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Yemen Desert Locust Response Project

Yemen Desert Locust Response ProjectSwarms of locusts travel in groups of at least 80 million; a swarm can routinely eat what 35,000 humans can eat in the same time span. This article will highlight the destructive potential of locust swarms and the Yemen Desert Locust Response Project. The desert landscape of Yemen makes it the perfect breeding ground for locusts. Death could be the result of human beings in major cases of locust devastation (35-60% of crops) due to a lack of available crops.

Purpose of the Yemen Desert Locust Response Project

The purpose behind the creation of the Yemen Desert Locust Response Project was to kill desert locusts so they could not continue to swarm. This project sought to provide financing for activities that promoted food growth and healthy behaviors of citizens. Secondly, this project looked to collect data and archive information for future generations regarding strategies the government used to stop locust outbreaks.

Yemen Desert Locust Response Project led by Sandra Broka and Yashodhan Ghorpade was approved by the World Bank in June of 2020. The project specified remediation efforts of $25 million to take place throughout the Middle East and North Africa. The Republic of Yemen will benefit from this declaration, which is set to end December 29, 2023.

About the World Bank

The vision of the World Bank is to empower third world countries to reach the financial security and maturity of developed nations. Being able to transform dwindling institutions of academia, medicine, business and government is the end goal of the World Bank. Loans have terms that specify repayment barriers and deadlines; grants are met through the embodiment of criteria on a checklist, and countries will not need to pay these amounts back. During an attack of locusts, the World Bank quickly worked to funnel out available funds to citizens and organizations for agricultural revival.

The International Bank for Reconstruction and Development (IBRD) makes up the World Bank with other agencies like The International Development Association (IDA), corporations and centers. The two main players, IBRD and IDA, have donor countries. The IBRD has 189 donor countries and invests in the market to achieve financial capital benchmarks. The IBRD also has established credit that allows a profit margin between the loans it gives and the amounts it requires for repayment from clients.

International Development Association Financial Procurement

The IDA is overseen by 173 countries that make up the governing body. The governing body has agreed upon a set amount of money that it will donate to the IDA; this amount regenerates every three years. When this cash is dispersed, recipient countries improve the mitigation of environmental catastrophes. They are then able to locate economic interventions that reap the benefits of an enhanced quality of life.

Quick Locust Breeding; Quick Response

For countries to benefit from an increased quality of life, they must adhere to the warnings of the United Nations Food and Agriculture Organization (FOA) regarding the growth of locust populations. It is believed that in July, as swarms reach their adulthood, crops will also reach the peak of their growth; this also means they reach their highest risk of being eliminated by locusts. Farmers may be able to save July 2020 harvests. Ultimately, Failure to react will cause further distress to Yemen natives.

Preemptive warnings from the FOA are related to the travel destinations that locust swarms will navigate through during the month of July 2020. The FOA predicted African invasions of locusts in northern Somalia and northeast Ethiopia. With Yemen Desert Locust Response Project funds working in unison with FOA advisories, Yemen can better mitigate locust challenges than if it were acting as a stand-alone country not utilizing outside resources.

– DeAndre’ Robinson
Photo: Flickr

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10 Most Malnourished Countries

top ten malnourished countriesAccording to the United Nations Food and Agriculture Organization (FAO), 815 million people around the world suffer from malnourishment. Hunger strikes a nation when violence, conflict and any type of instability is present. Here are the top ten malnourished countries based on the malnourishment rates of countries around the world.

