There is an outbreak of millions and millions of locusts hitting the Horn of Africa, the result of extreme climate change, which threatens to make the situation in a region recovering from drought and deadly floods even more catastrophic. Another outbreak of these insects has also compelled the Pakistani government on the Asian continent to declare a national emergency.
Dense clouds of these voracious insects spread from Ethiopia and Somalia to Kenya in December, after they started in Yemen, in what is the worst infestation in decades. Nothing like this had been seen for 25 years in the first two countries and 70 years ago in Kenya. In Pakistan, where the country’s northwestern region has been affected, Pakistani Prime Minister Imran Khan says it is the worst infestation in more than two decades.
The UN Food and Agriculture Organization (FAO) speaks of an “unprecedented threat” and estimates that one of the locust swarms is 2,400 square kilometers (almost twice the size of Greater Lisbon). This means that it can have up to 200 billion locusts, each of which consumes its weight in food every day. In addition, they can move 140 kilometers in just 24 hours.
According to FAO, which launched an appeal to donations to be able to carry out aerial spraying,a small swarm of just a square kilometer can ingest, in a single day, the same amount of food as 35 thousand people. In the Horn of Africa there are almost 12 million people affected by severe food insecurity, many of whom depend on agriculture to survive.
United Nations Secretary-General António Guterres left the alert on Thursday on Twitter. “Desert locusts are extremely dangerous. Triggered by the climate crisis, the outbreak is further worsening the dire food security situation in East Africa”, wrote.
2019 began with a drought in the Horn of Africa, but several floods followed. There have been eight cyclones off East Africa, the highest number in a year since 1976, because of rising temperatures in the Indian Ocean.
If the situation is not controlled, the number of locusts could multiply 500 times by June, reaching Uganda and South Sudan and becoming a plague that will devastate crops and grazing areas in one of the poorest and most vulnerable regions in the world.
Technically, according to FAO, the current invasion is known as an outbreak, affecting an entire region, but if it gets worse and cannot be controlled, then it will fall into the category of pest. Since 1900 there have been six major desert locust pests, the last of which was between 1987 and 1989. The last major outbreak dates back to 2003 and 2005.
In Pakistan the problem started in June, when the insects arrived from Iran, having already destroyed crops of cotton, corn and wheat.
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