Haiti presents us with a complicated environmental and social justice problem. Columbus marveled because of its slush and green, but as many popular films and books are displaying, brown has been replacing the green lately.
Though it is true that French colonialism exploited its agriculture as no other colonial power did in the Western Hemisphere, the intense harvesting of trees for lumber export after independence and the essential usage of domestic charcoal have been the main reasons for its depleted forests. With little industrial base Haiti had relied heavily on its woods for everything, starting with family residences, institutional buildings, to badly needed woods for export.
Unfortunately, with a chronically exhausted central government, Haiti had not been able to follow any meaningful conservation or replanting policies. And international interventions have not helped much either. Whereas the United States occupation in neighboring Dominican Republic helped spark interest in Dominican nature conservation (one of the few positive effects it had), the U.S. occupation of Haiti did exactly the opposite. Later international intrusions like the one that wiped out the Haitian Pig population (pay attention to a similar case in Egypt and the Coptic Pigs) followed the same pattern of worsening of the peasant condition and thus of the forest conservation: the poorer the peasantry is, the poorer the forests are.
Haitian history is also differently from most other histories in the sense that the Haitian peasantry successfully resisted (to a large extent) the seizing of their lands from large Hacendados (the elite resorted to other means for exploitation). Pétion began land redistribution, and Boyer continued it. So, one legacy from the Revolution that has persisted has been the image of the peasant with its own plot of land, which explains why Haiti did not have to go through the same profound land-reforms that other Latin American nations experienced.
But these little plots of lands have had to be split in even smaller pieces as families grew. Moreover, with a governing class unconcerned with the peasantry (watch the Agronomist), the growing population had no other place to go, but to the city slums, while the peasant only had its plot to rely upon. The fierce grasp peasants had on their land made it even more difficult for any government to practice conservation. That the peasant relies only on its land, make our cause for action even more desperate: this is an endangered species, namely, peasants owning their own land, but losing it to environmental degradation.
Currently the lack of enough trees in Haiti is not simply affecting the current peasant economy, but it is washing away the top soil, which is essential for any type of future agriculture and sustainable ecosystem. This means that our inaction not only is affecting the people there today, but will affect the people there tomorrow. We need to help restore the forests, help create the type of conditions in which trees could survive on Haitian soil, and peasants could continue living off their land without being exploited. I feel compel to save one of the few remnants of the Haitian Revolution as well as helping prevent mass emigrations and environmental refugees.
Like most problems in the world, the Haitian environmental degradation stemmed from a combination of external and internal forces. The same type of arrangement has to bring the solution. Haitians and non-Haitians have to work in collaboration to bring an end to the environmental chaos that exists there today. But there are plenty organizations that work on Haiti, sometimes even in opposition. That is why I urge you to support an organization that its main objective is to help save the Haitian environment in cooperation with other institutions, and not in isolation.
Please, consider giving and getting involved with this organization: Reforest Haiti
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