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Transboundary Plant Pests and Diseases

Locusts: Towards sustainable management in Caucasus and Central Asia

14/05/2024

The Food and Agriculture Organization of the United Nations has called for sustained locust management in Caucasus and Central Asia (CCA), based on long-term regional cooperation, monitoring and early warning systems, as well as advanced and safer control techniques, in particular biopesticides. The call was made at the side-event of the 34th session of the FAO Regional Conference for Europe (ERC34).

In the CCA region, the Moroccan Locust, the Italian Locust and the Asian Migratory Locust are major threats to the food security and livelihoods of at least 25 million people in ten countries: Afghanistan, Armenia, Azerbaijan, Georgia, Kazakhstan, Kyrgyzstan, the Russian Federation, Tajikistan, Turkmenistan and Uzbekistan. Their threats also extend to other neighboring countries, especially People’s Republic of China and the Islamic Republic of Iran.

FAO's initiative

Fighting locusts needs sustained efforts. Important progresses have been made over the past 12 years, with the support of the FAO “Programme to Improve National and Regional Locust Management in Caucasus and Central Asia (CCA)” financially supported by the Japan International Cooperation Agency (JICA) and the United States Agency for International Cooperation (USAID).

The interregional and multifunded programme implemented in the ten CCA countries, supports the application of the FAO locust preventive control strategy, and it also promotes regional cooperation to reduce the occurrence and intensity of locust outbreaks. It strengthens national institutional, human and operational capacities for monitoring and early warning systems for pests and for minimizing the impacts of control operations on human health and the environment.

“To ensure the sustainability of the gains, further support should be secured for regional cooperation, to maintain and expand the use of the introduced automated system for monitoring, data collection and analysis, and forecasting, and more resources should be provided for the further promotion of effective locust control techniques,” said Shoki Al-Dobai, Locust and Transboundary Plant Pests and Disease Team Leader. “

Prevention is the only sustainable approach to safeguarding food security, nutrition and livelihoods, protecting human health and the environment, and saving financial resources.

The locust persisting menace

Locusts pose the most serious threat to livelihoods of at least 25 million people in the ten CCA countries. Over the past 15 years, on average, locusts have been infesting 6.8 million hectares annually. As a control measure, about 3.7 million hectares are sprayed with insecticides per year.

“The three locusts are transboundary pests, their breeding areas are situated across the political borders, therefore, solving this problem in one country is impossible. Climate change is aiding locusts to become more dangerous because they expand their distribution ranges,” Alexandre Latchininsky, FAO Senior Locust Management Expert told the meeting.

Affected countries shared good practices related to locust management

Kyrgyzstan

Almaz Alakunov, Head of Plant Protection and Control Division, Department of Chemicalization, Plant Protection and Quarantine, Ministry of Water Resources, Agriculture and Processing Industry, highlighted the positive impact of the FAO Locust Programme in CCA on locust management in his country and the whole region, in terms of regional cooperation and capacity strengthening. He called for sustained efforts to further reinforce those aspects.

Uzbekistan

Alisher Umaraliev, Head of Institutional Development and Better Regulation Unit, Ministry of Agriculture, also stressed the importance of training-of-trainers and capacity building activities and equipment and called for continuous regional dialogue and knowledge exchange supported by FAO.

FAO speakers also included

  • Viorel Gutu, Assistant Director-General, Regional Office for Europe and Central Asia, who open the side-event.
  • Oleg Kobiakov, Director, FAO Liaison Office with the Russian Federation, who stressed the importance of ensuring regional cooperation in the long-term for locust management.

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