Pakistan readies for second battle against crop-devouring locusts

In this picture taken on February 23, 2020, a farmer tries to chase away locusts in Pipli Pahar village in Pakistan's central Punjab province. (AFP)
Short Url
Updated 14 May 2020
Follow

Pakistan readies for second battle against crop-devouring locusts

  • Last year, Pakistan suffered its worst attack of locusts since 1993
  • Experts say insect populations have found new homes across Pakistan and are now laying eggs in nearly 40% of its territory

KARACHI: To many farmers in southeast Pakistan, an impending locust attack when summer crops of cotton, sugarcane and rice are being sown, and fruit and vegetables are ready to be picked is a much bigger problem than the coronavirus pandemic.
"If the crops are eaten up by the locusts, we will have a dire food security issue on our hands," said Zahid Bhurgri, a farmer from Mirpur Khas district in Sindh province.
"The price of flour and vegetables will sky-rocket," making staple foods hard for some to afford, added Bhurgri, who is also general secretary of the Sindh Chamber of Agriculture.
The United Nations’ Food and Agriculture Organization (FAO) estimates losses to agriculture from locusts this year could be as high as PKR 353 billion ($2.2 billion) for winter crops like wheat and potatoes and about PKR 464 billion for summer crops.
A May update from the FAO warned it would be “imperative” to contain and control the desert locust infestation in the midst of the additional impacts of the COVID-19 pandemic on health, livelihoods, food security and nutrition for Pakistan’s most poor and vulnerable communities.
Last year, Pakistan suffered its worst attack of locusts since 1993, for which the country was largely unprepared.
Farmers now have little confidence the government will help them fight a new wave of voracious insects threatening their harvests – though officials said extensive measures were being taken.
"Neither the central, nor the provincial government is doing anything about it," said Bhurgri, who grows vegetables, red chillies, cotton and sugarcane on about 600 acres of land.

'PERFECT SETTING'
The locusts arrived in Pakistan from Iran in June 2019, devouring cotton, wheat and maize, among other crops.
The invasion was initially expected to subside by mid-November. But it has persisted due to favourable weather conditions for continued locust breeding, linked to global warming, according to FAO's Pakistan office.
"Good vegetation due to plentiful rain and a sandy soil provided a perfect setting for the insects to multiply," said Muhammad Tariq Khan, technical director at the Department of Plant Protection in the Ministry of National Food Security and Research.
In a recent letter to Prime Minister Imran Khan, Sindh Chief Minister Murad Ali Shah warned of a "massive locust attack" expected on local farmland when swarms from Iran reach his province in mid-May, which could "prove more harmful" than last year’s invasion.
With little time to waste, farmer Bhurgri decided to take matters into his own hands and "fight the locusts myself".
Using a power sprayer fixed on a tractor, he plans to douse them with pesticides while they rest on trees at night, and get his farmhands to clang pots and pans during the day to drive the pests from his land.
But there are many small-scale farmers who lack the means to deal with the locusts on their own, he added.
Some do not feel confident enough to invest in their crop this year or are cutting costs by not using the required amount of fertiliser, he noted.

CLIMATE CONNECTION
Mubarik Ahmed, national coordinator for locust control at FAO's office in Karachi, told the Thomson Reuters Foundation that Pakistan had been taken by surprise last year when locusts wreaked havoc in all its four provinces.
Unprecedented rains that led to vegetation cover in Sindh’s Tharparkar desert had enabled the locusts to breed and then attack crop areas, he said.
The country was “relatively better prepared” to meet the challenge this year, he added. But the situation could get worse with huge swarms expected to arrive in the coming two to three months from Iran, Oman and the Horn of Africa.
Locust swarms are not new in East Africa, the Middle East and South Asia. But climate scientists say erratic weather linked to climate change has created ideal conditions for the insects to surge in numbers not seen in a quarter of a century.
Warmer seas have led to more cyclones in the Indian Ocean, causing heavy rainfall along the Arabian Peninsula and in the Horn of Africa, producing the perfect environment for breeding.
Experts say insect populations have found new homes across Pakistan and are now laying eggs in nearly 40% of its territory, including Sindh but mainly in the southwest province of Balochistan.
FAO locust forecaster Keith Cressman said locusts that had unusually stayed in parts of Punjab, Khyber Pakhtunkhwa and the Indus Valley during the winter would now move southeast to their summer breeding areas in the Cholistan and Tharparkar deserts from May to July.
Swarms breeding in Pakistan’s deserts will likely be joined by others from southern Iran in a few weeks, with more likely to arrive from the Horn of Africa around July, experts predict.
The swarms are expected to be much larger than in 2019, because their numbers increase on average 20-fold with each generation. They travel in swarms of between 30 million to 50 million insects, covering a distance of 150 km (93 miles) and devouring 200 tonnes of crops per day.

