INDEPTH: HAITI
Deforestation in Haiti
CBC News Online | October 1, 2004
Reporter: Dan Bjarnason
Jeanne wasn't yet a full-blown hurricane when it hit Haiti. At that point, it was only a tropical storm. Still, its impact was enormous. Jeanne packed such a punch because Haiti's natural defences were already gone.
The Dominican Republic is lush, green, fertile. On the same island, neighbouring Haiti is mostly mountainous and virtually denuded of trees. Forests, no forests – that's the difference.
Poor Haiti, its forests first ravaged to fuel colonial sugar mills and now its people, impoverished by a string of gangster governments, are driven to destroy what's left of their trees just to survive.
"There are simply no jobs in Haiti, and for many people, cutting down and selling trees is a form of income, which they would otherwise not have," says Daniel Erikson of Inter-American Dialogue. "Then the other side of it is 70 to 80 per cent of the Haitian people have no access to modern electricity, so they need wood-based charcoal to cook, to provide fuel for heat, for light."
So it's no mystery why tropical storms are a calamity. No trees means there's nothing to break the fall of raindrops in a storm and they smash into the ground like bullets.
"The soil just can't absorb the water that's coming down in such a short period of time. It's got nowhere to go but overland, and that's exacerbated by the slope that covers most of Haiti," says Ken MacDonald of the University of Toronto.
Successful reforestation schemes just aren't part of Haiti's reality; the poor chop down millions more trees each year than are ever planted.
"Haiti actually has some environmental laws that are quite reasonable and quite good, but there's absolutely no enforcement, and in most of the country, you have no functioning state whatsoever," Erikson says.
Prospects are grim in Haiti's battle against nature: as the population mushrooms in the next 20 years, twice as many people will be going after ever fewer trees.
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