South-south cooperation works fast on locust control

As swarms of locusts began devastating the crops and pasture lands of West Africa during this year's rainy season, the first teams to provide assistance on the ground did not come from the traditional donor countries of Europe and North America. Instead, trucks loaded with spraying equipment and pesticide rolled across the Sahara desert from Morocco, Algeria, Tunisia and Libya to help the struggling locust-control teams of their poorer southern neighbours. The first locust-control teams from the countries of the Maghreb arrived in Mauritania, Senegal, Mali and Niger at the end of July, a few weeks after the first swarms of locusts. Very soon they were followed by crop-spraying planes. These were dispatched south to destroy millions of insects within a matter of minutes as the locust swarms rested on the ground in cool of the early morning. “We came to help the Sahelian countries limit the number of swarms that will eventually move back north since we know they will come to Algeria," Mohamed Arezki Ouitis, the head of the Algerian locust control team based in Saint Louis in northwestern Senegal, told IRIN. “Two days after Senegal launched the appeal, we arrived,” he told IRIN as he surveyed yet another field of groundnut plants stripped bare of their foliage by the swarm of large yellow insects swirling round him. It was only in early October - two months after Ouitis and his team arrived in Senegal after a gruelling six-day drive across the Sahara desert, that a contingent of six crop-spraying aircraft sent by the United States was flown into the Sahel to help out. By then, the locust swarms had already started moving back north across the Sahara to their winter feeding and breeding grounds in North Africa. “We should have reacted earlier, but it is a phenomenon that not a lot of people are familiar with," said Regina Davis, the Head of USAID's Disaster Assistance Response Team. "People say this is the worst locust invasion in 15 years, but it is not until it has reached a state where you comprehend what it really means for the people that you react," Davis told IRIN as she helped the US locust-control team set up operations in Saint Louis. The UN Food and Agriculture Organisation (FAO) which has coordinated international efforts to control locust plagues in Africa for more than half a century, says it warned western donors in good time about the need to act fast to avoid a crisis this year. It saw the problem coming after exceptionally heavy rains in the Sahel last year created ideal conditions for locusts to breed rapidly and congregate into voracious crop-destroying swarms. This spurred the FAO to issue its first locust warning in October 2003. That was followed by an appeal for US$9 million to boost locust control operations in February, when the swarms were still in North Africa on the southern slopes of the Atlas Mountains. But still there was little in the way of response. By August, when North African locust control teams were already rushing to help out their totally overwhelmed colleagues in the Sahel, the FAO had raised its appeal to US$100 million and had started to warn of the risk of famine if the insects were not brought under control. The West finally woke up. During September the United States and the countries of the European Union started to pitch in with hefty pledges of aid. "Since our last meeting (with donors), the response had been very encouraging, but is still less that what is required," Jacques Diouf, the Director General of FAO told a news conference in Rome on Wednesday. "The contributions made thus far only amount to a quarter of what we need," he added. The FAO said that by 13 October $58 million had been pledged by donor governments, but less than $20 million of cash had been received. To this, the FAO added $6 million from its own resources. "FAO has warned about this problem since October last year," Clive Elliott, the head of the FAO's Locust Group in Rome, told IRIN. "The problem is that the donors were slow to respond, and when they did respond they did not provide cash [immediately]." The donors have meanwhile accused the FAO of failing to ring the alarm bells loud enough to bring the gravity of the crisis to their attention. "I think the ball has been dropped and I'm disappointed by what I have seen, by this lack of urgency," Tony Hall, the US ambassador to the FAO in Rome, told Reuters in mid-September. Since then, the locust crisis has assumed a higher international profile and the UN Office for the Coordination for Humanitarian Affairs (OCHA) has stepped in to support the FAO in lobbying for an emergency response. "Unless immediate action is taken to stop what is now the worst locust plague of the last decade, up to 25 percent of crops in West Africa could be lost, and the livelihoods of 150 million people put at risk by year's end," Jan Egeland, the UN Emergency Relief Coordinator, said in an article published by the New York Times last week. However, some donors still complain that bureaucracy is slowing down the rapid delivery of effective help in the form of more pesticides, aircraft, vehicles, spraying equipment, vehicles and radios. “We took the decision to support West African countries via the FAO in August, but it has been so complicated to sign a contract between our capital, our embassy in Rome and the FAO that the contract has not been signed yet,” one European diplomat told IRIN in Dakar. Diouf said on Wednesday there was perhaps a need for the FAO to establish its own emergency response fund in order to kick-start operations in future crises. "There might be a need for a large emergency fund that would enable a quick reaction pending the arrival of donor contributions," he said. "We are trying to evaluate how much