In Haiti, Deforestation Paves the Road to Catastrophe

January 12, 2011 | Good, Pulitzer Center

William Wheeler

Mountains beyond Mountains. The island's mountainous terrain makes it prone to landslides and flash floods, greatly exacerbated by deforestation. While hillside terracing and soil conservation programs can help, decreasing demand for wood fuel is also a part of the solution. Haiti, 2011.

In Gonaives, a flood basin north of Port au Prince, 26-year-old Fils-aime Clairmentine lost two homes during floods in 2004 in 2008 before, like many Haitians, she gave up and moved to the capital. She survived the earthquake, but has since returned to her village. Haiti, 2011.

Most Haitians rely on subsistence farming. Deforestation -- visible in the barren hills in the background -- has undermines agricultural livelihoods, providing a push effect to the pull of jobs in the city that drove rapid urbanization in recent decades. Haiti, 2011.

Port-au-Prince was “a disaster before the disaster,” as one UN official told me. The loss of 230,000 people is a reflection, in part, of shoddy building practices. The stream of urban migrants flooding the capital each year moved into lawless shantytowns or cement block homes constructed without the benefit of a building code, or the methods and materials used for more than a century in developed countries. Haiti, 2011.

"There's no mystery why these buildings came down,” said Peter Haas, who runs Appropriate Infrastructure Development Group, an engineer training charity inspecting buildings and teaching masons how to build back better in Haiti. “Its really construction practice and materials.” Haiti, 2011.

The city's slums became breeding grounds for disease and political volatility, potentially stirred up around elections or a change in grain prices. Haiti, 2011.

UN peacekeepers here since 2004 fought neighborhood to neighborhood through the areas like Cite Soleil, once considered the most dangerous slum in the Western Hemisphere. Haiti, 2011.

According to one International Crisis Group report, between January 2006 and May 2007, the murder rate in some slums was "comparable to that of Colombia's Medellin during the worst days of trafficking related killings in 1991, when it was Latin America's most violent city." Haiti, 2011.

On the heels of four consecutive storms and hurricanes that wrought $897 million in damage, the ICG warned that "a new natural disaster in 2009 in an overpopulated city such as Port-au-Prince could easily transform the considerable opposition to the Preval administration again to violent conflict." Haiti, 2011.

Today, the country's first official relocation camp is built in a flood basin beneath hills scarred by erosion. Thousands were told to evacuate when a tropical storm lashed the valley this fall. Haiti, 2011.

Kids in a camp wait for a meal cooked on a fuel-efficient stove, intended to reduce demand on wood fuel. Haiti, 2011.

But experts say that alternative fuels and jobs to supplement income from charcoal production—like work planting trees or protecting forests—are also needed to restore Haiti’s environment. Haiti, 2011.

In a country scarred by disaster, deforestation may lead the path to the next catastrophe.

This slideshow also appeared in Good Magazine.