Climate change created the perfect breeding grounds for a biblical pest.
On this farm in central Kenya, people bang cooking utensils as they try to ward off an infestation of desert locusts, one of many swarms eating their way through East Africa.
If not contained, agencies have warned that locust numbers will multiply by up to 400 times in June, and their rising numbers could turn the infestation into a plague by the end of the year. This breeding cycle, from egg to mature gregarious locust takes roughly three months and can bring a 20-fold increase in numbers. This can then increase to 400-fold after six months and 8,000 after nine months.
Desert locusts are the oldest migratory pest in the world. Yet extreme weather events linked to climate change helped create the unprecedented scourge in recent times, according to the United Nations. This year, swarms have continued to spread and reproduce through East Africa. They've been seen in Uganda, Tanzania and South Sudan -- one of Africa’s most food-insecure and fragile economies. The FAO worries that swarms could travel as far as West Africa in the summer.If the locust outbreak is uncontained, estimated damages and losses could reach $8.5 billion by the end of this year, said the World Bank. Ethiopia is expected to be the worst hit.
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