Ken Robbins | 2012 September

The Complexity of Cause & Effect

Ken Robbins September 18, 2012 Systems Thinking 3 Comments

Bornea

To understand the complexity of cause and effect, let us travel back to the 1950s to a remote island in the South Pacific. Just as a 1952 New York Times article described a fall in the overall worldwide death rate of malaria and attributed the “spread of the use of DDT” as one of the major contributing factors, the Southeast Asian island of Borneo was experiencing a terrible outbreak of the disease. The WHO (World Health Organization) thought it would step in and “relieve” the suffering of the Borneo people by spraying DDT all over their villages and huts.

This worked well and in just a year, the percentage of mosquitoes carrying malaria dropped from 40% to less than 1%. The series of debilitating mistakes made next are instructive as to considering what causes things to happen. The indiscriminate spraying of DDT killed most of the caterpillar-wasps which fed on the thatch caterpillar population. With caterpillars unhindered, their population exploded and they ate through the Borneo peoples’ roofs resulting in ongoing property destruction that only a hurricane could match. Next, gecko lizards ate heartily on the fallen mosquitoes and wasps and since DDT passes up the food chain, cats started dying when they fed on geckos.

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The Complexity of Cause & Effect

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