Category Environment

Controlling locust swarms is no easy task. The larger the swarms, the more difficult the task becomes.

• At present, the primary method of controlling desert locust swarms and hopper bands is to use pesticides, which is applied in small concentrated doses by vehicle-mounted and aerial sprayers. (However, this led to environmental concerns).
• Natural predators such as wasps, birds and reptiles may prove effective at keeping small swarms at bay.
• Other strategies include catching them in nets, driving them away by burning tyres, collecting hoppers with catching machines, trapping them in duties, and other mechanical methods.
• One of the most effective ways to avoid the devastating effects of locust players is to prevent them from happening in the first place. Early warning and preventative control strategies are in place in some places. Locust monitoring stations collect data on weather, ecological conditions and locust numbers, making forecasts of the timing and location of breeding.

 

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• The desert locust is potentially the most dangerous of the locusts because of the ability of swarms to fly rapidly across great distances. Plagues of the desert locust have threatened agricultural production in Africa, the Middle East and Asia for centuries.
• During quiet periods (known as recessions) the desert locust is usually restricted to the semi-arid and arid deserts of Africa, the Near East and South-West Asia, inhabiting some 30 countries (including India) but during plagues, they may spread over an enormous area of nearly 30 million sq. km., extending over 60 countries.
• According to the National Geographic, a single swarm of the desert locust can be 460 square miles in size and pack between 40 and 80 million individuals into less than half-a-square mile. Each locust can eat its weight in plants each day, so a swarm of such size would eat 423 million pounds of plants every day.
• The desert locust flies with the wind and swarms can travel from about five to 130 km or more in a day. Solitary adults usually fly at night whereas gregarious adults fly during the day. The locust can live between three and six months, and there is a 10- to 16-fold increase in locust numbers from one generation to the next.

When conditions are right

• The desert locust reproduces and increases in numbers, when conditions are favourable. It needs moist, sandy soil to lay eggs and fresh vegetation for hoppers (nymphs) to grow into adults. A good monsoon is therefore a cause for concern.
• Females lay about 95 to 158 eggs in an egg pod in soft soils at a depth of 10 to 15 cm below the surface. The location needs to be at the night temperature and right degree of dampness.
• Thought it’s still a mystery what triggers solitary insects to become gregarious, scientists have theorised that a primary cause of the switch happens when individuals regularly touch others on the hind legs within populations. When population starts to build up following a period of drought, individuals concentrate in an environment while foraging. As young insects get more crowded, the close physical contact causes the insects’ hind legs to bump against one another. This triggers a change in behaviour, they say.

 

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The Basel Convention on the Control of Transboundary Movements of Hazardous Wastes and their Disposal was adopted in 1989 and it came into force in 1992. The convention aims to protect human health and the environment against the adverse effects resulting from the generation, transboundary movements and management of hazardous waste and other waste.

In May 2019, 187 countries agreed to amend the Basel Convention to subject shipments of scrap plastic to tighter controls and greater transparency. Set to come into effect in 2021, this amendment would prohibit nations from exporting hazardous plastic waste to other countries.

 

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The Southeast Asian importers became swamped with waste posing significant threat to the environment. The sheer quantity of imported scrap not only overwhelmed ports, but also caused a sharp uptick in illegal recycling operations. Illegal recyclers dumped toxic wastewater into waterways and polluted the air with fumes from burning plastic.

These countries began to face backlash from the public and environmental groups, who used officials to permanently ban the import of plastic waste. This made countries send unwanted and contaminated waste back to the countries it came from and to impose new controls.

• In 2018, Malaysia announced bans on imports of plastic scrap by 2021. Malaysia has revoked import permits and has been clamping down on illegal processing plants.
• Thailand has temporarily prohibited plastic waste import.
• Indonesia has restricted the import of non-recyclable waste and Vietnam will bar all imports of plastic scrap by 2025.
• India announced that a ban on import of plastic waste would began in August, 2019.

 

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China was the world’s biggest importer of scrap plastic, receiving close to half of the world’s global plastic waste for three decades. But serve pollution concerns prompted the country to impose a ban on plastic waste import abruptly in January 2018. This shook up the global garbage/scrap trade. With the primary importer of plastic waste out of the market, exporting countries began sending increasing volumes of scrap to Southeast Asia, with Malaysia emerging as the number one importer. Vietnam, Thailand and Indonesia also picked up a lot of the slack. Malaysia’s imports rose five-fold and the Philippines’, three-fold.

The recycling crisis triggered by China’s ban could have an upside, experts say, if it leads to better solutions for managing the world’s waste, such as expanding processing capacities in North America and Europe, and spurring manufacturers to make their products more easily recyclable. Above all, experts say it should be a wake-up call to the world on the need to sharply cut down on single-use plastics.

Over the coming decade, as many as 111 million tons of plastics will have to find a new place to be processed or otherwise disposed of as a result of China’s ban, according to Brooks and University of Georgia engineering professor Jenna Jambeck. However, the places trying to take up some of the slack in 2018 tended to be lower-income countries, primarily in Southeast Asia, many of which lack the infrastructure to properly handle recyclables. Many of those countries were quickly overwhelmed by the volume and have also now cut back on imports.

 

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For many years now, wealthier nations have been shipping their waste including paper, plastic, metal and electronic items, to developing countries, which recycle them and use them as raw material in their manufacturing businesses. For the former, it’s a cheap way to dispose of their waste, and for the latter, waste is a valuable source of income. But in recent months, the global waste trade has been facing a crisis. A growing number of countries are demanding that nations take back their plastic waste. Malaysia, the Philippines and Indonesia have started to send contaminated waste back to where it came from. Returning 42 shipping containers of illegally imported plastic waste to the U.K., Malaysia’s Environment Minister Yeo Bee Yin announced last month that Malaysia would take steps to ensure it does not become the garbage dump of the world. In 2019, the Philippines shipped back 69 containers of plastic to Canada that it said was falsely labelled as recyclable in 2013 and 2014.

Global trade in plastic waste is a big business. According to an estimate, from 1988 to 2016, the top 10 plastic waste exporters shipped 168 million tonnes, most of it to China. Exporting is seen as a cheaper option than sorting, cleaning, recycling or reusing it locally.

In developing countries on the other hand, recyclers line up to buy this waste and turn it into new products.

In the recent past, countries found themselves dealing with huge volumes of waste they are ill-prepared to handle. Such waste also contains a variety of materials, chemical additives and dyes that make it next to impossible to recycle. Workers who process these shipments are often exposed to hazardous chemicals. Further, the plastic that cannot be recycled is disposed of in incinerators, landfills, thereby polluting the air, land and sea. Worries about receiving such waste have forced countries to act.

The Exporters

• Garbage is exported from about a dozen developed countries, including the U.S., Canada, France, Belgium, Germany, Spain, the Netherlands and the U.K., according to Greenpeace.
• The European Union is the largest exporter of plastic waste, with the U.S. leading as the top exporter for a single country.

The Importers

• The list predominantly includes Asia countries such as China, Malaysia, India, Indonesia, Vietnam, Thailand, the Philippines, South Korea, Taiwan, and Hong Kong. They import some form of waste or the other.
• About 1,21,000 metric tonnes of plastic waste is imported to India.
• Interestingly, some developed countries too import plastic waste. They include Germany, the U.S., Italy, Canada, Sweden, France, the U.K., the Netherlands and Belgium.

 

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