EU allocates 1 mln euro to fight against desert locust in East Africa

BRUSSELS, Feb 20 (NNN-KUNA) — The European Union allocated an initial 1 million euro in emergency funding to support international efforts to tackle the desert locust outbreak currently wreaking havoc in eastern Africa.

“The locust swarms are having a real humanitarian impact, destroying crops and pastures. Swift action is needed. Our emergency funding will help pastoralists and farmers in the affected areas who are at risk of losing their means of subsistence,” Janez Lenarcic, EU Commissioner for Crisis Management, said in a press statement.

The EU is considering further substantial support to the efforts that the UN”s Food and Agricultural Organisation (FAO) is currently deploying in the region, he noted.

Locusts are a voracious pest that can fly up to 150 km in a day. A typical swarm can contain 150 million locusts per km2, which each day can consume the equivalent of food crop to feed a population of 35,000 people, added the statement.

Meanwhile, the European Parliament in a press release today said the Development Committee of the EP discussed the locust plague that has hit East Africa and called for a coordinated international effort to stop it from spreading and causing a humanitarian crisis.

Unusual rains have caused one of the worst outbreaks of desert locusts in decades, destroying crops and thereby threatening food security of 13 million people in Ethiopia, Kenya and Somalia.

Left unchecked, the crisis threatens to spill over to Djibouti, Eritrea, Uganda, South Sudan and Tanzania, it warned.

Dominique Burgeon, Director of Emergency at the Food and Agriculture Organization of the United Nations, told the Committee that USD 15.4 million of the USD 76 million requested to combat the locust plague has been raised from development partners, including the European Union. — NNN-KUNA