The connection between coronavirus, cyclones and the attack by locusts

Three seemingly unrelated events have caused havoc in recent weeks. Covid- 19 that surfaced sometime in February 2020 is the first. The second is the saga of swarms of desert locusts descending on vegetation in parts of Rajasthan, Uttar Pradesh, Madhya Pradesh, Chhattisgarh and Maharashtra. There are now media reports that swarms have been spotted in Andhra Pradesh and Tamil Nadu too. The third calamity has been the super cyclone Amphan that wrecked coastal Bengal and Kolkata, which was closely followed by Cyclone Nisarga that spared Mumbai but caused much damage to Raigad district.

Is there a connection between these disparate occurrences? Are we in some ways respon- sible for these ‘natural’ calamities? Has our greed and unbridled consumerism played a role? Diseases transmitted from animals to humans is known as ‘zoonosis’ and are nothing new. Plague, Tuberculosis, Rabies and Malaria – are all examples of zoonosis. And as historian Yuval Noah Harari notes in his book Sapiens, “Most of the infectious diseases that have plagued agricultural and industrial societies (such as smallpox, measles and tuberculosis) originated in domesticated animals and were transferred to humans only after the Agricultural Revolution.”

Human beings have been contracting such diseases for 12,000 years now but something has changed in recent times. Human greed has led to unprecedented loss of forest land over the last two decades, forcing animals and human beings into closer contact than ever before. This is happening despite persistent warning that if we do not desist, many other pandemics of this nature will follow.

Super-cyclones are battering our world with increasing frequency and ferocity. The United Nations’ Intergovernmental Panel on

Climate Change (IPCC) report, published in September 2019 raised the alarm on rising sea-levels, and predicted category 5 cyclones hitting coastal areas multiple times a year.

Another IPCC report says that oceans have esert locusts or Schistocerca gregaria is since 1970 absorbed 90% of the excess heat generated by anthropogenic greenhouse gas emissions. Critically, as compared to the peri- od between 1969 and 1993, the rate of ocean warming has doubled during 1993-2017.

The correlation between global warming – which includes increase in sea-surface tem- perature (SST), increase in air temperature, sea level rise – and increased frequency as well as intensity of tropical cyclone is a complex one. However, IMD data shows that there has indeed been a 26 per cent increase in the occur- rence of tropical cyclone over the past century. Also, marine heat waves have doubled since 1982, and such waves have also become more long-lasting, more intense and more extensive. This probably contributed to the severity of Amphan, and 2019’s Fani.

From the flash floods in Mumbai in 2005 to that in Chennai in 2015, the imprint of our stupidity is evident. We tend to ‘develop’ an urban space without taking environmental conditions, ecological constrains, climate sci- ence projections into consideration. This turns an extreme weather event into a catastrophe. The disaster is invariably human-induced — incumbent upon the civil constructions, roadways, sewerage systems, weather forecasts, relief and aid. Until we become attentive to these factors on an urgent basis, we will continue pay heavier prices for our impudence.

Cyclone Aila hit Bengal with a wind-speed of 120 kmph in 2009, Fani (only the second cyclone in 128 years to have made landfall in India in the pre-monsoon season) made land- fall on the Odisha coast at 170 kmph in 2019, and now Amphan came with a wind-speed of 185 kmph. According to UN reports, what used to be such once-in-a-century weather events are set to become as frequent as once-a-year in tropical regions. One also has to bear in mind that our country has the seventh longest coast- line in Asia – stretching for over 7,500 km. Thus, we are very, very vulnerable.

Arabian Sea has been witnessing an increase in cyclonic activity over the last sev- eral decades. Public memory is short or else we would have remembered that between 1998 and 2001, three cyclones had crashed into the Indian subcontinent to the north of Mumbai, claiming over 17,000 lives. We also know of 2007’s Cyclone Gonu, a Category 5 hurricane and the Arabian Sea’s strongest-ever recorded storm, battering Oman, Iran and Pakistan.

Another danger lurks in the Arabian Sea. The sea is by no means seismically inactive.

There is a recently-discovered, probably very active, 800-kilometre long fault system off the coast of Oman that faces the west coast of India.

Desert locusts or Schistocerca gregaria is one of about a dozen species of short-horned grasshoppers. These are unique ani- mals in the way they change their behaviour – turning from solitary to ‘gregarious’ or social insects that coalesce into a swarm and forage for food together – when the climate becomes conducive for their breeding.

This particular swarm originated in the ‘Horn of Africa’. Excess rains reportedly led to formation of lakes in the middle of the Oman desert as well – triggering locust hatching from long-dormant eggs. The India-Pakistan border too apparently is a breeding ground for these insects.

But what brought in that excess rain in that impossibly arid Eastern African/West Asian region? Again, it’s a ‘man-made’ disaster. We have caused so much global warming that the seas, winds, and clouds are all conspiring together and behaving in unprecedented pat- terns. It seems that these forces of nature are in an unforgiving mood – wanting to punish humanity for all its misdeeds.

Because our oceans have absorbed 20-30% of anthropogenic CO2, the water has under- gone increased acidification with a loss of oxygen from the surface down to a depth of 1,000 meters in many areas. To add to that, marine heat waves have led to large-scale coral bleaching events. Thus, the heat wave across the Indian Ocean to the West Pacific region has severely affected marine life and schools of fish. Many lives have been already lost, and more lives are being lost every day.

The genesis of the Kurukshetra war in the epic Mahabharata is worth recalling. The Vishnu Purana says the Earth Goddess, in the form of a cow, complains to Lord Vishnu that she has been milked so terribly by the greedy kings on earth that her udders are sore. The Lord promises retribution and spills the blood of these kings on earth so that like a lioness, the earth goddess can drink their blood. Thus, the Kurukshetra war was preordained and it ended only after a monumental loss of lives.

Similarly, natural disasters seem preordained.

(The author is an award-winning commu- nications professional with editorial stints at leading newspapers)