NATIONAL PLAN
Khan of the Department of Plant Protection, who is the state's focal point for locust control, said the government had been preparing for the next wave of locusts since last year.
In January, the ministry shared a national action plan for surveillance and control of the desert locusts with the prime minister, who declared the locust attacks a national emergency in February.
That helped drive things forward with funding, surveillance and control operations, coordinated with provincial agriculture departments, the National Disaster Management Authority, the FAO and the army, said Khan.
In addition, officials from the FAO, Afghanistan, India, Iran and Pakistan meet each week to discuss and plan for the regional situation, he added.
Khan said Pakistan now had “a fairly foolproof plan”, including aircraft and ground vehicles to spray the insects, pesticides and more than 1,000 trained teams of four people that can be deployed at short notice across the country.
Timely action since February in the remote desert of Balochistan, with support from the army, had so far helped tame the threat, he added.
Surveys detected the locusts’ breeding ground and the hoppers – or young locusts – have been sprayed regularly to kill them before they become adults, he said.
If control operations go according to plan, he remains hopeful Pakistan will not suffer the high levels of infestation now being experienced in the Horn of Africa.
"One of the reasons I say this with such confidence is that I know what their level of preparation is and what is ours right now," he added. ($1 = 160.8000 Pakistani rupees) (Reporting by Zofeen T. Ebrahim; editing by Megan Rowling. Please credit the Thomson Reuters Foundation, the charitable arm of Thomson Reuters, that covers the lives of people around the world who struggle to live freely or fairly. Visit http://news.trust.org/climate)


WFP, GCF launch $9.8 million project to protect flood-prone communities in Pakistan’s north

Updated 15 July 2025
Follow

WFP, GCF launch $9.8 million project to protect flood-prone communities in Pakistan’s north

  • The initiative aims to benefit 1.6 million people through early warning systems, capacity-building of local authorities
  • Pakistan witnessed unprecedented floods in 2022, over 100 people have already been killed by monsoon rains this year

ISLAMABAD: The United Nations (UN) World Food Program and the Green Climate Fund (GCF) have launched a $9.8 million project in Pakistan aimed at protecting flood-prone communities in its northwestern Khyber Pakhtunkhwa province, Pakistani state media reported on Tuesday.

Titled the “Integrated Climate Risk Management for Strengthened Resilience to Climate” project, the initiative aims to help flood-prone communities cope with extreme weather by installing early warning systems such as weather stations and river-level monitors.

Pakistan is one of the world’s most vulnerable countries to the effects of climate change and its 240 million residents are facing extreme weather events with increasing frequency.

In 2022, unprecedented monsoon floods submerged a third of Pakistan and killed 1,700 people, with some areas still recovering from the damage. This year, more than 110 people have been killed and over 200 injured in rain-related incidents across the country.

“The initiative funded by the GCF with $9.8 million will directly benefit 1.6 million people in Buner and Shangla districts of KP province, two areas highly vulnerable to climate shocks,” the Associated Press of Pakistan (APP) news agency reported on Tuesday.

The project will help improve coordination among government departments and enhance capacity of local authorities and emergency teams through targeted trainings and essential equipment, according to the report.

This will ensure timely and effective responses to climate-related emergencies and faster communication of alerts to communities at risk. People will be trained to interpret warnings issued by the weather systems to evacuate safely and take measures to protect their farms and homes before disasters strike.

“Recurring climate shocks are a driver of hunger and malnutrition, threatening lives, livelihoods and entire food systems,” WFP Pakistan Representative and Country Director Coco Ushiyama was quoted as saying.

“This project represents a multi-layered investment, not only in early warning systems and anticipatory action, but also in local adaptation planning and institutional capacity.”

The initiative supports the UN-backed GCF’s Strategic Plan 2024–2027 by addressing urgent adaptation needs in underserved areas, bridging critical capacity gaps in flood preparedness and strengthening community resilience.


