates and comparison of ssd with the European species (Lab activity on progress).
  3. The application of the PRIMET model for the study area level risk assessment of the Ethiopian Pesticides (to be started soon).