Analyze

How does visualizing allows us to set the parameters to make the future vision a reality?

As a researcher, I’m interested in the political, ecological, and cultural debates around mosquito-borne diseases and the solutions proposed to mitigate them.

When we received the task, my first impulse was to investigate about the contemporary effects of anthropogenic climate change in mosquito-borne diseases in New Orleans. But I was afraid to make the same mistake that I did in my PhD research. I wrote my PhD proposal while based in the US, more specifically in New England, during the Zika epidemic, and proposed to understand how scientists were studying ecological climate change and mosquitoes in Brazil. However, once I arrived in the country the political climate was a much more pressing issue, with the dismantling of health and scientific institutions.

Thus, after our meeting yesterday, and Jason Ludwig’s reminder that the theme of our Field Campus is the plantation, I decided to focus on how it related to mosquitoes in New Orleans.

The Aedes aegypti mosquito and the yellow fever virus it can transmit are imbricated in the violent histories of settler-colonialism and slavery that define the plantation economy. The mosquito and the virus arrived in the Americas in the same ships that brought enslaved peoples from Africa. The city of New Orleans had its first yellow fever epidemic in 1796, with frequent epidemics happening between 1817 and 1905. What caused New Orleans to be the “City of the Dead,” as Kristin Gupta has indicated, was yellow fever. However, as historian Urmi Engineer Willoughby points out, the slave trade cannot explain alone the spread and persistance of the disease in the region: "Alterations to the landscape, combined with demographic changes resulting from the rise of sugar production, slavery, and urban growth all contributed to the region’s development as a yellow fever zone." For example, sugar cultivation created ideal conditions for mosquito proliferation because of the extensive landscape alteration and ecological instabilities, including heavy deforestation and the construction of drainage ditches and canals.

Historian Kathryn Olivarius examines how for whites "acclimatization" to the disease played a role in hierarchies with “acclimated” (immune) people at the top and a great mass of “unacclimated” (non-immune) people and how for black enslaved people "who were embodied capital, immunity enhanced the value and safety of that capital for their white owners, strengthening the set of racialized assumptions about the black body bolstering racial slavery."

As I continue to think through these topics, I wonder how both the historical materialities of the plantation and the contemporary anthropogenic changes might be influencing mosquito-borne diseases in New Orleans nowadays? And more, how the regions’ histories of race and class might still be shaping the effects of these diseases and how debates about them are framed?

According to the article, Hurricane Sandy has caused severe damage in Newark and with the public health and safety in mind, the organization wants to reduce the emissions of greenhouse gases in Newark and help reduce climate change and make Newark more resilient. 

In this article, the researchers from the Environmental Protection Agency (EPA) came up with a portable air sensor that can measure the levels of the particulate matter and nitrogen oxide in order to get data from the areas that are directly being affected by air pollution. 

In this case, the hazard is distributed differently in the sense of geography because areas near the Eastern shore have had much greater damage rather than ones far away from the Eastern shore.

The organization called Resilience Action Plan (RAP) team is a newly formed organization so they did not get a chance to do something yet from looking in the article. 

Air pollution causes many eye and skin irritation in addition with lung problems resulting in asthma and even cancer. These risks would affect people who live in communities that have high pollution, severely. 

According to the article, officials were trying to evacuate the areas that they predict to have the most damage, move people to higher ground, tell people to stay indoors, and close all public transportation systems. 

The aim of this organization is to work as a collaborative team to address efforts in reducing greenhouse gases, adapt to changes that are already underway, and foster social inclusion and cohesion. 

In terms of precaution regarding air pollution, the article talks about making good choices of transportation which means to walk or bike or take public transportation whenever feasible; choosing cars that have better mileage per gallon or electric cars; buying food locally grown rather than food from other places in order to reduce air pollution.