In Humanitarian and Political Fracases, Don’t Forget Haiti’s Environmental Issues
DEVELOPMENTS
Since the devastating earthquake that struck Haiti in January 2010, the world’s attention has turned to the Caribbean country. In only fifteen months, what started as an environmental disaster morphed into a humanitarian nightmare with international ramifications of the first order.
Earlier this month, Haiti’s Provisional Electoral Council (CEP) announced that Michel ‘Sweet Micky’ Martelly was elected the nation’s next president after verifying initial electoral results from the March 20th election. This announcement capped a six-month period from the initial election in November that was marred with scandal from the start.
With the world weary of environmental disasters — the human suffering in Japan and Haiti similar for some reporters who have covered both tragedies — Haiti is tasked with the monumental challenge of coming back from the worst tragedy to ever strike the financially, politically, and environmentally beleaguered nation.
‘Building back better’ will require sustainable development that protects Haitians from future environmental disasters; makes sensible use of land and open space; and creates a civil society and jobs infrastructure that gives the people a stake in their nation.
BACKGROUND
Haiti’s extreme poverty and shoddy building standards compounded the effect of 7.0 magnitude earthquake on January 10, 2010, killing as many as 250,000 people and leaving well over one million people homeless. By one estimate, almost 70 percent of buildings in the capital, Port-au-Prince, were destroyed. The threat of landslides and erosion in the hills surrounding the city drastically increased. And the destruction of the capital’s seaport – buckled sea walls, collapsed piers, and destroyed equipment – hampered supply delivery and other relief efforts.
Some experts and environmentalists began looking at the country’s rampant and longtime deforestation activities – some of the highest rates in the world, relative to land size and population – as a destabilizing factor. Many of these experts are uncertain about the country’s ability to withstand future disasters. This stark image along the jagged Haitian-Dominican Republic border makes the severity of the problem quite clear.
Deforestation in Haiti was a problem long before last year’s earthquake. Located directly in Hurricane Alley, Haiti has been wracked by hurricanes throughout its history. In mid- and late- 2008, four massive storms hit the country, killing hundreds and causing millions of dollars in damage. A lack of adequate treetop coverage to serve as a barrier and reduce the gale force winds from the storms contributes to the infrastructure damage and loss of life. The 2011 hurricane season is predicted to be very active, and any devastating storm to hit Haiti will worsen the lingering humanitarian problems plaguing the country.
The threat of cholera and other diseases poses a persistent risk to millions of Haitians. Late last year, the country was thrown into turmoil over a cholera outbreak that killed thousands and sickened tens of thousands more. The epidemic’s cause – the first outbreak in the country in a century – was traced to unclean drinking water from the Artibonite River. A lack of clean drinking water and poor sanitation facilities – some of the highlights of the tent cities that dominate Port-au-Prince, where more than one million disaster victims call home over a year later – created a health disaster.
Writing in The New York Times last summer, Haitian Prime Minister Jean-Max Bellerive and former U.S. President Bill Clinton, currently the United Nations Special Envoy to Haiti, detailed some of the most urgent work required to propel the country forward. Chief among the short-term efforts to begin long-term development, they said, was the need for removing rubble. Yet a report at the one year anniversary of the earthquake – just three months ago – shows that only 20 percent of the rubble has been cleared. The impassible streets and wreckage-strewn commercial and residential lots are severely impeding Haiti’s ability to create critical infrastructure needed to support a national economy.
ANALYSIS
No nation, no matter how powerful or strategically located, will be able to avert natural disasters. However, adequately investing in common-sense technologies and planning with regional and international partners will save lives and reduce damage in the interim, and help a country mitigate the aftermath of Mother Nature’s wrath.
An astounding $4.6 billion was pledged by countries in 2010 and 2011 alone, though just this month a U.N. report found that only $1.7 billion had been distributed. With long-term aid pledged at almost $10 billion following the United Nations conference on Haiti in March of last year, there is little excuse for getting the ball rolling on a couple key issues to improve the country’s prospects.
The pace of rubble removal must dramatically increase. And as lots, blocks, and whole sections of Port-au-Prince are cleared, redevelopment and reconstruction must begin immediately to end the scourge of the crime-infested, cramped tent cities that one-too-many Haitians still call home.
That reconstruction, however, must make use of sustainable resources that will also be resistant to earthquakes and other environmental disasters. Though concrete holds up well against hurricane-force winds, in an earthquake it will pancake and crumble on itself, which is tragically the reason so many people were killed.
Support for organizations working to replant trees in Haiti must be increased. A nation both as impoverished and under constant threat from hurricanes and tropical storms as Haiti, can’t afford another moment of stump-filled hills, landslides, and flooding.
The country must also embark on a land use campaign. Before the earthquake, about three million people – one-third of the entire country’s population – lived in Port-au-Prince. Wealthy landowners should become credible partners with the government and international organizations in reform efforts to decentralize the capital city and help people live in a safe, more environmentally-sustainable way.
With a new president-elect, who, if all goes according to plan will be officially certified later this month and inaugurated in May, the country must turn its complete attention from political spectacle to substantive development, in conjunction with the myriad international partners and nonprofit organizations ready to help Haiti put itself on a safer, cleaner, and more prosperous path.
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Sean Bartlett is Americas Regional Editor for Foreign Policy Digest.
