Search

As a participant in the NOLA Anthropocene Campus, I have gained insights on how communities, stewards, and managers of ecosystems in New Orleans have rolled out forms of interspecies care vis-à-vis ongoing environmental changes, coastal erosion, climate catastrophes and their deeply present and current effects (i.e., the 2010 BP oil disaster). Whilst much analytical lens has been given to geospatial changes in the study of the Anthropocene, here, I focus on how relations to non-human beings, also threatened by the changing tides of NOLA’s waterscapes, can enrich our understanding of such global transformations.

After disasters like Katrina, urban floodwaters harbored many hidden perils in the form of microbes that cause disease. Pathogenic bacterial exposure occurred when wastewater treatment plants and underground sewage got flooded, thus affecting the microbial landscape of New Orleans and increasing the potential of public health risks throughout Southern Louisiana. But one need not wait for a disaster event like Katrina to face these perils. Quotidian activities like decades of human waste and sewage pollution have contaminated public beaches now filled with lurking microbes. Even street puddle waters, such as those found on Bourbon Street, contain unsanitary bacteria level from years of close human exploitation of horses and inadequate drainage in 100-year old thoroughfares. More recently, microbial ecologies have also changed in the Gulf of Mexico due to the harnessing of energy resources like petroleum. Lush habitats for countless species are more and more in danger sounding the bells of extinction for the imperiled southern wild.

Human-alteration has severely damaged the wetland marshes and swamps that would have protected New Orleans from drowning in the water surge that Hurricane Katrina brought from the Gulf of Mexico. The latter is something that lifelong residents (i.e., indigenous coastal groups) of the Mississippi River Mouth have been pointing to for a  long time. Over the past century, the river delta’s “natural” infrastructure has been altered by the leveeing of the Mississippi River. Consequently, much of the silt and sediments that would generally run south and deposit in the river mouth to refeed the delta get siphoned off earlier upstream by various irrigation systems.

While some actors see it as a futile effort, there have been many proposals to restore the Mississippi River Delta. For instance, the aerial planting of mangrove seeds has even been recommended to help protect the struggling marshes and Louisiana’s coastal region. Tierra Resources, a wetland’s restoration company, proposed that bombing Lousiana’s coast with mangrove seeds could save it. Mangrove root systems are especially useful in providing structures to trap sediments and provide habitats for countless species. Additionally, mangroves have been touted as highly efficient species in carbon sequestration, thus taking carbon dioxide out of the biosphere.

Species diffusion into new environments has been of great concern for the different lifeways these soggy localities sustain, whether human or non-human. Many so-called “invasive species” have been identified throughout the river delta by researchers at the Center for Bioenvironmental Research hosted by Tulane and Xavier University. Such species have disrupted local ecological relations and practices and have had profound economic effects. Some plants have even entirely blocked waterways in the swamps and estuaries where salt and freshwater mix. 

Louisiana’s humid subtropical climate, and the diverse ecosystems therein, also warrant attention in that they can incubate some of the world’s deadliest parasites and other microbes. Of particular concern would be some of today's Neglected Tropical Diseases (i.e., Chagas, Cysticercosis, Dengue fever, Leishmaniasis, Schistosomiasis, Trachoma, Toxocariasis, and West Nile virus) often perceived as only affecting tropical regions of Latin America and revealing the enduring legacies of colonial health disparities.

How and when are seemingly quotidian events and upsets understood as not isolated but rather as produced in conjunction with other anthropocenics worldwide? What roles will interspecies relations and forms of care play as we cope with further anthropocenic agitation?

NOLA’s oldest tree, McDonogh Oak in City Park, 800 years old: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=DK9YoGpng_c&t=0s

Other trees in New Orleans: https://www.atlasobscura.com/things-to-do/new-orleans-louisiana/trees

I found the images of speaches by the liberian president to be out of place and not compelling. I also found the apparent lack of hard numerical and scientific data in the film to be offputting.

From the information provided and resources available I was unable to determing if this report has been used elsewhere.

The author of this article is Scott Gabriel Knowles, the department head and an associate professor in the Drexel University Department of History Center for Science, Technology and Society. His focuses are on risk and disaster, with particular interests in modern cities, technology, and public policy. He also serves as a faculty research fellow of the Disaster Research Center at the University of Delaware and since 2011 he has been a member of the Fukushima Forum collaborative research community. His more recent works include:

The Disaster Experts: Mastering Risk in Modern America (University of Pennsylvania Press, 2011).4

Imagining Philadelphia: Edmund Bacon and the Future of the City (Editor, University of Pennsylvania Press, 2009).

"Defending Philadelphia: A Historical Case Study of Civil Defense in the Early Cold War" Public Works Management & Policy, (Vol. 11, No. 3, 2007): 217-232.

In recent years, incarceration rates and prison populations nationwide have grown exponentially for a variety of sociological and political factors. The organization believes that research indicates that this epidemic has had a particularly hard impact on economically vulnerable communities, where a majority of the people brought into custody suffer from addiction, substance use, and/or mental illness. Due to their economic situation these people were likely unable to seek care or treatment from any public health system in the community. This interaction of illnesses and diseases and criminalization in communities and incarceration results in a complex public health and human rights crisis in both correctional and other criminal justice settings. The Center for Prisoner Health and Human Rights seeks to apply new research to help to mitigate this.

Emergency response is not specifically addressed in this article. 

The focus of this article is on the inequities in public health focused on the group of amerindian canadians and the long term inequties in their mental health care, leading to repeated health crises. 

To support its arguements and produce claims, this article uses statistics from the health care system, personal testimonials, and extensive field work.