Alex Rose-Innes
Since 2019, huge clouds of locusts had swarmed the Horn of Africa and put future food security at great peril.
According to National Geographic and the United Nations Food and Agriculture Organization (FAO), millions of these destructive insects had settled on farmland across eight African last year.
In an effort to combat the scourge of destruction, the FAO had embarked on a spraying campaign to stave off loss of income and subsequent food shortages. In 2020, enough food stocks and arable land had been saved through this interception to feed 28 million people for a year.
But, the question which had now arisen is at what cost to the environment had this been done? While raptors and small mammals feasted on the swarms which covered 460 square miles (740km), researchers and conservationists voiced their fears that the spraying campaign could have severe consequences on the landscape, its biodiversity and people.
Hitherto-unknown consequences of the crop spraying on wildlife, other insects, such as bees and humans, could see these become casualties in the war against, what the BBC termed,”2020 locusts swarms of Biblical proportions.” More than 2 million litres of chemical pesticides were sprayed over 1.9 million hectares in East Africa from Yemen’s war zones at a cost of more than USD 195 million. Spraying would continue during 2021.
While scientific assessments of possible environmental damage are still lacking, the harming effect of pesticides are well documented. Broad spectrum pesticides had proved ineffective effective at killing locusts, but kill bees and other insects and leach into water systems damaging human health.
Dino Martins, an entomologist and executive director of the Mpala Research Centre in Kenya, said collateral damage could not be avoided. “All these chemicals are designed to kill insects and they do so in very large numbers.”
Kenya had not suffered a major locust invasion in 70 years. When the first swarms arrived in 2019, the country was unprepared for what had been considered a remote threat. Keith Cressman, the FAO’s senior locust forecaster, told the BBC in an interview that the country had no equipment, no expertise, no pesticides, no aircraft and no knowledge on how to deal with the influx.
Researchers explained that after various cyclones created vast amounts of stagnant water in the Arabian deserts, it provided fertile ground for locusts to breed in the wet sand. With the subsequent strong winds experienced on a daily basis in the region, swarms were blown from Yemen across the Red Sea, into East Africa with Kenya, Ethiopia and Somalia at the receiving end.
James Everts, an eco-toxicologist specialising in the environmental effects of pesticide use, said that in Kenya, the locust invasion led to a panic reaction and people with very little training were allowed to dump whatever pesticides they could find on the ground. With no proper understanding of the environmental effects of the pesticides, in some areas, 35 times the necessary amount was sprayed while pesticides were spilled on volunteers and crops. Thousands of litres of insecticides which had been banned in Europe and the United States were scattered onto the soil, the people themselves and the food.
But, according to Thecla Mutia, an FAO team monitor in Kenya, the idea was to manage the swarm infestation as quickly as possible to ensure food security.
However, designed to kill, pesticides are toxic by definition. Three of the four chemicals recommended by the FAO and authorised by regional governments, are broad-spectrum organophosphates, (which had proved to be of little effect), considered as dangerous as Sarin gas. Deltamethrin, a fourth pesticide used in addressing the emergency, is especially toxic to bees and fish. The FAO’s Pesticides Referee Group (researchgate.net) listed all four chemicals as high risk to bees, low or medium risk to birds and medium or high risk to locusts’ natural enemies and soil insects such as ants and termites. The European Union banned most of these pesticides.
Despite non-toxic alternatives being available for decades, chemical pesticides remain the weapon of choice, accounting for 90% of the spraying in the current East Africa campaign.
Only time will tell which damage was the greatest.
