Geographies of Insects and Institutions: Mosquito Governance in the U.S. Southwest

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A range of institutional systems exist to manage and mitigate environmental problems, yet the quickly changing, ecologically surprising, and spatially complex qualities of new problems create a serious mismatch for institutions formed in earlier times. What remains unclear, therefore, is the degree to which and the way in which already existing bureaucracies and structures of governance are organized to address emergent problems. The recent outbreak of West Nile Virus in the United States and the associated risk of other diseases, including dengue fever and a range of related encephalitis diseases, is an acute example of just such a problem. This project seeks to explore the specific geographies of governance available to differing government agencies relative to the biological and climatological geography of mosquitoes in southern Arizona. Specifically the research postulates that multiple non-overlapping geographies are in play. The first, belonging to state and non-governmental organizations is hierarchically organized and follows geopolitical and juridical boundaries, informed by diverse scientific conceptions of the problem, each organization with its own geography of causation, surveillance, and mitigation. The second, that of the mosquitoes themselves, is patched and flowlike, following the contours of biophysical conditions and human disturbances. It is further postulated that there is a spatial and scalar mismatch between the geographies of the insect and that of institutions set up to deal with disease risks. Using institutional ethnography, insect habitat modeling, and direct surveillance of mosquito distribution, the research will test the match and mismatch of organizations and the hazards they are organized to govern.The research will result in findings that address the specific capacities and tendencies of agencies relative to mosquito-borne disease hazards. It will further produce education al information and workshops convened with members of both state and local agencies, to facilitate inter-agency discussion of results, especially to the degree that the work identifies gaps and overlaps in current information, practice, and policy. The results of these workshops should make a step towards coordinating, translating, and interpreting experiences across agency and disciplinary boundaries, presenting not only "hard" data concerning the geography of insects of concern, but further allowing meaningful discussion of differential training, experience, and institutional habits. While it cannot be expected to make institutions conform unproblematically to the geographies of the insect, the research can identify problem areas and explore specific ways to make institutions more robust, adaptive, and flexible in response to the mosquito. By coordinating with agency members in the final phase of the project, it is intended, therefore, to identify 'best institutional practices' associated with mapping, analysis, knowledge dissemination, institutional learning and adoption, intra- and inter-jurisdictional connectivity, etc., that might be fostered to improve insect management and public responses to serious and ongoing health hazards.