Pakistan to register tour operators to streamline pilgrimages to Iran, Iraq

Updated 15 July 2025
Follow

Pakistan to register tour operators to streamline pilgrimages to Iran, Iraq

  • The development comes after some Pakistani pilgrims were found to be overstaying their visas, working in host countries
  • Official says authorities in Iran, Iraq and Syria raised their concerns, underlining a need for formal, accountable structure

ISLAMABAD: The Pakistani government is introducing a new, centralized system for organizing pilgrimages to holy sites in Iran and Iraq that would require interested parties to register as tour operators, the Pakistani religious affairs minister announced on Tuesday, a day after a trination meeting in Tehran between interior ministers from the three countries.

Islamabad had requested for the tri-nation conference to discuss issues relating to thousands of Pakistani Shiite Muslims, who travel annually to holy sites in Iran, Iraq and Syria.

Pakistan previously had no formal structure for people to travel to Iran and Iraq for religious purposes. Although a system was approved in 2021 to organize these pilgrimages, but little progress was made on its implementation.

Pakistan’s Religious Affairs Minister Sardar Muhammad Yousaf clarified that managing the affairs of Shiite zaireen (pilgrims), like Hajj and Umrah pilgrims, falls under the purview of his ministry.

“The existing, outdated system will soon be phased out and companies interested in organizing pilgrimages [to Iran, Iraq and Syria] must register with the ministry immediately,” he was quoted as saying by the religious affairs ministry.

The announcement follows a statement from Pakistani Interior Minister Mohsin Naqvi, following the tri-nation meeting in Tehran, saying that Pakistani Shiite pilgrims would not be able to individually travel for religious pilgrimages from Jan. 1 next year.

Some Pakistanis traveling individually to these countries were found to be overstaying their visas or working in the host countries, according to the interior minister.

Religious Affairs Minister Yousaf noted that around 40,000 Pakistani pilgrims had remained in Iraq, Syria and Iran in recent years and authorities in the three countries had raised their concerns with Pakistan, underlining the need for a formal and accountable structure.

“If the government had a proper record, we would know where each pilgrim went,” he said, adding that Naqvi and Religious Affairs Secretary Dr. Syed Ata-ur-Rehman are currently in Iran to integrate the pilgrimage process into a modern, computerized tracking system. 

Last month, Pakistan evacuated over 260 nationals from Iraq and another 450 Pakistanis who had been stranded in Iran during the Tehran-Israeli conflict, according to the country’s foreign ministry. There was no confirmation of the number of evacuees who had traveled legally and those who had been staying in the two countries illegally.

Yousaf said Pakistan’s federal cabinet has approved a new framework for Zaireen Group Organizers (ZGOs), and accordingly, the Ministry of Religious Affairs has issued a public notice for interested parties to register as ZGOs.

Of the 1,400 applicants, 585 companies cleared the security vetting process and have been instructed to complete their online registration through the religious affairs ministry’s website and submit required documents by July 31, according to the minister.

Companies wishing to work as ZGOs can apply for registration till Aug. 10.

“Just as Hajj pilgrims travel through licensed Hajj tour operators, Zaireen will also travel only through registered ZGOs,” Yousaf said, adding that ZGOs will also be required to provide travel cost packages for pilgrims like Hajj tour organizers.


Pakistan mulls over 60 percent cut in solar buyback tariffs to save $15 billion in 10 years

Updated 15 July 2025
Follow

Pakistan mulls over 60 percent cut in solar buyback tariffs to save $15 billion in 10 years

  • Pakistan currently buys back solar-generated electricity from domestic, commercial and industrial producers at Rs27 per kilowatt hour
  • Authorities to present revised policy ‘within a month’ as global energy think-tank ranks solar as Pakistan’s largest power source in 2025

KARACHI: Pakistan’s government plans to more than halve the buyback tariffs for net-metered solar power to save Rs4.3 trillion ($15.1 billion) over the next ten years, according to people privy to the matter.

Authorities at Pakistan’s energy ministry are working on a new solar policy that looks to change the current net-metering regime under which the cash-strapped government is buying back solar-generated electricity from domestic, commercial and industrial producers at Rs27 per kilowatt hour (kWh).

The buyback rates for large scale grid-connected solar plants like Quaid-e-Azam Solar Power (Pvt.) Limited, Pakistan’s first 100-megawatt solar utility set up by Punjab government, ranges between Rs9 and Rs11.

“The government is proposing to remove this anomaly and offer almost a uniform buyback rate for net-metered solar power in line with global standard practice,” said a Pakistani energy ministry official who is privy to the policymaking discussions but cannot share them with media.

