Earth’s burgeoning population and concomitant societal challenges, including climate change, diminishing land and water resources, increasing urbanization, changing incomes and diets, and the need to ensure better health outcomes impose significant obstacles to our ability to achieve global nutritional security. Recent domestic and international policies of some countries have either hindered or contributed to a regression of gains made to address these societal challenges. Unfortunately, the locust plague in East Africa, the Middle East, and South Asia since June 2019—the result of heavy rains in the Arabian Peninsula—is one of the worst outbreaks in decades. Whether there is a connection to climate change remains to be made unequivocally. Owing to conflicts in the affected countries, and now the COVID-19 pandemic, coordinated efforts to control locusts has been hindered, contributing to food crisis, hunger, and poverty. The pandemic has negatively impacted progress on global poverty and hunger, in part, because of impacts on supply chains—from production to delivery. The organizers of the symposium engaged in multiple conversations this past summer on the role of the Entomological Society to undertake an inventory of knowledge, capacity, and infrastructure, which could then be converted into actions to help the affected countries—logistically, operationally, and politically. We hope this symposium will help inspire members of the ESA to play an active role in mitigating the threat of locusts to the impacted peoples and help ensure their nutritional security.
