Learning From Haiti
posted by: Dave R. 95 days ago
As hurricane season gets underway, Haiti is again in the news. Massive environmental degradation and rising hurricane intensity mean that the country's 10 million residents are at risk with each tropical storm. Due to deforestation, the rambling and once arbitrary border between Haiti and Dominican Republic has become a geographical one that can be seen from space. Less than 2% of Haiti has forest cover. Can you tell where the border is in the NASA photo? The lack of forest cover sends rain water and top soil pouring out of the hills and through the coastal towns.
Deforestation has occurred for a variety of reasons, including overpopulation, poor land management, corruption, extreme poverty, and a lack of alternatives to charcoal for fuel. Charcoal is a terrible fuel source: it's inefficient and dirty to make, and unhealthy to use, especially indoors. But in the poorest areas of the world, it's often the only game in town.
A blog isn't the right place for giving justice to the complex social-political-environmental history of Haiti, but the pattern of environmental degradation from profit-motivated opportunism to economic necessity to ecological and humanitarian disaster is a cautionary tale playing out in other areas of the world as well. As cap and trade and other emissions reduction ideas are debated here inthe US, economic necessity is often used to justify resistance. It would serve us well to look at what lies beyond this argument before giving in so easily.
It also underscores the economic necessity that is driving much of the irreversible ecological damage in the first place. Simply supporting economic and environmentally sound alternatives where locals are otherwise be forced to make bad choices may be the best way to avoid more Haitis, and a warming planet. In Brazil, for example a project ClimatePath supports funds replacement of native wood fuel sources with cleaner and renewable biomass, to preserve the Cerrado.
As the climate debate and discussion about the climate-poverty connection grows louder, you'll be hearing more about projects like this, and efficient cookstoves, and even small scale solar installations, or in Haiti's case, possibly even paying to replant forests. In a country like Haiti, where over half the population lives on less than a dollar a day, we can make a very real difference.
Deforestation has occurred for a variety of reasons, including overpopulation, poor land management, corruption, extreme poverty, and a lack of alternatives to charcoal for fuel. Charcoal is a terrible fuel source: it's inefficient and dirty to make, and unhealthy to use, especially indoors. But in the poorest areas of the world, it's often the only game in town.
A blog isn't the right place for giving justice to the complex social-political-environmental history of Haiti, but the pattern of environmental degradation from profit-motivated opportunism to economic necessity to ecological and humanitarian disaster is a cautionary tale playing out in other areas of the world as well. As cap and trade and other emissions reduction ideas are debated here inthe US, economic necessity is often used to justify resistance. It would serve us well to look at what lies beyond this argument before giving in so easily.
It also underscores the economic necessity that is driving much of the irreversible ecological damage in the first place. Simply supporting economic and environmentally sound alternatives where locals are otherwise be forced to make bad choices may be the best way to avoid more Haitis, and a warming planet. In Brazil, for example a project ClimatePath supports funds replacement of native wood fuel sources with cleaner and renewable biomass, to preserve the Cerrado.
As the climate debate and discussion about the climate-poverty connection grows louder, you'll be hearing more about projects like this, and efficient cookstoves, and even small scale solar installations, or in Haiti's case, possibly even paying to replant forests. In a country like Haiti, where over half the population lives on less than a dollar a day, we can make a very real difference.
Read more: global warming
comments
Actually Robert, it isn't the people of Haiti who created this problem. It was the colonizers who depleted the natural resources and forced people into this situation. It's time to respect the lessons of history.
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Dear Joyce,reading your words it occurs me that maybe you are a Native American,or if not ,your ancesters came in here to seek the same opportunity as everybodyelse, Am I wrong?
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To solve the problems of Haiti, is to need a world alliance to cut this situation quickly.
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Hard to know what to do for people who have a culture of creating their own disasters, of turning an island paradise into a hell on earth.
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We all need to do more work dealing with contraception,over population will be the death of us all 1 day
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The Dominican Republic has a history of shooting illegal loggers.
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As a resident of Florida, I know we have to pay attention to Haiti and its economic/environmental problems.
Haitians get in rickety boats to come to the US to improve their lives. The swelling population of Haiti has over extended the land's carrying capacity.
Since Reagan, Republican presidents have cut the funds for international family planning, causing the closing around the world of reproductive clinics where families could get contraceptives.
Ironically, it is the right wing, who scream the loudest about illegal immigration. Where do they think those people come from?
Also, the population explosion in the Mid East has contributed to creating terrorists, when young people have no other opportunites they are easy recruits for terrorist groups.
You can thank the GOP for the closing of family reproductive clinics in poor countries over the past 30 years.
How dumb is that? General Hayden, former CIA Director, called the rapid increase in young people without jobs worldwide a threat to the security of the US and its interests.
Something that is seldom mentioned is that
both Clinton and Obama refunded international family planning. They get it. One of the many reasons to vote Dem.
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Saw a documentary about Haiti recently saying the same thing. Terrible state to be in, and awful for life on the island.
I was in neighbouring Cuba this year, and it's a paradise in comaprison.
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