He said officials at the ministry’s power division will present a revised solar policy to the federal cabinet “within a month,” proposing to reduce the buyback price for net-metered solar power by more than 60 percent to Rs10 per kWh.

The government plans to link the buyback rates with the national base tariff.

“The government is encouraging these domestic and other distributed solar producers and has allocated a quantum for them in the IGCEP (Indicative Generation Capacity Expansion Plan),” the official said.

“What this new net-metering policy will define is the question that at what rate the government should buy power from these distributed producers. We are working this out.”

The move would help the government save Rs4.3 trillion ($15.1 billion) in the decade to come, he added.

Prime Minister Shehbaz Sharif’s government is currently trying to revive Pakistan’s debt-ridden economy by introducing energy and economic reforms, backed by the International Monetary Fund (IMF) that approved a $7 billion loan for the South Asian nation in Sept., last year.

Promoting renewable energy sources like solar and wind has been part of the government’s plan to avoid costly oil imports that shrank five percent to $15 billion from July 2024 till May 2025, according to latest official figures.

The South Asian country has boosted solar electricity generation by over three times the global average so far this year, fueled by a more than fivefold rise in solar capacity imports since 2022, Reuters reported last month, citing data from global energy think tank Ember.

The combination of rapidly rising capacity and generation has propelled solar power from Pakistan’s fifth-largest electricity source in 2023 to its largest in 2025, Reuters said.

However, the country still relies heavily on fossil fuels and generates 56 percent electricity from thermal, 24.4 percent from hydel, 8 percent from nuclear and 12.2 percent from renewable energy sources.

According to Pakistan’s latest economic survey, the nation’s total installed electricity generation capacity stood at 46,605 megawatts from July 2024 till March 2025, showing 2 percent increase from 45,888 megawatts during the same period in the previous year.

“The increase can be attributed with the installed capacity of 2,813 MW from net-metering,” the survey said.

Shankar Talreja, head of research at Karachi-based brokerage firm Topline Securities, said Pakistan had been spending billions of dollars on the import of solar panels from China, thus pushing the country’s inflation-hit consumers from grid-based energy to solar photovoltaic plants many of them have now installed at their rooftops to ensure smooth and cheaper supply of electricity.

“The benefit of net-metering was quite attractive, [so] people started installing solar at their rooftops and they were also selling excess electricity to government at a price of over Rs20 per kwh,” Talreja said.

“Pakistan imports over $2 billion of solar [panels] every year and it was increasing at a higher rate, resulting in further reduction in utilization of grid energy.”

Pakistan has so far imported solar panels of 48,000 megawatts capacity, mostly from China, of which, the country is generating close to 6,000 megawatts power due to low efficiency (up to 21 percent) of these panels, according to officials.

“People are installing as many solar plants as possible and selling their surplus power to the government at a higher rate,” the energy ministry official said, adding the government is also considering 8,500 megawatts power generation quota for the distributed net-metering solar electricity that comes from domestic, agriculture, commercial and industrial producers.

“The buyback rate the power division is proposing stands equivalent to the tariff we are using to buy power from large-scale solar plants,” he said, adding that even K-Electric, Pakistan’s largest private utility that powers the country’s commercial capital of Karachi, had agreed to sell its solar power to the government at as much as Rs10 per kilowatt.

Last month, K-Electric signed a memorandum of understanding (MoU) with China’s Huawei Digital Power Pakistan to strategically collaborate for 300 MWh battery energy storage systems and electric vehicles charging infrastructure to accelerate Pakistan’s smart energy transition.

The off-grid solar solution was one of the major reasons for 4 percent decrease in Pakistan’s total electricity consumption that dropped to 80,111 gigawatt hours from July 2024 till March 2025, according to the economic survey.

Talreja said the government, sensing the costly nature of net-metering, has started discouraging and insisting people to stay on the national grid, and proposed to slash and link the buyback tariff with national base tariff, i.e. 33 percent.

“The government is trying its best to increase share of renewables in overall energy mix, however, its implementation gets tougher due to idle capacity of expensive thermal assets,” the economist said.


