Rebecca's+Project

=**Deforestation in Haiti and its Consequences**=


 * Rebecca Shaver**


 * Dr. Connie Lester, Dr. John Walker**


 * 4/30/12**

[] The border of Haiti (left) and the Dominican Republic (right)

Known to many as the poorest country in the Western Hemisphere, Haiti has unfortunately faced all manner of disaster and tragedy since before its birth as a nation. As a result of these disasters, all but 4% of the country’s forests have disappeared, never to return to their natural state. Throughout its history, Haiti has demonstrated a strangely perfect combination of environmental, political, economic, and agricultural factors that have caused vast destruction across the landscape of the country. The destruction is documented back to the 1400s when it was first colonized by the Spanish as San Domingo and it continued throughout the revolution and gaining of independence as a nation. Today, the loss of forests endures in forms ranging from natural disasters to subsistence farming, and the consequences to the large rural population are devastating. Thanks to the actions of others in circumstances beyond their control, many Haitian peasants are trapped in a vicious cycle perpetuated by and resulting in deforestation, and there is little that they can do to escape.

Environmental Conditions
The country of Haiti, though it has been exploited for cash crop for hundreds of years, does not have a landscape that lends itself to tradition widespread agricultural use. Namely, 63% of the country has inclines of more than 20% where as only 29% of the country has inclines of less than 10% (Federation de Amis de la Nature, 1999), or as the Haitian metaphor goes: "Beyond the mountains, still more mountains " (Smith, 2001) According to the Encyclopedia of Global Warming and Climate Change, only 20% of the land is arable, and Spain, France, and England have all managed to benefit from farming on the island Hispanola. With such steep mountains covering this small nation, colonizers have had to clear a vast amount of land in order to produce a successful crop. This is because the soil is infertile and thus doesn’t produce a high yield for a very long time. When this happens, farmers simply move to another piece of land leaving the previous plot fallow. This process, in conjunction with using wood to fulfill 71% of the country’s energy needs, has led to severe erosion with devastating consequences. Some of those consequences, as mentioned by the Federation des Amis de la Nature, include “a) Reduction of natural fertility of the land. b) Reduction of agricultural production, and famine. c) Increase in salinity. Salt water tends to be drawn back up to the surface by osmosis, which leads to an increase in uncultivable land.” Furthermore, as shown by the tables acquired from The International Disaster Database, Haiti has been affected by a tragic combination of natural disasters ranging from Earthquake to Epidemic, which have claimed hundreds of thousands of lives and cost millions in economic damage. Unfortunately, since the table shows only the top ten worst disasters in the past century, it can be assumed that far worse damage has occurred, including the damage done to the environment. Granted, these disasters were natural, but the condition of the land that they encountered when they reached the country of Haiti was not. The soil, already stripped of nutrients and left unprotected, has been no match for the torrential wind and rain that comes the storms of the Caribbean. The storms bring floods, mudslides, and consequently unbelievable loss of life and property.

sorted by numbers of killed:||~ Disaster
 * Top 10 Natural Disasters in Haiti for the period 1900 to 2012 **
 * ~ Date ||~ No Killed ||
 * Earthquake (seismic activity) || 12-Jan-2010 || 222,570 ||
 * Epidemic || 22-Oct-2010 || 5,592 ||
 * Storm || 4-Oct-1963 || 5,000 ||
 * Storm || 17-Sep-2004 || 2,754 ||
 * Flood || 23-May-2004 || 2,665 ||
 * Storm || 21-Oct-1935 || 2,150 ||
 * Storm || 12-Aug-1915 || 1,600 ||
 * Storm || 5-Nov-1994 || 1,122 ||
 * Storm || 2-Sep-2008 || 529 ||
 * Flood || 14-Nov-1963 || 500 ||

sorted by economic damage costs:||~Disaster []
 * Top 10 Natural Disasters in Haiti for the period 1900 to 2012 **
 * ~ Date ||~ Damage (000 US$) ||
 * Earthquake (seismic activity) || 12-Jan-2010 || 8,000,000 ||
 * Storm || 5-Aug-1980 || 400,000 ||
 * Storm || 4-Oct-1963 || 180,000 ||
 * Storm || 20-Sep-1998 || 180,000 ||
 * Storm || 11-Sep-1988 || 91,286 ||
 * Storm || 5-Nov-1994 || 50,000 ||
 * Storm || 17-Sep-2004 || 50,000 ||
 * Storm || 7-Jul-2005 || 50,000 ||
 * Earthquake (seismic activity) || 27-Oct-1952 || 20,000 ||
 * Storm || 29-Sep-1966 || 20,000 ||

Colonial Impacts


In 1492, when Columbus sailed the ocean blue, he landed on the island known to us today as Hispanola where he found a native people group called the Tainos. The Spaniards used the natives’ passivity to their advantage and put them to work mining for gold and eventually working on plantations farming cash crops. Deforestation began without hesitation, because they had not come to the Indies to “put down roots” but rather to “help themselves to new riches-principally gold, and take them back to Europe” (Joachim, 1979). Therefore, any inclination that they may have had about how limited the natural resources were, or what a delicate natural balance this particular island depended on, did not matter because they had no intentions of making the place into a home. The island itself, the native people included, was simply a resource to be exploited, which is evident by the Spaniards’ relative abandonment of the island once the supply of gold was exhausted.