10 Most Malnourished Countries

  1. Central African Republic (CAR): CAR is known to be the hungriest country in the world. Half of its population suffers from hunger. CAR has “suffered from instability, ethnic violence and conflict since 2012.” This has disrupted food production and has displaced more than a million people. CAR has the highest malnutrition rate at 61.8 percent.
  2. Zimbabwe: A combination of the economic crisis and the devastating drought from October to May has resulted in Zimbabwe’s 46.6 percent malnutrition rates. About 5.5 million people will need food assistance by 2020. More than two million people are already facing severe starvation.
  3. Haiti: Haiti has gone through hurricanes, floods, political instability and earthquakes that account for its high levels of hunger. About 22 percent of children are chronically malnourished, and 66 percent of children under the age of five are anemic. Half of the 10.7 million people in Haiti are undernourished. Haiti’s malnutrition rate comes in at 45.8 percent.
  4. The Democratic People’s Republic of Korea: More than 10 million people, around 40 percent of the population, are in need of “urgent food aid.” Due to the drought the country experienced earlier this spring, its crops went through “dry spells” and “heat waves,” leaving one in five children stunted.
  5. Zambia: The drought from 2001-2002 has driven Zambia into a “massive food deficit” that affected more than 2.3 million households who are dependent on rural agricultural. About 58 percent of the population are “classified as extremely poor,” hungry and food insecure. About 25 percent of children under five are underweight, and 6 percent are severely malnourished.
  6. Madagascar: Due to extreme weather conditions, long droughts and locust attacks, 1.4 million people in Madagascar are in food crisis. At least 43.1 percent of its population is malnourished. Deforestation is another key issue since 85 percent of its rainforests have vanished because of “cooking and slash and burn agricultural practices.”
  7. Uganda: Because of issues of land evictions, fake seed supplies and problematic farming methods, Uganda’s malnutrition rate stands at 41 percent. More than 1.6 million Ugandans are in a food crisis. About 82 percent of malnourished children cases go untreated, resulting in many other health problems. About 15 percent “of all child mortality cases” in the nation are related to undernutrition.
  8. Democratic Republic of the Congo (DRC): The food situation in DRC is so dire that people are resorting to prostitution and joining armed forces for extra money. Due to conflict-related issues, about 15 million people in the nation are going hungry. This is higher than the 7.7 million people in 2017.
  9. Yemen Republic: Yemen has a 39 percent malnutrition rate. More than 2 million children are suffering from malnutrition. Food insecurity in Yemen is due to the “large scale displacement, high food prices, endemic poverty, and influences of refugees and migrants.”
  10. Chad: Chad has been suffering from “political instability, social unrest and conflicts” ever since its independence in 1960. Additionally, its consecutive drought and random rains have resulted in failed harvests. The National Nutrition Survey of 2018 states that global acute malnutrition rests at 13.5 percent, of which 4 percent is severe malnutrition. The U.N.’s Office for the coordination of Humanitarian Affairs reported that about 4.5 million people face food insecurity.

Organizations Combatting Malnutrition

Organizations like Action Against Hunger and UNICEF are trying to combat malnutrition. The World Food Programme helps 86.7 million people in 83 different countries every year. It delivers “food assistance in emergencies” and works with communities to “improve nutrition and build resilience.” It has helped each one of these nations listed above. It had especially helped Yemen in 2013 when it provided food assistance for more than five million people.

IFRC and the DPRK Red Cross have also helped highly vulnerable countries like North Korea. IFRC has given about 77,000 Swiss francs to the national Red Cross efforts to help 22,000 people. Red Cross has also created around 100 community greenhouses to grow vegetables to help feed communities. DPRK has also helped by deploying water pumps during droughts so communities can water their crops.
Malnutrition is a serious issue that affects many countries. Populations in developing countries and countries in conflict are the most vulnerable. Efforts from organizations to combat malnutrition are making a difference. However, the top ten malnourished countries on this list are still in dire need of aid.

– Isabella Gonzalez Montilla
Photo: Flickr

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Achieving Zero Hunger Will Require Investments

Zero Hunge
On Dec. 6, 2016, the United Nations Food and Agriculture Organization (FAO) released the first post-Millennium Development Goals (MDGs) report, 2016 Asia and the Pacific Regional Overview of Food Insecurity — Investing in a Zero Hunger Generation. According to the report, although the Asia-Pacific Region met the MDG target of halving the proportion of people suffering from hunger, “the overall rate of progress is less than desired, and there are several countries and sub-regions where the prevalence rates are still very high.”

Sustainable Development Goal (SDGs)

In September of 2015, world leaders adopted the Agenda for Sustainable Development, which features 17 new Sustainable Development Goals (SDGs). The second goal (SDG2) of the agenda reads, “End hunger, achieve food security and improved nutrition and promote sustainable agriculture.” The report warns that progress towards achieving zero hunger has slowed, and must increase in order to reach SDG2’s target by 2030. In addition, the report says fully eliminating the prevalence of undernourishment, as well as reducing other forms of malnutrition across the Asia-Pacific region will be a challenge.

5th Global Forum

The U.N. FAO report was featured at the 5th Global Forum of Leaders for Agricultural Science and Technology (GLAST-2016), a three-day event in December that took place in Hainan, China. The theme of the forum was “Eliminating poverty and hunger through Science and Technology,” and discussions focused on solutions to the challenges facing agricultural development. One of the attendees was FAO Assistant Director-General and Regional Representative for Asia and the Pacific, Kundhavi Kadiresan, who said, “Most countries in this region are spending too little on agricultural research…we will, collectively, need to put our money where our mouths are to ensure we can meet these twin challenges [SDG2].”

Achieving Zero Hunger

According to the report, although economic growth is part of achieving SDG2, it is not nearly enough. Agriculture and food sustainability face resource scarcity and a changing, often unpredictable, climate, and growth in the agricultural sector is much more important. Investing in ways to improve agricultural production in order to enhance food availability is essential. Therefore, these should be the focus of government programs and policies that are intended to increase food and nutrition security.

