Uganda scrambled to respond to the arrival of the biggest locust outbreak that parts of East Africa have seen in decades, while the United Nations warned that “we simply cannot afford another major shock” to an already vulnerable region. An emergency government meeting hours after the locusts were spotted inside Uganda on the weekend decided to deploy military forces to help with ground-based pesticide spraying, while two planes for aerial spraying will arrive as soon as possible, a statement said. Aerial spraying is considered the only effective control. The swarms of billions of locusts have been destroying crops in Kenya, which hasn’t seen such an outbreak in 70 years, as well as Somalia and Ethiopia, which haven’t seen this in a quarter-century. The insects have exploited favourable wet conditions after unusually heavy rains, and experts say climate change is expected to bring more of the same. Keith Cressman, the UN Food and Agriculture Organisation’s (FAO) senior locust forecasting officer, said Kenya has received “waves and waves of swarms” since the beginning of the year from the Horn of Africa, and “over the weekend they moved on the side of Mount Kilimanjaro across the border into Tanzania.” Doomsday Clock moves closest to midnight in 73-year history “Also over the weekend they moved into northeastern Uganda,” he told a news conference at UN headquarters in New York. “We’re expecting any day they will move across the border into the southeast corner of South Sudan,” where another several million people face hunger as the country struggles to emerge from civil war. UN officials warn that immediate action is needed before more rainfall in the weeks ahead brings fresh vegetation to feed new generations of locusts. If left unchecked, their numbers could grow up to 500 times before drier weather arrives, they say. “There is the risk of a catastrophe,” UN humanitarian chief Mark Lowcock told a briefing in New York on Monday, warning that 13 million people already face severe food insecurity – 10 million in places affected by locusts – and the region can’t afford another jolt. Dominique Burgeon, the FAO’s emergency and resilience director, warned at the UN briefing that another 20 million people in the region are in danger of becoming food insecure. Without enough aerial spraying to stop the swarms, the locust outbreak could turn into a plague, “and when you have a plague, it takes years to control,” Burgeon said. Desert locusts – whose destructive infestations cause major crop damage – are a species of grasshopper that live largely solitary lives until a combination of conditions promote breeding and lead them to form massive swarms. The FAO says the current invasion is known as an “upsurge” – when an entire region is affected – however, if it gets worse and cannot be contained, over a year or more, it would become what is known as a “plague” of locusts. How plague in Hong Kong sowed seeds of democracy, changed urban planning and helped heal social divisions There have been six major desert locust plagues in the 1900s, the last of which was in 1987-89. The last major upsurge was in 2003-05. The UN has asked for US$76 million in immediate aid. So far just under US$20 million is in hand, including US$10 million released by Lowcock from the UN emergency relief fund and US$3.8 million from FAO, officials said. The United States said Monday it has released US$800,000 and the European Union has released € 1 million. “The response today is not gonna work, unless there’s a big scale-up,” Lowcock said. The locusts are eating the vegetation that supports vibrant herder communities in the region, and Kenyan Ambassador Lazarus Amayo warned of the “inherent risk of communal conflict over pastures” The outbreak is so severe it might even disrupt the planting of crops in the coming weeks, he said, adding that the locusts “do wanton damage”. Additional reporting by Agence France-Presse
