Résumé
A collective scientific assessment was conducted to identify current consensus knowledge and further needs regarding the impacts of plant protection products on biodiversity and ecosystem services in France, including its overseas territories. A particular focus was placed on chlordecone used extensively in the French West Indies (FWI) to control the banana root borer. The FWI support biodiversity hotspots, with many endemic and endangered species, and include marine and terrestrial protected areas. The risk posed by persistent organic pollutants such as chlordecone is therefore of particular concern. The objective of this work was to review the contamination of the FWI environment by chlordecone, its transfer through ecosystems, and its impacts on biodiversity and ecosystem services. To perform the literature review, nine queries (Chlordecone; French West Indies; Contamination; Ecotoxicology; Biodiversity; Terrestrial ecosystems; Freshwater ecosystems; Marine ecosystems; Ecosystem services) and related keywords were formulated. The literature search was conducted on the Web of Science™ (WoS) from 2000 to 2024. After removing duplicate references, we finally analyzed 186 papers. Several of them were discarded because they were out of scope, e.g., toxicological studies or human epidemiology. In addition, we focused on the most integrative and ecologically realistic studies as possible. As a result, 45 papers were retained for further analysis. They were completed by additional documents known by the authors and which were not retrieved with the WoS.Both the environment (soil, freshwater, freshwater sediment, mangrove water and sediment, seawater) and a wide diversity of terrestrial and aquatic organisms (primary producers such as root vegetables, trees and algae; invertebrates such as earthworms and crustaceans; vertebrates such as fish, birds, dolphins and also livestock) are impregnated by chlordecone and its transformation products in the FWI. Aquatic food webs are contaminated by bathing and by trophic route, with bioaccumulation along freshwater or marine food webs. The bioaccumulation depends on the feeding mode and on the location of the species. For terrestrial ecosystems, soils contaminated with chlordecone, which is recalcitrant to microbial degradation, could be a possible source of contamination of organisms living there. Little is known about the impacts of chlordecone and its transformation products on biodiversity. Some results show impacts of chlordecone on physiological processes of crustaceans like immune system or protein synthesis and degradation. In addition, chlordecone is demonstrated to be a potent endocrine disruptor compound for decapod crustaceans. In fish, it impacts reproduction and development. Chlordecone is carcinogenic, reprotoxic and neurotoxic for mammals and birds. Finally, this insecticide also affects microbial communities and the functions they perform in ecosystems. There is no data on the impacts of chlordecone on ecosystem services.Despite 15 years of public policy dedicated to developing knowledge on chlordecone’s fate and socio-economic impacts, there are significant gaps regarding the description of the processes involved in its abiotic and biotic transformations, and the assessment of its effects on terrestrial and aquatic biodiversity and on ecosystem functioning. Future research is needed to characterize the impacts of legacy pollution by chlordecone and its numerous transformation products on exposed organisms and ecosystems.