Letter to the directors of FAO

We have recently received your press release 76/15. I would like to ask you the following questions:

1. What do you mean by "acceptably low environmental contamination?" How do you calculate it and what are the "ground and air spraying methods" which can achieve it, while at the same time eradicating tsetse fly?

2. To my knowledge, the only way to eradicate an insect species is to remove its niche: for example mosquitoes have disappeared where marshes have been drained. All attempts to eradicate insect species by waging chemical warfare against them, have failed in the long run, largely because resistance builds up against the chemicals and also for logistical reasons.

On what then is your optimism based? Clearly not on experience. Do you have at your disposal insecticides to which resistance does not build up? Have you devised a programme which is free of logistical problems, i.e. for whose application the resources and capital will always be available, or is this just wishful thinking?

3. It has been agreed, you say, that special attention must be paid to the protection of wildlife from chemical hazards and from the reduction of their present habitat by expanding cattle herds, in the future. Does this mean that you plan to use insecticides which only infect tsetse flies and which have no effect on non-target species including birds and mammals? It you have, then indeed you have achieved a noteworthy breakthrough. What are the insecticides involved?

Since your plan is to "boost herds in tropical Africa from 20 million to 120 million head" you will have to find grazing for some hundred million domesticated animals. The soils of tropical Africa are very thin and poor in organic material. At least twenty acres of land are required to support a single head of cattle, and this in the best conditions. This means that 2,000 million acres, or 2 million square miles of land will be required.

In such conditions how do you propose to protect wildlife? Presumably you mean that zoos will be built for them in urban areas. There is no other way of protecting them if their habitat is to be sprayed with poisonous chemicals and subsequently taken over for domestic cattle. It seems that the concern you express for wildlife is simply an attempt to placate those who will express their fears because they understand the hideous destructiveness implicit in your enterprise. It is very much like saying: "We have decided to explode a hydrogen bomb over your city, but all measures will be taken to ensure that no damage will be done to life or property."

4. You write that "experts from industry express confidence that a concerted effort and a political will to control tsetse and trypanosomiasis would benefit both wildlife reserves and grazing resources because of the increased attention that would focus on them."

Who are these experts from industry and what are they experts on? On tsetse and trypanosomiasis control? Since such control has been particularly ineffective so far, their expertise cannot be of very much value. If they are experts on the control of insect pests in tropical areas they must be aware that systematic eradication programmes are unlikely to work. There are far too many niches for insects in such areas, thousands more than there are in temperate zones. Perhaps they are just experts in the use of insecticides; in which case the expertise they will provide will but serve to rationalise a prior decision to adopt a course of action to which they are psychologically and financially committed.

5. Do you really believe that wildlife reserves would benefit from being sprayed with poisonous chemicals and reduced to a minute fraction of their present size, simply because "increased attention" is to be focused on them? Is there any precedent which might serve to justify this claim? Is the world attention at present being focused on the Blue whale, the Indian tiger, the Highland gorilla and the orang-utan going to save these magnificent creatures? We know that it will not. Current trends show that all are doomed to extinction by the end of this century.

This increased attention will also, it is claimed, prevent over-grazing. Can you justify this? Over-grazing is one of the main causes of the world's most terrible problem - desertification. Indeed it is estimated that some 650 million hectares of land have already been lost to the expanding Sahara, which is estimated to be advancing, at some points, at the rate of 30 kilometres a year; a rate which could reduce all Africa to desert in little more than a century.

Desertification is receiving ever wider attention. Indeed next year it is due to be the subject of a full United Nations Conference. What is likely to be the outcome? Quite a predictable one I am afraid. Attention is unlikely to be focused on the causes of the disaster, such as over-grazing but on the resulting famine, for which the accepted remedies are precisely those measures you now propose. Measures which involve further increasing the impact of man's activities on an environment ever less capable of sustaining it and which, in the long run, can only accelerate the process of desertification leading to famine on an as yet unprecedented scale.

Yours faithfully,