Major development started up again near the end of the 17th century when the French came to the island as Buccaneers. They originally settled on the coast, but herds of wild cattle that had been brought to Hispanola by the Spanish inland. It should be noted that the French described the island as being “overrun” with cattle (Hazard, 1873), which undoubtedly made a sizeable impact on the condition of the land and the soil in particular through their grazing. Thus, having found abundant food and little human opposition, the French easily began to establish a capitalist economy in what they called San Domingo. Their success depended heavily on the importation of resilient African slaves. C.L.R. James estimates that between 1764 and 1771 an average of ten to fifteen thousand slaves were imported each year, coming from every corner of the African continent. This abundant labor supply enabled the colony to export 72 million pounds of raw sugar, 51 million pounds of white sugar, 1 million pounds of indigo, 2 million pounds of cotton, ad “quantities of hides, molasses, cocoa and rum in only one year, 1767.

Again, this impressive number of exports suggests that the colonizers had no intention of maintaining the land for long term inhabitance, or no concept of the consequences of their exploitation. Hazard makes note of this “short-sighted policy” that the French adopted and points out that at the time he wrote //Santo Domingo//, the year 1873, portions of land that were once producing high yields of tobacco were left “uncultivated and unproductive, not from any fault of the soil, but from the utter worthlessness of the population.” Though the statement is quite subjective, it is important to note that the land was left bare. Whether or not the soil was depleted of nutrients when they stopped farming on it, is debatable when considering the source, but for the sake of this argument it is irrelevant. The point is that leaving the land bare and exposed to wind and rain would quickly ruin the soil quality, if it were not already ruined, and would only cause further destruction via erosion and flooding.

Revolution Impacts
The kind of land and labor exhaustion utilized by the French let itself to a rebellion of the thousands of poorly treated slaves and freed blacks. The infamous Haitian revolution was militariliy and politically successful, but it also allowed for the occurence of what some refer to as the nation's "primary cause of environmental degradation" which was the "movement of the poor peasantry into the mountains" (COHPEDA, 1993). Once the revolution was undrway, the French landowners began to leave their plantations, and so did their former slaves. Consequently, they left more land stripped of its natural vegetation and vulnerable to the tumltuos climate that would soon render the bare land relatively unusable. Amidst the widespread violence, and conflict between the blacks and the French, and then between the elites and the peasants, the Republic of Haiti was established und er the rule of Jean-Jacques Dessalines. The Haitian peasantry, no longer bound by slavery, had escaped into the mountains. THe majority of the peasantry was able to acquire their own plots of land following a principal of "counter-plantationism" (Dubois, 2012). Multiple rulers attempted to reestablish the peasants as subservient workers on land owned by gover nment or wealthy individuals, but these attempts proved unsuccessful. Instead, many rural self-regulated communities formed where peasants worked together to supply each other's needs and defend ownership of land (Dubois, 2012).

One final effect of the Revolution on the environment came years later, in 1825. It was then that the Haitian elites agreed to officially purchase their freedom from the French in order to be internationally recognized a a nation. Unfortunately, as a solution to paying this incredible debt, they chose selling the lumber from the tropical trees that were still in plentiful supply across the Haitian mountains for making furniture (Johnson, 2007). In this way, the French were able to continue having devastating effects on the land long after they had officially relenquished control of the country.

Post Revolution Impacts
Uses for lumber progressed from furniture making to energy production for a growing industrial economy, including charcoal made from wood. THis trend quickly increased in popularity as the unforgiving mountainous terrain, coupled with the large scale production of cash crops, caused the amount arable land to decrease at a rapid rate (Johnson, 2007). As of late 1980s, staple industries were still heavily reliant on wood as a means of energy. For example, in 1986 71% of energy needs in the dry cleaning industry were met by wood, and bakeries in the Port-Au-Prince area met 66% of their energy needs with wood. For obvious reasons, this has caused widespread deforestation. However, it has also kept some peasants alive. When they could no longer provide for themselves through traditional agricultural practices, due to the poor quality of the land, another option was to turn to charcoal making.