Pakistan seeks higher 2026 Hajj quota after 455,000 register for pilgrimage

Updated 15 July 2025
Follow

Pakistan seeks higher 2026 Hajj quota after 455,000 register for pilgrimage

  • Islamabad urges Saudi Arabia to raise Hajj quota from 179,210 in 2025 to 230,000 next year
  • Pakistan's current Muslim population is approximately 230 million, according to latest census

ISLAMABAD: Pakistan's religious affairs minister, Sardar Mohammad Yousaf, said on Tuesday the country has requested a higher Hajj quota in proportion to its population for the next year from Saudi Arabia, after early registrations for the pilgrimage reached 455,000 this month.

Pakistan's current Muslim population is approximately 230 million, according to the latest census cited by the minister.

He added the government had urged the Kingdom to raise the country’s Hajj quota from 179,210 to 230,000 in a formal letter, aiming to enable more citizens to perform the annual Islamic pilgrimage.

"A gazette notification has ... been issued regarding the population, so based on that population, our [Hajj] quota should be 230,000," Yousaf said during a news conference.

"For this, we've written to the Saudi government and demanded [an increase], and a letter has been sent [to them] by the Ministry of Religious Affairs," he continued. "We hope they will consider this [request] and adjust our quota in proportion to our population."

Yousaf highlighted that the registration of 455,000 intending pilgrims by the deadline reflected their strong eagerness to perform Hajj.

The government announced the initiation of next year’s Hajj process early, asking aspiring pilgrims to register themselves first.

No fee was required at the registration stage.

All registered applicants will now be able to choose between the government and private Hajj schemes.

A large portion of the private Hajj quota for 2025 remained unutilized due to delays by tour operators in meeting payment and registration deadlines, while the government fulfilled its full allocation of over 88,000 pilgrims.

Private operators attributed the shortfall to technical issues, including payment processing problems and communication breakdowns.


At SCO summit, Pakistan slams Israel for using ‘aggression as tool of policy’ in Middle East

Updated 15 July 2025
Follow

At SCO summit, Pakistan slams Israel for using ‘aggression as tool of policy’ in Middle East

  • The bloc is seen by some Western analysts as regional grouping by Beijing, Moscow to counter United States influence in Asia
  • Pakistan FM Ishaq Dar says Israeli military actions against SCO members are ‘unacceptable,’ demands immediate end to Gaza war

ISLAMABAD: Pakistan’s deputy prime minister and foreign minister, Ishaq Dar, on Tuesday criticized Israel for using “aggression as a tool of policy” in the Middle East, condemning Israeli military actions against regional states and demanding an end to its 20-month war on Gaza.

Dar said this while addressing a meeting of the Shanghai Cooperation Organization’s (SCO) Council of Foreign Ministers (CFM), which came in the backdrop of heightened tensions in South Asia and the Middle East, particularly after the Pakistan-India conflict and Israeli military actions against several Gulf countries.

Israel’s war on Gaza, which began after Oct. 2023 attacks by Hamas on Israel, has killed more than 58,000 Palestinians, over half of them women and children, according to the Palestinian health ministry. On Tuesday, the UN rights office said it had recorded at least 875 killings within the past six weeks at aid points in Gaza.

Speaking at the CFM meeting, Dar said Pakistan was seriously concerned at the trends of using aggression as a tool of policy, emphasizing the resolution of disputes through peaceful means and according to the principles of international law, justice and fairness.

“Israel has shown a reckless disregard for international norms and humanity through its relentless and disproportionate use of force in Gaza resulting in the death of tens of thousands of civilians causing the worst humanitarian crisis in Gaza,” he said.

“We call for immediate halt to Israel’s atrocities.”

Dar said the only viable remedy to the Palestine dispute was the realization of the two-state solution, which includes the establishment of Palestine as a viable, secure and contiguous state on the basis of pre-1967 borders.

He also condemned the “unjustified and illegitimate aggression” by Israel against Iran and the United States (US) strikes on its nuclear facilities.

“Such illegal actions directed against SCO member states are unacceptable,” Dar said.

The 12-day war between Iran and Israel, which began on June 13 Israeli airstrikes on Iranian nuclear facilities and military leadership, killed around 1,000 Iranians and more than two dozen Israelis.

The SCO, comprising China, Russia, Pakistan, India, Iran, Belarus and Central Asian states, is seen by some Western analysts as a regional grouping by Beijing and Moscow to counter United States influence in Asia.

The CFM meeting, a key diplomatic gathering aimed at preparing the groundwork for the upcoming SCO Leaders’ Summit later this year, was convened to review progress on multilateral cooperation and set the agenda for endorsement by heads of state.