14855: Christophe: Re: 14824: LeGrace Benson: deforestation (fwd)

[Bob Corbett <corbetre@webster.edu>]

From: Marc A. Christophe <mactof@erols.com>

Dear LeGrace,

Thank you for bringing to the fore the historic of Haiti's disastrous
deforestation problem.  Too many people have forgotten that this process
started two hundred years ago with Spanish and French colonization, and that
from the 1600s to the 1940s Haiti exported precious wood (Mahogany, Gayac,
Campeche) to America and Europe.  Until World War II, the German Import
Export firm, Reinbold Co, based in Saint Marc, specialized in the
exportation of Campeche to Europe.  As a result huge campeche forests in the
Artibonite region were destroyed. Similarly, the forested area that extended
from Montrouis to Port-au-prince, was cleared to give way to the SHADA
(SOCIETE AMERICO-HAITIENNE FOR THE DEVELOPMENT OF GRICULTURE). This is but a
few examples of an industrial exploitation of Haiti's forests and that help
explain their disappearance. It is an area of Haitian studies that is
begging for objective and well researched analysis.

Today, what is left of Haiti's forests are being quickly consumed by
bakeries, dry cleaners, distilleries, house building  and other small local
industries.

Unfortunately, when reference is made of deforestation and erosion problems
facing Haiti today, Haiti's  peasants are  always presented as sole
culprits.  Contrary to the wood "grapillage " practiced by  Haiti's farmers,
which allow for the regeneration of bushes and so call "green wood", only an
industrial, systematic clearing of the land could have caused the ecological
disaster that is Haiti today.