New Delhi, Islamabad team up to fight locusts

DESPITE high running tensions between India and Pakistan over Kashmir, Islamabad has said the two have been cooperating to fight a desert locust invasion under a forum administered by the Food and Agriculture Organisation (FAO).

Pakistan is part of the FAO’s Commission for Controlling the Desert Locust in Southwest Asia (SWAC), which is one of the oldest of the three regional commissions within the global locust early warning and prevention system. Other members of the regional commission include India, Iran and Afghanistan.

FAO spokesperson Aisha Farooqui told a weekly media briefing that the ministerial meeting of the commission held in March had decided to reactivate communication between the member states on the locust situation and a Technical and Operational Coordination (ToC) team was formed to exchange information, enhance coordination at the border areas, and increase synchronisation to combat desert locust outbreak in the region.

She said Pakistan had been participating in SWAC meetings on a weekly basis, describing the cooperation as “fruitful” in exchanging information in the bordering areas of Pakistan and India.

Pakistan and India are facing the worst locust attack in nearly three decades and it is feared that crops worth billions of rupees would be lost. This has led to fears about food security in the two countries.

The FAO said the early migration of locusts from Pakistan to India started last month and the situation is expected to aggravate further this month when swarms are expected to arrive from Iran and Horn of Africa.

The insects have, moreover, for the first time entered areas in the two countries that remained unaffected in previous invasions.