would be needed in order for us to respond to four crises at the same time," Diouf added. He noted that in addition to locusts in West Africa, the FAO was currently dealing with an outbreak of bird flu in Asia, hurricanes in Caribbean and floods in Bangladesh, Nepal and Bhutan. Locust-control experts said most of the aid received from North Africa had been generated through the coordination efforts of a regional locust-control body sponsored by the FAO. The Algiers-based Commission for Controlling Desert Locusts in the Western Region - better known by its French acronym CLCPRO - groups the Arab states of Morocco, Algeria, Tunisia and Libya with their southern neighbours Mauritania, Senegal, Mali, Niger and Chad. It formulated an action plan to deal with the locust invasion in Niamey in June, just a few weeks before the first swarms began emerging from the Sahara into the dry savannah woodlands of the Sahel. But the aid flow from North Africa to the Sahel only began in earnest following a further meeting in Algiers on 27 and 28 July. "The CLCPRO member states agreed that the northwestern African countries should contribute first the amount of US$12 million through the sending of teams, pesticides, planes and engaged the action immediately," Sidi Ali Moumen, the president of the regional organisation, told IRIN. Within days indeed, aid was on its way, spurred by the certainty that unless locust numbers were reduced drastically in the Sahel, North Africa would face an even bigger invasion during the coming winter and spring. “South-south cooperation functioned extremely well, with countries such as Algeria, Morocco, Libya, Gambia sending us treatment and prospection teams,” Mbargo Lo, an agronomist at Senegal's Ministry of Agriculture told IRIN. Lo pointed out that enlightened self-interest also led the Sahel states to cooperate actively in helping each other. He noted that Gambia, which has so far escaped the locust invasion, sent six ground control teams to help out Senegal. It did so knowing full well that unless the locust swarms were contained in northern Senegal, they would spread south to destroy its own croplands. Lo also pointed out that although Senegal's own locust control teams were struggling to cope with swarms on their own doorstep, the government had dispatched three spraying trucks to neighbouring Mauritania which is even more hard-pressed. It is not hard to see why. Nearly every day, Senegal's Ministry of Agriculture notes in its locust bulletin that fresh swarms have invaded northern Senegal from southern Mauritania. At a regional coordination meeting in Dakar end of August, President Abdoulaye Wade of Senegal criticized the long lead times taken by western donors to convert pledges of aid into effective assistance. He urged them not simply pledge cash, but to urgently deliver concrete help in the form of pesticides, crop-spraying planes and other essential equipment. Diouf said the FAO had so far delivered about 600,000 litres of pesticide, not just to West Africa, but also to locust control operations in East Africa and the Saudi peninsula. A further 700,000 litres were on order, he said. Diouf added that FAO had already sent two crop-spraying planes to Mauritania and another two to Mali. A further five planes were in the pipeline for Senegal, Mauritania and Niger. But Moumen, the president of the CLCPRO, said aid was not arriving fast enough. “The assistance received so far remains insufficient because the current situation shows a generalised locust invasion, but only 18 percent of the infested area has been treated." "At this point last year, only 600,000 hectares had been infested, compared to 3.8 million at present," he noted. By the time much of the western aid now in the pipeline finally arrives in the Sahel, it may be almost too late. By the end of November the region's grain harvest - or what is left of it in areas that have been ravaged by locusts - will be complete. By the end of November too, most of the locust swarms will have started moving north towards the Maghreb. Carried by the prevailing winds, they can move over 100 km per day. The FAO has been reporting large swarms moving into northern Mauritania, southern Algeria and southern Libya since the beginning of October. “More swarms will form this month in the Sahel and a major redistribution of populations from West Africa to Northwest Africa is expected to occur this month,” the organisation said in its latest locust update. Experts are now predicting that whatever is done to step up control measures in the Sahel during the coming weeks, North Africa is likely to suffer an even bigger locust invasion in the coming winter and spring than it did last year. “We are in the midst of reproduction, ecological conditions are still favorable, there are population movements from the south to the north. We have not yet reached the peak of the reproduction curve that could be situated somewhere around Spring 2005," Said Ghaout, a Moroccan locust control expert sent to Senegal by the FAO, told IRIN. Elliott, the head of the FAO Locust Group, said that between them Morocco and Algeria spent about US$100 million on spraying locust swarms in North Africa last winter. "The chances are that the infestations in this coming winter/spring season are going to be bigger than they were last year," he said. "Everybody knew that the locusts would come back." Diouf paid tribute to the efforts undertaken by the North African countries to help their Sahelian neighbours and urged western donors to compensate them for their efforts. "These are more developed countries than those in West Africa, but they are still developing countries which will need international support. That is why I launched an appeal to donors this morning to help them," the FAO director general said.