Locust plagues. Permanence of a millennial biological risk

Abstract

At the beginning of the XXth century we haven’t been able to see the eradication of the biological plagues or the infectious diseases. The first still have grave implications for the use of the natural resources in the whole planet. The second still affect the health from the most part of the humanity. The influence is assymetric: some of the poorest regions concentrate the major part of the damage. All of these contrast with the optimism of the members from the scientific elites in the years after the Second World War. They believed in the scientific activity as a tool to eliminate the plagues and the infectious diseases. Not being against the Science, possibly they did not take into consideration others factor, specially the ones related to the social organization. The lack of strong and preventive policies in the war against the plagues has been, with no doubt, the responsible fact of its survival. In this context, the 10th “Coloquio Geocrítica” about the ten years of changes in the world, in Geography and Social Science, we pretend to think of the changes and permanencies in the fight against the locust plague, as a reference in the global context of the fight against the biological risks.