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Grim. Disastrous. Uncertain. Most people would use a synonymical definition for the year 2020. Amidst the pandemic, the locust attacks have caught the majority off guard. However, these locust outbreaks have a detailed history, which outlines a reasonable pattern.
Desert Locusts, which belong to the grasshopper family, are more responsive to the meteorological conditions. They have the ability to change their behaviour and physiology, including their colour and shape. These locusts, when low in numbers, keep to themselves and prefer a solitary existence. However, when they crowd together, they undergo an erratic behavioural transformation, and become “gregarious mini-beasts”.
(Image Credits: FAO, United Nations | Region: East Africa)
Desert Locusts can be indefinitely found in the deserts between Mauritania (Northwest Africa) and India. Abundant rainfall creates a breeding ground for locusts, resulting in extensive breeding causing an upsurge. Continuous downpour can eventually lead these locusts to multiply several folds and could even cause a plague. Even though according to many experts like Richard Munand (Climate Expert at UNEP), desert locusts are usually restricted to the semi-arid and arid deserts of Africa, the Near East and South-West Asia that receive less than 200 mm of rain annually. In normal conditions, locust numbers decrease either by “natural mortality” or through “migration”.
However, with the rising temperatures and climate uncertainties, the conditions have been far from normal. The last five years have been hotter than any other since the industrial revolution (1760) and since 2009. Hotter climate and wet weather, which is being linked to more damaging locust attacks, has left Africa disproportionately affected. The Horn of Africa received 400% more rainfall than normal from October 2019 to December 2019. These abnormal rains were attributed to the Indian Ocean dipole, also termed as “Indian Niño”. The same phenomenon has been used to explain the bushfires in Australia.
(Image Credits: NOAA Climate.gov)
Do Locusts Pose a Potential Threat to our Livelihood?
Locusts swarms are marauding pests having a ferocious appetite. These plain statistics have induced a sense of fear among the farmers and the citizens, ringing the impending bells of hunger and starvation amidst the pandemic. The magnitude of this locust attack will leave the livelihood, income and food source of millions of people in absolute shambles. David Beasley, Executive Director of the UN World Food Programme, also warned that the pandemic could fuse into a “hunger pandemic”, pushing an additional 130 million people to the brink of starvation, bringing the global total of those facing extreme hunger to 265 million.
The fear in the mind of people has been increasing due to past incidences of locust attacks and international impact of the same. Earlier this year, the desert locusts went berserk and destroyed crops and pastures across East Africa, including Kenya, Ethiopia and Somalia. This became the worst infestation in Kenya in 70 years and the worst in Somalia and Ethiopia in 25 years. In February, Pakistan declared a national emergency to prevent large scale crop decimation in the Punjab province. In the situation where agriculture accounts for 20% of the nation’s GDP, the locust attack could stoop Pakistan’s economic growth to less than 2% in the fiscal year ending in June.
Currently, India is battling the worst locust attack in 27 years, with the pests wreaking havoc in the states of Madhya Pradesh, Rajasthan, Uttar Pradesh, Gujarat and Maharashtra. These pests have reportedly damaged 5 lakh hectares of crop in Rajasthan alone.
An Economic Crisis Amidst a Pandemic?
The Government of India had announced an economic stimulus package of Rs 20 lakh crore to cushion the impacted citizens from the coronavirus outbreak. The economic burden of the locust plague will once again demand a proactive and substantial relief response from the government. This would mean scrutinizing the problem of food insecurity rationally, and allocating a considerable package to protect the impacted farmers, and to balance the market inflation caused by food shortage.
With the problem of food insecurity tightening its grip, what's baffling is the fact that the Indian government is letting tonnes of food rot in its godowns with substandard storage facilities.
Desert Locust Information Service by United Nations’s Food and Agriculture Organisation (FAO) has warned of several successive waves of invasions which are expected until July in Rajasthan, with eastward surges across northern India as far as Bihar and Orissa. This will be followed by westward movements with a returning wave to Rajasthan due to the changing winds associated with the monsoon.
The Rajasthan state government has reportedly announced compensation worth Rs 31 crore for four affected districts of Jaisalmer, Barmer, Jalore and Jodhpur, after conducting a special assessment of losses. Farmers would be entitled to a compensation of Rs 13,500 per hectare of damaged crop land. However, this insufficient compensation comes with a silver lining. “Compensation will be given for damage suffered, but not beyond two hectares, irrespective of how much land the farmers have cultivated”, said C.L. Goel, additional district collector of Jalore.
How to Stop 2020’s Newest Trouble
Organophosphate chemicals are saving the day for most countries fighting locust swarms. These chemicals are showered in small concentrated doses by vehicle-mounted and aerial sprayers, which kill these pests in a relatively short period of time. The use of chemicals as a shield has its own elaborate demerits. Critical ecosystems, such as bees and other insects, which pollinate up to 70% of our food and form an integral part of the food chain, get severely affected. This not only impacts food security, but puts human health on prime risk.
The World Bank Group approved $500 million in “grants” and “low-interest loans” to aid the affected countries in Africa and the Middle East and help them fight ravenous pests.
The World Meteorological Organization is on its feet to monitor the forecasts and apprise the more immediate weather changes that may exacerbate the locust attacks, giving sufficient time for the regions to prepare for invasion.
FAO is proactively working on various tools like eLocust3, which is the standard surveillance technology being used by countries with frequent infestations. A team from Penn State University, working closely with the United Nations, also developed a reporting mobile app “eLocust3m” which can be used on most smartphones, and comes with an in-country chat option. This app is "exponentially increasing countries’ capacities to share geo-referenced reports of locust movements and control operations in real time". FAO will also be introducing drone prototypes (both rotary and fixed wing drones) in Kenya to check for infestations and to reach complicated or inaccessible areas.
Solar dryers can ensure that the farmers are able to to preserve their harvest and sell during the offseason. This not only protects the crops but provides a financial vantage point for the farmers who can now earn upto 30 times more. Demand for these dryers also creates lucrative business opportunities for supplementary value chains attributed to the manufacturing of these carbon-alternatives.
The concept of indoor farming is also gaining popularity in India, and can open abundant opportunities for the farmers to grow fruits, vegetables and greens without worrying about the seasons.
Countries like Africa face unscrupulous wrath of nature given their geographical vulnerabilities. While climate change is a global phenomenon, the subpar socioeconomic development in Africa aggravates the inevitable impact on its environment.
Climate change is as real as the locusts that cumulatively knocked on the windows of the residents in India. The locust plague is just a reminder that our reckless tampering with nature backlashes fiercely, with history speaking evidently of the poor facing the repercussions. As greenhouse gases continue to heat the ocean and the atmosphere, floods and cyclones are becoming more common, increasing the possibility of frequent locust attacks. The situation has become so worrisome that Pakistani and Indian authorities (mortal enemies 101) are working together to combat the worst invasion of desert locusts in decades in the region.
Harshita Kasliwal is the founder of 'Anticlimactic Post', an online platform aimed at recognizing the science and reasoning behind the progress in the field of sustainability and development.