17324: Lemieux: LA Times: Erosion in Haiti (fwd)

[Bob Corbett <corbetre@webster.edu>]

From: JD Lemieux <lxhaiti@yahoo.com>

Haiti Can't Gain Ground on Erosion
Reckless deforestation and construction on the nation's
hillsides and highlands have made floods common in the
six-month rainy season.
By Carol J. Williams
Times Staff Writer

November 17, 2003

KENSCOFF, Haiti — It begins in the lush orchards and
terraced farms skirting this mountaintop village, little
rivulets of rainwater channeled away from precious crops to
the sole paved road that plunges in twists and turns for 20
miles to the Haitian capital.

Once the runoff reaches the road, it joins an ochre-colored
torrent already cascading along the surface, picking up
speed and gravel as the byway becomes an aqueduct.

By the time the deluge makes its way to the suburb of
Petionville, halfway from the Massif de la Selle promontory
to the sea, the raging waters uproot shrubs, wash the
ground out beneath homes' foundations and bulldoze anything
in their path, even cars and the flimsier shanties.

"People put out their trash when it rains so the water
carries it off," said Jane Wynne, a farmer who, along with
her late father, has been battling for 50 years to raise
environmental consciousness in order to halt the rains'
annual devastation.

Misguided irrigation and drainage practices in Haiti's
highlands, unregulated construction on hillsides and
excessive cutting of endangered forests for fuel wood have
combined to expose the area around Port-au-Prince to
erosion that threatens to wipe out whole neighborhoods,
rich and poor alike.

Damage from the heavy rain that falls almost nightly from
June through November has been accelerating in recent years
because every tree cut means less resistance to the water's
flow. Every new home or business built in the hills above
the capital scrapes away more grass and ground cover,
leaving nothing to slow the runoff. Officials at the
Environment Ministry blame corrupt local officials for
failing to enforce laws against harvesting timber or
building homes on publicly owned land.

"The problem is that the peasants don't have the means or
the will to practice soil conservation," horticulturist
Dimitri Norris said. "A peasant can live for a week from
the proceeds of cutting one tree. He sees that as an
immediate reward, whereas tending a fruit tree doesn't
bring in that much income and requires a long-term
commitment."

In a country with 70% unemployment, cutting trees and
selling the wood to make charcoal is one of the few ways an
indigent Haitian can make a living.

Foreign-funded organizations such as the Haitian
Environmental Foundation are making inroads by promoting
tree-planting and developing alternatives for fueling
stoves.

Scientists working with the organization have developed
briquettes made from compressed recycled paper that burn
more efficiently and cleanly than charcoal, said Wynne, who
operates a model farm here and works with international
conservation and relief efforts. Bakeries are among the
largest consumers of wood in Haiti, Wynne said, so the
foundation is subsidizing conversion of their ovens to run
on propane.

The U.S. Agency for International Development estimates
that 71% of Haitian fuel consumption is of wood and
charcoal. Last year the agency replaced 47,000 wood stoves
with oil-fired burners and planted 600,000 trees in the
most denuded and endangered regions.

But the baby steps toward education and recovery are
drastically outpaced by behavior that few expect to change.
As long as grinding poverty afflicts all but a tiny segment
of this country, the majority of Haitians will be compelled
to give priority to the daily demands of buying food and
putting a roof over their families.

Although the government has 1,000 forest rangers to guard
against wood poachers, men and women carrying bundles of
slender tree trunks and logs brazenly tread the roadsides
with their purloined burdens.

Fewer than 100,000 acres of forest are left in a country
that was three-quarters woods when European explorers
arrived five centuries ago — Haitians have cut down all but
about 1.5% of the original tree cover. The remaining
woodlands are concentrated south of here in the La Visite
and Foret des Pins national parks, unapproachable by
vehicle in the rainy season because the surrounding roads
have been washed out.

The consequences, seen in the low-lying slums of
Port-au-Prince, are stunning. Knee-high muck — mud, sewage,
blown-off tin roofs, the occasional car — covers the roads
through Carrefour and Cite Soleil each morning until
jobless men and boys can be induced by drivers' gratuities
to shovel it to the side. At a car dealership on a
sea-level plain near the airport, a lake of muck last month
rose as high as the door handles, forcing much of the
inventory off the sales lot.

Lerisson Beauvoir, a tailor who recently moved to
Petionville from Les Cayes, rents a one-room shack perched
precariously above a ravine — into which dozens of similar
structures have tumbled in recent rainstorms. He has rigged
up troughs and drainpipes to divert water from the home's
foundation but fears that the effort is only postponing the
inevitable.

"There's no such thing as building codes. People just build
wherever they want," he complained, gesturing at a new pink
villa a mere dozen feet uphill from his house.

Norris, the horticulturist, acknowledged that rampant
corruption in municipal governments allows reckless
construction to persist. "There's a lot of advantage for
officials to let people squat on state land. It's a very
profitable business."


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