UN Emergency Relief Coordinator , Mr Mark Lowcock , has warned of serious consequences if nothing is done within the next three weeks to check the locust outbreak in the Horn of Africa .

Lowcock gave the warning during a joint media briefing with senior official s of the Food and Agricultural Organisation ( FAO ) at the UN Headquarters in New York on Monday .

Unusual weather patterns , including heavy rains since October , and general climate conditions , are blamed for the spread of the desert locust swarms , which are feeding on crops.

The current outbreak is destroying tens of thousands of hectares of cropland and pasture in Ethiopia , Kenya and Somalia .
Lowcock said no fewer than 30 million people in the affected countries were at immediate risk of food insecurity , with 10 million of them in the places affected by the locusts .

He said this was the worst outbreak in over 25 years in Ethiopia and Somalia , and the worst observed in over 70 years in Kenya .

According to him , Kenya was hit by a swarm of between 100 and 200 billion of locusts in January , covering an area of about 2 , 400 km square .

He explained that a swarm has the capacity to consume the same amount of food as 84 million people in one day .
“ On Jan . 22 and 23, the FAO launched an alert and a response plan for $ 76 million to try and deal with this problem through surveillance and control , including spraying .

“ On same day , I released $ 10 million from the Central Emergency Response Fund ( CERF) .

“ That was an unusual thing for me to do because normally when I am releasing money from CERF , it is for problems where there are people starving and dying right now.

“ I released this money because it was clear to me that unless there was a rapid response , we are going to have a huge problem later in the year if nothing was done now, ’’ he said .

According to him , only $ 21 million has so far been realised , half of which came from the CERF .

“ Unless we get a grip on this in the next two or four weeks we are going to have a really serious problem .

“ We can make a lot of progress if we act now. The binding constraints is the money .
“ Our plea really is for those member states and other organisations who are thinking of doing something about this , don ’ t think for too long before you get the response in place because it is a very small window . ’’

Mr Dominique Burgeon , FAO Director of Emergencies , said the locusts were spreading fast , with Uganda , South Sudan and Tanzania already affected as of Sunday night .

Burgeon said in the affected countries there mature swarms of locusts laying eggs and producing a new generation that would be at the voracious stage by the next planting season .

“ When you look at the crop calendar of that part of the world , we are current in between two planting seasons .
“ The locusts came towards the end of the last cropping season , and so damages were relatively limited

“ But now, they are breeding big time and they would be ready for a very large damage by March and April , underscoring the fact that this is the time for us to scale up control operations , ’’ he said.

Source:- NAN

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