Subject: Haiti Becomes a Caribbean Desert
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Forest Networking a Project of Ecological Enterprises
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12/19/98
OVERVIEW & COMMENTARY by EE
Anyone that questions the need for forest conservation should take a 
trip to Haiti.  It is clear that forest ecosystem functionality can 
not be taken for granted, and that forests largely drive the 
environment that we depend upon for life. 
g.b.

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Title:   Feature-As Trees Go, Haiti Becomes a Caribbean Desert
Source:  Reuters
Status:  Copyright 1998, contact source for permission to reprint
Date:    December 15, 1998 

PORT-AU-PRINCE, Haiti (Reuters) - Once or twice a month, Maryse 
Charistile takes the bus to Haiti's western coast and brings back 20 
to 30 large sacks of charcoal-- a load many times larger than she is-- 
by ferry boat.

Despite her efforts and a steady supply of the fuel-- the product of 
constant tree-cutting that has left her homeland with only about 1.5 
percent of its original forest cover-- Charistile, 27, said her 
business is not good.

"Sometimes I can spend a week not selling at all," she said in the 
market outside the Caribbean nation's capital where she sells 
charcoal, her face and arms marked with smudges. "You buy but it 
doesn't always sell."

Environmental experts say Haiti has the worst case of deforestation in 
the Western Hemisphere because of charcoal's place as the primary 
fuel. The United Nations estimates that 70 percent of the population 
uses charcoal for cooking.

The use of charcoal has been an environmental catastrophe. Haiti has 
been losing forests for decades but the rate at which woodlands have 
been logged out, burned and turned into farmland or scrub has risen in 
the 1990s. Now Haiti's forests are disappearing at a rate of 15 to 20 
million trees a year, slowly turning the once-lush country into the
region's first desert.

'PARTS OF HAITI WILL NOT COME BACK'

"In general, I think we are getting close to the dropoff point where 
parts of the country will not be able to come back," said Paul 
Paryski, an environmental specialist for the U.N. Development Program 
who contributed to a recently released U.N. report on Haiti's 
environment.

Charistile and other charcoal sellers say they are aware that 
deforestation is a problem but said they have no other way to feed 
their families. Haiti is the hemisphere's poorest nation with a per 
capita income of about $260.

"We have to make a living somehow. The children are crying in our arms 
and we don't have anything to feed them. It's just a little charcoal 
to sell, to get a little money to feed our children," the single 
mother of three said.

Every rainfall in Haiti now sends chunks of mountain down onto roads 
and into the sea. Hurricane Georges, which passed over the island in 
late September, did even worse damage. The entire village of Fond 
Verrettes, southeast of Port-au-Prince, was washed away in flooding 
that took 102 lives as Georges went through, nearly half of at least 
229 lives lost nationwide.

Mapou, a valley village in the southeast, is still flooded more than 
two months after the hurricane. After Tropical Storm Gordon ravaged 
Haiti in 1994, it took 13 months for the water to drain out of Mapou, 
which has no canal or drainage system.

"The environment has continued to be degraded," Paryski said. "Some 
areas are so degraded that they will never be what they once were."

EROSION CLAIMS TONS OF TOPSOIL A YEAR

The United Nations says erosion claims an estimated 36 million tons of 
Haiti's topsoil each year. Areas around Gonaives in the department of 
Artibonite and parts of Haiti's northwest are the most badly 
deforested, with dry, brown desert-like mountains.

Political in-fighting and the government crisis that has left Haiti 
without a prime minister for 18 months have aggravated the already 
disastrous environmental situation. The environment ministry, created 
in 1995, has no official minister or law to determine its functions 
and it receives only 0.25 percent of the national budget, according to 
the report.

"It's virtually dysfunctional," Paryski said. International donors are 
eager to work with the government to salvage what remains of the 
environment, he said. "But without a government that is motivated and 
willing to take action the donors are merely plugging holes in a dam 
that one day will break."

Some environmentalists point to the example of the Dominican Republic, 
which shares the island of Hispaniola with Haiti. The Dominican 
government has outlawed the use of charcoal for cooking and subsidizes 
gas for stoves.

Agronomist Dimitri Norris, who works in Haiti's environment ministry, 
said the government will take aggressive steps to protect the 
environment and has just completed a National Environmental Action 
Plan outlining problems and solutions.

"I think this plan is a significant accomplishment. Now there is a 
plan of action for the government and donors regarding rehabilitation 
and protection of the environment," Norris said.

Local groups and government projects have undertaken scattered tree-
planting campaigns. But random planting will not solve Haiti's 
problems, environmental experts say.

"We see there are no trees so we plant trees, but we are not attacking 
the roots of the problem here," said Aldrin Calixte, who works with a 
local environmental group.

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