WEST AFRICA: Bettter coordination and reserve funds needed to fight locusts

[XXPANTHAXX]

DAKAR, 14 Jan 2005 (IRIN) - International agricultural
experts have warned that better coordination is required to
tackle locusts in West Africa after governments in the region
and international donors were caught off guard by last year's
insect invasion.

Meeting in Dakar from 11 to 13 January, they also concluded
that reserve funds should be established so that in the event
of a fresh emergency, control operations can get under way
immediately before donor funding filters through.

"Coordination is presently organised at both an international
and regional level. But experience shows that it is necessary
to complete this framework by establishing a mechanism for
sub-regional coordination among the frontline states
(Mauritania, Niger, Mali and Chad) and those where swarms do
not normally form," the 200 agricultural experts and aid
officials said in a final statement.

The conference also said that last year's locust control
campaign had "clearly shown the urgent need for the states
affected to be able to mobilise resources easily and rapidly."

The experts therefore suggested that "a national fund for
fighting locusts should be established in each country that
should be funded in the first instance by the national
budget."

The semi-arid Sahel belt of West Africa suffered its worst
invasion of locusts for 15 years between June and November
2004. The insects caused serious damage to crops and
pastureland in Mauritania and parts of Senegal, Mali and
Niger. Aid officials say hundreds of thousands of people will
go hungry over the coming year unless they receive food aid.

Donors reacted too late to requests for emergency aid to deal
effectively with the locust crisis, even though the UN Food
and Agricuture Organisation (FAO) launched its first appeal
for aid in February. And the coordination of cross-border
operations was poor.

"During the last invasion, the infestation was five times
bigger in Mauritania than in Senegal, but that country only
had six aircraft at its disposal, whereas Senegal had 20,"
Mbargou Lo, the director of vegetation protection at
Senegal's Ministry of Agriculture, told IRIN on the sidelines
of the conference.

"The Americans created a tripartite commission (between
Senegal, Mauritania and Mali) which attacked the swarms
without worrying about which side of the frontier they were
on and that really proved useful," he added.

The experts did not specify which organisation should take
the lead in regional coordination.

Two already exist.

One is OCLALAV, an inter-governmental organisation for locust
control in West Africa, based in Dakar. However, the
organisation's control equipment and operating bases were
handed over to its member governments in 1989 and its
effectiveness has since declined. OCLALAV is now just a
small, under-funded early warning body with a handful of
staff.

The other existing locust control organisation in West Africa
is the Commission for Fighting Desert Locusts in the Western
Region (CLCPRO). This is an Algiers-based organisation set up
by the FAO in 2000, but which never managed to coordinate
action among its member states on the southern fringe of the
Sahara.

Michel Lecoq, the head of locust research at France's
Internationational Centre for Agronomic Research (CIRAD),
said the best solution would be to activate another embryonic
organisation created by the FAO called EMPRES.

The acronym stands for the Emergency Prevention System for
Transboundary Animal and Plant Pests and Diseases.
EMPRES is an early warning, research and rapid reaction
organisation that already operates effectively against
locusts in East Africa and the Arabian peninsula. However,
FAO officials say it never received the necessary funding to
set up in West Africa.

"It is necessary to use EMPRES to resurrect a prevention
mechanism which already exists, but which is not effective
enough," Lecoq said.

He told IRIN that EMPRES was designed to provide an early
warning and rapid reaction capacity for Morocco, Algeria,
Tunisia and Libya in North Africa and the Sahelian neighbours
Mauritania, Mali, Niger, Chad and Senegal.

"Everybody agrees that we need to relaunch the programme and
several donors who a year or two ago were unwilling to invest
a couple of million dollars in preventive measures now
understand the importance of supporting this," Lecoq added.

Sidi Ali Moumen, Algeria's Director of Vegetation Protection,
agreed that CLCPRO had not performed as well as it should
have done last year.

Moumen, who chairs the CLCPRO, told IRIN that agricultural
experts had seen the 2004 locust invasion coming, but his
organisation had not taken sufficient preventive action and
it had failed to make donors sufficiently aware of the degree
to which the insect invasion could damage food security in
the region.

Lecoq of France's CIRAD, hammered home the need for an
emergency reserve fund capable of kick starting locust
control operations before donor funds to deal with a
particular crisis are mobilised.

"In order to deal with a situation where the existing means
of control have been overwhelmed and ecological conditions
are favourable (to locust breeding) we must put in place
emergency plans backed by a reserve fund which will enable us
to conduct control operations right at the beginning of the
upsurge," he said.

If these funds prove insufficient, we can then appeal to
donors in an efficient manner."

Jacques Diouf, the director general of the FAO admitted last
year that his organisation had been slow in mobilising donors
to deal with the locust invasion and that it needed a large
emergency fund to deal with such breaking crises quickly and
effectively.

Most of the locusts in the Sahel countries migrated north to
their winter breeding grounds in the Maghreb during November,
although some swarms were blown southwards to Guinea-Bissau
and southern Senegal.

Agricultural experts fear a second locust invasion of the
Sahel during the onset of the rainy season in the Sahel in
June.

However, the FAO said last week that it was still too early
to say how large and dangerous this would be. "Only in March-
April 2005 will it be possible to have clear indications on
what scale breeding will occur (in North Africa) and on what
scale the Sahel will be reinvaded in the summer," the Rome-
based organisation said in a statement.