Haiti: Exploitation Deforestation Hurricane Floods Cholera

HAITIAN SUFFERING ACCELERATES AS CONSPICUOUS CHRISTIAN SENATOR HOLDS UP AID

As yet another hurricane passes through the accursed island-nation of Haiti, Senator Tom Coburn contiues up over $1 billion dollars in U.S. Aid pledged for post-quake rebuilding. This continues a decades long pattern in Haiti, a pattern defined by horrendous natural disasters, but exacerbated by human corruption and hypocricy. Much as the aid from the January 2010 Earthquake has yet to arrive - but whatever. That was last year's disaster. The net result is that Haiti is more unprepared with each natural disaster as the infrastruction continues to decline and the nation falls further into dispair.

From 1995 - 2005, 95%* Tree Loss Caused Permanent Climate Change

If you fly over the center of the island of Hispanolia, you can see a clear demarkation. Starving Haitians have cut down most of the trees in the nation's once lush mountains. The man made devastation has resulted in the deforestation of 90% of the island nation.

The villagers first chopped down hardwoods like mahogany and cherry to make charcoal to sell, the last remaining option for survival for many. Next came mango and avocado trees, destroying a food source. And now, the astounding mapou trees, which many worshipped as homes of spirits, have all but disappeared from large swatches of the country.

* When the Catastrophe Map first posted this page in 2006, the percentage was 90% loss.

They did it on Easter Island

They did it in Ethiopia

They're doing it in Indonesia

KEEPING THE HUNGER PAINS AWAY WITH MUD COOKIES
Hurricane Hanna and three other recent storms have only increased the devastation, resulting in a downward spiral of erosion, flooding and mud slides. The situation is so critical that inhabitants have taken to "baking" mud cookies out of dirt, salt and vegetable oil.

mud cookies in haiti help ease the pain of hunger, but have no nutritional value

mud cookies in haiti help ease the pain of hunger, but have no nutritional value

Until recently, the World Food Programme (WFP) had been building terraces up in the mountains, to catch the water should there be another hurricane. Twelve thousand people have been working on the terraces, some paid in food. But now the funding for that program has stopped, and so has the work. This pattern is typical of the Haitian experience.

THE U.S. IN HAITI?

Flying over the island of Hispaniola, the difference between Haiti on the western half and Santo Domingo on the eastern half is amazing. Human's have turned Haiti into a desert, while Santo Domingo retains much of it's tropical foilage. What's the difference?

In a nutshell, the extreme poverty that defines Haiti as the poorest nation in the West, has led to the dangerous environmental choices of the citizens. Since the early 1960s the U.S. used its political influence and development assistance programs to help turn Haiti into a low-wage, export-friendly economy that provided profitable business opportunities for U.S. investors. In 1971, at a time when development assistance to Haiti had been cut off due to the terrible human rights record of the Duvalier regime, the Nixon administration agreed to give political support to the transition of power from Papa Doc to Baby Doc—dictator to dictator—in return for the establishment of generous incentives to attract U.S. private investors. These included maintenance of an extremely low minimum wage, the suppression of labor unions, and the right of foreign companies to repatriate their profits.

In 1986, after the expulsion of Haitian dictator Jean Claude “Baby Doc” Duvalier the International Monetary Fund (IMF) loaned Haiti $24.6 million indesperately needed funds (Baby Doc had raided the treasury on the way out). In order to get the IMF loan, Haiti was required to reduce tariff protections for Haitian rice and other agricultural products in order to open up the country’s markets to competition from outside countries. Especially that big nation to the North.

Within less than two years, it became impossible for Haitian farmers to compete with what they called ‘Miami rice.’ The local rice market in Haiti fell apart as cheap, U.S. subsidized rice, some of it in the form of ‘food aid,’ flooded the market. By 1987 and 1988, there was so much rice coming into the country that many stopped working the land. The free market, as envisioned by Ronald Reagan.

In the 1980s, the U.S. Agency for International Development embarked on an ambitious $22.8 million project to plant some 30 million trees that could provide income for peasants. But the project focused on trees that can be made into charcoal for cooking, and nearly all were eventually cut down. Damn.