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24796: Severe (pub) Miami Herald Article on MPP's Jean Baptiste(4/18)



Constantin Severe <csevere@hotmail.com>

Haitian's work against deforesting wins prize
Haitian peasant-rights activist Chavannes Jean-Baptiste has won the $125,000 Goldman Environmental Prize.
BY JOE MOZINGO
jmozingo@herald.com


PAPAYE, Haiti - Farming in Haiti is spiraling slowly toward oblivion.

After three centuries of deforestation, rain does little more than carry precious topsoil away to the sea.

And as the land becomes ever more barren, peasant farmers have only one way to survive -- burn the last scraggly trees to sell as charcoal.

Foreign conservationists have spent untold millions of dollars trying to break this cycle, only to watch the nation sink further into a Dust Bowl of its own making.

But Chavannes Jean-Baptiste, a Haitian agronomist and founder of the Papaye Peasant Movement, has been fighting the problem from within, working to give small farmers a reason to preserve the land as a stake in their own survival.

Today, the San Francisco-based Goldman Environmental Foundation announced it is awarding Jean-Baptiste its annual $125,000 prize, considered the Nobel for environmentalists.

''In a country battling both extreme poverty and environmental degradation, Chavannes Jean-Baptiste has inspired thousands of Haitians to protect their watersheds, tree cover and farmland,'' Richard Goldman, co-founder of the prize, said in a statement. ``He is a true environmental hero and exemplifies the purpose for establishing the prize.''

The award will give Jean-Baptiste a boost of cash and considerable leverage for more funding from foreign groups. But whether his movement of 60,000 peasants on Haiti's arid Central Plateau will bear fruit in the long run depends on whether Haiti can stabilize itself.

SHOT AT, EXILED

Jean-Baptiste has been shot at, sent into exile and seen his life's work ransacked by government thugs. He has seen the orchards he has planted cut down and watched the political movement he helped build, the Lavalas party of former President Jean-Bertrand Aristide, turn into something he despised.

The political turmoil of the past 20 years -- the coming and going of numerous, ineffective governments -- has made significant progress on any front impossible, including the environment.

''The Papaye Peasant Movement has always been an advocacy movement,'' said Daniel Moss of Grassroots International, a group that helps fund the movement. ``But who do you make your demands to in Haiti? It's like shadow boxing.''

Jean-Baptiste, 58, grew up here in the Central Plateau, got his degree in the capital and returned to train peasants in the 1970s.

The lot of the Haitian peasant is as hard as the cracked earth they cultivate. The population expands as the arable land shrinks. Irrigation is scant, few farmers have titles to the land, and U.S.-backed free trade draws in cheap imports like chicken, rice, beans and pork that squeeze peasant produce out of their own markets.

Among a number of things thwarting progress, according to Jean-Baptiste, is a mind-set that the success or failure of crops depends only on supernatural forces.

''If the peasant thinks his crop didn't grow because of God or because some neighbor has a curse against you, what point is technical knowledge?'' asked Jean-Baptiste.

He began the long process of educating and organizing peasants with a simple philosophy: Give them a sense of ownership, and economic need will drive preservation.

As the movement coalesced, they established a credit union to help them buy seeds at lower interest rates. They built grain silos to store their crops, eliminating speculators and middlemen. They started a peasant radio station and improved irrigation to increase the growing season.

Jean-Baptiste became a master at wooing foreign funders, and he became a major political force of his own.

When Aristide first won the presidency in 1991, Jean-Baptiste was one of his closest confidantes. Four years later, Lavalas considered him as one of two possible successors for the presidency along with Rene Preval, who ultimately won. Jean-Baptiste headed Preval's transition team.

Now he is behind a new political party called Konba.

''A lot of people say I'm going to run for president,'' he said. ``It is absolutely false. I am not a candidate.''

Jean-Baptiste's political involvement over the years has drawn detractors. Some have questioned why the Papaye movement isn't more strident -- staging protests, blocking roads, demanding land reform, basic irrigation and import tariffs.

''Chavannes has been a galvanizing figure,'' said Robert Maguire, a Haiti expert at Trinity University in Washington who once funded Jean-Baptiste. ``Either people are really taken in by him or are really put off by him.''

A FALLING OUT

Jean-Baptiste had a very public falling out with Aristide in 1997, accusing him and Lavalas of corruption and thuggery. ''From then, until he left last year, we were under attack,'' he said.

Still, he moved forward with new projects. Over the last 30 years, the movement claims to have planted 20 million trees.

His home in the dry hills is what true success would look like -- an oasis of shade and fruit trees. Tall castor bean stalks supplant old-growth trees as fuel. Specially selected Benzoliv plants fortify the soil with protein. Drip irrigation conserves water, and tomatoes grow in the off-season.

But the landscape surrounding it is as bleak as ever: burned and crumbling hills, dotted with occasional trees, braided by muddy rivers.

''The question is,'' said Maguire, ``if Chavannes is being held up as an example, to what extent does the example he set spread to the farmers and sustain itself?''