In an interview with Leah Gordon, one charcoal maker said "you can see this earth doesn't want to give birth to anything. We keep going at ot to try and get a little corn and beans, but if there's no rain, you can't plant and the earth won't give anything." This is what has driven him to making charcoal from little trees he has left in order to make enough money to feed his family (1996). Tragically, the lack of rain he refers to is only intensified by the deforestation, When the trees are removes from the land, the natural progression is to soil erosion by way of wind and rain, and then when there is no vegetation left to absorb moisture, desertification sets in and farming becomes nearly impossible. Also in between these two extremes, the land faces increased risk of floods. In Johnson's paper, he points out that in 2006, the regions of Haiti recognized for highest charcoal production were also identified as the areas with the most sever flooding. In that November 2006, 7 people died and 317 homes were destroyed from these floods caused by removal of the forests. Another party that can be held largely responsible for Haiti's deforestation is unfortunately the United States of Am erica. In the century following the revolution, Haiti struggled to recover politcally and econmically with a long list of rulers who lasted for short periods of time and usually ended in disaster. This created a void that the U.S. justified filling with their own military presence, arguing that "occupation was crucial for making Haiti attractive to foreign investors," according to Dubois, who seeks to point out how Haiti has been wronged, and wrongly judged.Dubois t ells the story of U.S. occupation of Haiti as if it were a repeat of French colonization, in which monoculture plantations were the main focus for economic development. It began in 1918 with the Haitian American Sugar Company (HASCO), and the company easily acquired the land it sought once the U.S. occupied Haiti. Many other companies soon reaped the benefits of American occupation, namely the North Haytian Sugar company, the Haytian Pineapple Company, the Haitian American Development Corporation, and the Haytian Agricultural Corporation. These companies easily obtained thousands of acres where crops would be farmed and then exported to the U.S. (Dubois, 2012). If not clearing new land, the companies could get the land 'owned' by peasants with few obstacles, because of a lack of documented land ownership. No matter how much the American government thought or said they were helping Haiti, in the end they were not the ones who had to live with the almost entirely deforested landscape, that had now been thoroughly farmed in an unsustainable manner. In fact, if you consider Dantes Bellagarde as an example you may think the U.S. did not think or care much at all for Haiti's well being. Bellagarde was the minister of public instruction and agriculture at the time of American occupation with goals reforming rural areas by improving technology and farming techniques, but he claims U.S. officials ignored his suggestions saying they weren't interested in "such serious projects for agricultural organization and the education of the popular masses." With this attitude, it is easy to believe that the U.S. took little time to consider long term effects of their deforestation and consolidation of peasant farms. What delicate balance did exist among cooperative peasant communities and their environment was now lost as American companies claimed their land and put them to work farming large quantities of cash crops.

Dealing with the Consequences
From the information presented thus far, it can be gathered that, besides the forests themselves, it has been the Haitian peasants who suffer most from the country's deforestation. They are the ones who are left with the land that has been abused by others to the point of it being barely usable. They are ones of whom many make less than $100 per year and live far below the poverty line as defined by the World Bank. 86% of them are the ones are unable to obtain 75% of their "daily caloric needs" (Smith, 2001). The peasants, living in the mountainous inland of the nation are the ones being affected from increased flooding and mudslides now that much of the vegetation has been removed. Smith discusses how many outside agencies have aimed to change their impoverished conditions, but with the little success and the more likely outcome being that circumstances end up worse than they were before.

As a result, the rural peasantry has come to recognize the government as an unreliable source of help. They are "never to the advantage of the people," in the words of a Haitian peasant (Smith, 2001). With such a constantly changing government, usually ruled by an individual or group with highly selfish motives, it is no surprise that the peasants formed such strong self sufficient groups that are not easily broken by outside agencies. Smith, while in Haiti, observed this occurring all across the country, and its popularity is reflected in the abundance of cliches and saying Smith has compiled from her travels. Some of them are listed here: A cooperative spirit is seen in everything from the atribisyon-s (small work groups of 7 to 10 people) to the Gwoupman peyizan (community groups advocating for themselves politically) and from the evidence given by Smith's first hand account, it is this small scale cooperation that has sustained the rural peasants and in some cases helped them resist a return to subservient labor on other peoples land and thus maintain their highly valued independence.
 * When the hands are many the burden is light
 * One finger on its own can't eat stew
 * People who don't eat alone are never hungry
 * When the nose takes a hit, the eye sheds a tear

Conclusion
The existence of these cooperative groups is encouraging news in the midst of the tragic state of Haiti's natural environment, but it is important to not let that be the end of this work. In closing, I want to highlight the consequential information I have learned in this study. First, that the deforestation of Haiti has been fueled by the way it has been viewed by the other nations who have controlled the land. It began with Spain, then France, and finally the United States even though Haiti was never a colony of the U.S. Because these nations were not reliant on Haiti for long term subsistence, they each exploited its land without hesitating to calculate potential consequences. Once Haiti gained its "Second Independence," (Dubois, 2012), the condition of the environment was already on a destructive path into the cycles of deforestation, soil erosion, and desertification, of which the end results are virtually irreversible. Of course, the blame can not be completely eradicated from Haiti itself, but I believe it is fair to say that in the area of environmental sustainability, the nation had been set up for failure at least three times in its history.

Since the nation is still impoverished and much of land devastated, I think it is also important to come away from this study with an idea of what methods are effective in coping with the effects of deforestation: indigenous programs motivated by the drive to maintain independence. The Gwoupman peyizan, for example, began as a government program, but it was successful because it granted the peasants more power over their own lives. Where as attempts at assistance by the U.S. encouraged relinquishing individual land ownership in exchange for salaried work on large scale plantations or infrastructure projects. Compliance with policies like this is a rarity, because it threatens the independence and autonomy that the Haitian people have been fighting to earn and keep for centuries now. For this reason, it seems that the best way for the United States or other nations to help Haiti recover from the damage that they have contributed to would be to subsidize programs granting the people more freedom to control the fate of their own country by supplying them with education and capital resources.