Borneo Malaria Eradication Program (WHO DDT Spraying, 1950s)
- Region
- Borneo
In 1950s Borneo, the WHO treated malaria as a simple engineering problem and sprayed DDT, triggering a cascade of ecological and social harms, including a rat-driven plague outbreak and weakened roofs. The case is used to show what happens when a wicked ecological problem is treated as a tame one.
In the 1950s the World Health Organization treated malaria in Borneo as a tame problem and implemented a simple, linear solution: spraying DDT to kill the mosquito vector. The intervention triggered a chain of cascading ecological failures — DDT-poisoned insects were eaten by geckos, geckos by cats, the collapsed cat population caused a rat population explosion and outbreaks of bubonic plague and typhus, and the DDT itself weakened villagers' thatch roofs. The chapter presents this as the direct result of treating a wicked ecological problem as a tame engineering one.
In the framework
- Wicked Problems · problem type
- Tame Problems · problem type
In the book
- Chapter 4, section 031 · The Primacy of Diagnosis
Examples