19 March 2008: The distressing visible consequences of man’s unbridled carelessness with the earth’s resources have mobilized attention to the state of global ecosystems. Deforestation is one of the biggest concerns—many forests and jungles in Africa, Asia, and Central and South America have been severely depleted. Haiti presents a disparaging case of deforestation, which has been shockingly thorough and ecologically damaging.

A country whose area in 1923 was 60% forest, Haiti today retains less than 2% of its original tree cover. This denuding process has triggered the unnaturally rapid desertification of a once lush tropical nation and has left many questioning how to slow the catalysts and reverse the depredation.

The cycle of deforestation began soon after European’s settled in Haiti, the western one-third of the Caribbean island, Hispaniola, which was ceded by the French from Spain in 1697. Haiti’s economy was based strictly on the production of sugar and the extraction of timber for exportation. Both of these industries proved to be extremely profitable yet at great detriment to the integrity of the country’s environment and social structure, one whose main pillars were African slave labor and absentee plantation ownership. As part of the so called “sugar island” system, thousands of acres of Haiti’s most pristine land were cleared of trees to make room for vast sugarcane plantations. Forests were cleared further in order to fuel the country’s sugar mills and to supply Europe’s wealthy with a steady supply of exotic woods from the new world.

Although Haiti has been independent since 1804, its colonial legacies are as evident as ever. Its long history as a profiteering machine resulted in an administrative lack of concern for cultivating any kind of social institutions necessary for a country’s development. However, the expulsion of the abusive French authority did little to incite a revolution of progress. Haitian leadership inherited the responsibility to govern an anemic country with little to no infrastructure and a collapsing economy.

Little has changed in the 200 years since independence. Politics in Haiti have continuously been plagued by violence and egregious corruption and it remains the poorest country in the Western Hemisphere. Of Haiti’s 8.7 million people 80% live below the poverty line. More than half of the country lives in abject poverty. With no access to electricity, 75-80% of the population relies on wood-based charcoal to cook and to provide fuel for heat and light. This dependence on charcoal as a primary source of energy coupled with the country’s booming population have perpetuated the consumption of trees and exacerbated Haiti’s deforestation crisis.

With 98% of its trees gone, the land is unable to anchor its topsoil, which it loses to erosion at a rate of 36 million tons per year. The soil erosion and the land’s inability to absorb water has led to a severe drop in the land’s productivity, leaving the two-thirds of Haiti’s population who depend on small-scale subsistence farming to feed themselves and make a living, to vie for the few remaining arable plots.

Having almost no trees to breath water vapor back into the air has also led to decreased rainfall, which is rapidly transforming Haiti into the Caribbean’s only desert. When rain does come it falls unimpeded to earth and has nowhere to go but overland, resulting in conditions ideal for flooding. The rapid growth in Haiti’s population has forced many to relocate to marginal areas such as floodplains and steep hillsides increasing death tolls during periods of severe weather.

Despite the seriousness of this problem, practicable solutions have proven elusive. Haiti’s dependency upon charcoal is endemic. There are reasonable laws in place meant to protect Haiti’s forests, yet they are simply unenforceable in the many areas where there is little to no evidence of a functioning state.

To the common Haitian, it is not a question of preserving the environment but one of survival, of earning a living and feeding one’s family. To the outside observer it may seem a case of sheer disregard for an eco-system or of ignorance to permanent ecological consequences. Yet to Haitians, two-thirds of whom have no formal jobs available to them, there are few alternatives to cutting down trees they find to sell to be used for charcoal.

The U.S. Agency for International Development (USAID) initiated a program in the mid 1980’s that has helped to plant over 60 million trees in Haiti in the past 20 years. However, it is estimated that 15 to 20 million trees are cut down for fuel each year. Conversely, most of what was planted were hardwoods, trees that are mostly used in the process to make charcoal. It is not surprising that few survive.

The Organization for the Rehabilitation of the Environment (ORE), based in southern Haiti has also been on a reforestation crusade since 1985. They, along with other invested organizations, have managed to plant over one million fruit bearing trees since the project’s inception. The wood of fruit trees is not as suitable for making charcoal as hardwood. Also, ORE realized the necessity to plant renewable cash crops that can be used as valuable, yet sustainable economic resources giving Haitian peasants less incentive to cut them down for simple bio-mass fuel.

It has become bleakly obvious that the focus should not only be to repopulate Haiti’s forests but to concurrently end the people’s dependency on cutting the trees down for fuel. The people of Haiti are badly in need for an alternative source of energy. But what alternative fuel can logistically replace charcoal in a country so stricken by poverty?

There are also clean burning bio-mass stoves in the works. These would cut down on the amount of fuel needed, which would be beneficial both economically and environmentally, and would cut down on the amount of indoor air pollution. Coupled with simple solar light systems, both of these innovations would help jumpstart a progressive future.

Though the regeneration of Haiti’s forests is of utmost concern, the problem first needs to be approached at a simpler level. If people are given a means to cheaply and safely cook their food then they will no longer rely on the cutting down of so many trees and the process of reforestation can move forward in a more productive way.