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Locust swarms: climate change’s terrifying new trick

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A locust invasion is currently devastating the crops of one of the world’s most impoverished regions.

Climate change has given us many fun new experiences. First, it gave us rising sea levels, making regions uninhabitable. Then it increased wildfires in disaster prone regions, making them uninhabitable. Then it increased hurricanes and droughts, causing, you guessed it, uninhabitability. Now, many of these weather events have combined to create the conditions for, drumroll please… a devastating plague of locusts in East Africa, proving that climate change’s portfolio of disastrous consequences can always get more diverse.

Droughts, followed by an unusually high number of cyclones, created a perfect hospitable environment for the tiny pests, who have descended voraciously on East Africa in numbers not seen in decades. Warmer seas create more rain, wakening dormant eggs, and cyclones then distribute them.

The locust swarms are a ticking humanitarian time bomb, decimating crops, fuelling food insecurity, and potentially exacerbating conflict in the already precarious region through resource stress. The inability for East Africa to cope with a crisis of this magnitude is obvious and very worrying: Kenya is temporarily out of pesticides, Ethiopia needs more planes to distribute pesticides, and Somalia and Yemen, torn by civil war, can’t guarantee exterminators’ safety in certain afflicted areas.

Swarms typically contain between 40-80 million locusts per square kilometre, and they’re able to travel up to 150 kilometres a day, consuming everything in their path. A single square kilometre swarm can eat as much in a day as 35,000 people.

The region has known locusts since biblical times, but this invasion is unprecedented, and if left unchecked the locust population of the region could explode 400-fold by June. Given that more than 19 million people in East Africa currently living in poverty, such an event would lead to millions more dying of starvation.

The UN Food and Agriculture Organisation (FAO) said it would need at least $138 million USD to combat the crisis as soon as possible, but currently it’s falling far short of this. So far, donors have pledged only $52 million.

Whilst Uganda has deployed their military, Kenya is diverting cadets to spray pesticides, and Somalia have shot anti-aircraft weapons at swarms, their efforts are failing to contain the spread of the swarm, which would continue to spread across Africa. March, the rainy season, could herald even more of the critters when it hatches the new generation of larvae.

In one of the eeriest statements I’ve heard in a while, Cyril Ferrand, FAO’s head of resilience for Eastern Africa, has stated that ‘the second wave is coming. As crops are planted, locusts will eat everything.’

The region needs 500,000 litres of pesticide to stand a chance, and its own factories are working overtime. It’s likely that it will rely on donations from wealthier countries to survive.

As we’ve always known, poverty seems to beget itself.

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Departed London, UK

My interests include social and climate justice, women’s issues, and human rights. If you\’re keen on current affairs and social change, check out my profile! Follow me on Twitter and drop me some ideas/feedback via email.

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