– Kristin Westad

Photo: Flickr

How to Improve Pakistan’s Agricultural Sector

Agricultural_Sector
Amidst recent reports of a shrinking agricultural sector, Pakistani officials have initiated meetings with the United Nations Food and Agriculture Organization (FAO) in an attempt to create a long-term sustainable agricultural program. Over the past few years, the Pakistani landscape has been ravaged by a range of destructive climate forces varying from desertification to over-flooding. As a direct result of these factors, Pakistan’s overall economy has suffered, and it will continue to do so unless the U.N.’s FAO can help develop a new approach.

Agriculture is critical to the well-being of Pakistanis, as well as for Pakistan’s relevance on an international stage. The industry alone accounts for 40 percent of all Pakistani jobs, with agriculture comprising 25 percent of the nation’s GDP. With such a large contribution to the success of Pakistan, it would be expected that a large agricultural infrastructure would exist to satisfy the need for a quality agriculture division.

Pakistan has the fortune of being in an advantageous position to the Indus River, a powerful tool for thriving agriculture in that region, yet it fails to capitalize on this geographic asset. An excerpt from the Pakistan Times reads: “There are few regions in the world that have rivers like mighty Indus, but one could still find a vast desert and arid areas here. This has happened just due to the negligence of policymakers to modernize irrigation and agriculture.” Pakistan’s woes stem from an inability to adapt to new and future agricultural practices.

The partnership with the United Nations gives Pakistan an opportunity to learn and eventually cultivate proven agricultural techniques. The FAO’s representative for Pakistan, Patrick Evans, said this about assisting Pakistan: “We would like to bring in proven experiences of improved agriculture and irrigation practices and introduce climate-resilient crop varieties, which can sustain heat waves, floods, salinity and drought conditions, which are becoming frequent in Pakistan.” The issue in Pakistan lies with a refusal to move past ancient agricultural practices. For this country to succeed, it must accept outside assistance and focus on maximizing agricultural yield.

– Diego Catala

Sources: Pakistan Today, Samaa
Photo: Flickr

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Flooding in Nepal: Poor Most Vulnerable

Flooding
On August 2, a landslide and flooding in Nepal killed approximately 156 people. It completely covered a main highway leading to China with 20 feet of debris, blocked a major river and damaged hydro power stations, causing a 10 percent power loss across the nation. The Nepal Red Cross Society said that this recent two kilometer-long landslide was the worst in the nation’s history.

As a result, experts are encouraging the Nepalese government to map out hazard areas and include natural disaster planning in its economic and development plans for the country. Experts also agree that an early warning system could have avoided the large death toll.

Almost 80 percent of Nepal’s residents live in rural areas and 25 percent of the total population lives on less than $1.25 a day. About 3.5 million people are food insecure, according to the United Nations Food and Agriculture Organization. As a result, the impoverished in Nepal are among the most severely affected by natural disasters because their resources are so greatly limited.

The United Nations Development Programme explains “the poorest of the poor, who largely rely on agriculture, typically live on steep slopes under the constant shadow of landslides, or in low-lying flood-prone areas…have virtually no resources with which to bounce back after a weather-related calamity.”

Typically, communities that live in poverty also live in high-risk areas and, because of poverty, cannot afford to move to a safer location before or after a disaster.

Despite over 3.6 million people being affected by flooding, the New York Times writes, “Villagers continue to return to their ancestral homes where they at least have access to fertile land and water, which enables them to make…a living.”

There have been 4,511 deaths and over 18,000 homes destroyed in Nepal within the past three decades, according to a 2013 Natural Disaster report by the Nepalese government. Seventy-five people have died in separate floods in Nepal within the past year.

Yadav Prasad Koirala of the Department of Natural Disaster Management stated, regarding the August 2 landslide, “We have names of 159 people who are believed to be missing and buried, but there could be even more people.” Furthermore, lack of official records may mean the death toll is even higher.

A local resident of Mankha who was injured during the landslide expressed fear that the people in his village were all killed. “There are nearly 100 people in the 60 houses in my village and 20 more people in the neighboring village who were buried by the landslide. All of them are likely dead.”

The ministry of home affairs reports 300 deaths and 3 million dollars of damages per year because of landslides and floods. Although landslides are common in Nepal, with 14 major events since 1967, the recent landslide was unique because it was the first to occur in an area with major infrastructure.

It is hard to imagine the struggle an average American has to go through to recover from a natural disaster, but in a country with a much higher poverty rate and lower standards of living, it is even more difficult.

The concept of risk vulnerability is well established in social sciences, and it has been recognized by several academics that the poor are endangered more by natural disaster than wealthier people. The poor people of Nepal are certainly among the most vulnerable in the world to these natural disasters.

– Christopher Kolezynski

Sources: Global Issues, Circle of Blue, New York Times, NDTV
Photo: Poleshift