Haiti Blog, Chris Bowser, March ‘12

Hispaniola: A Tale of Two Environments

When you talk about Haiti it’s common to move to an immediate comparison with Haiti’s neighbor the Dominican Republic. “Haiti” conjures up mainly negative or strange stereotypes of poverty, corruption, disaster, and voudou, compared to the vacation beaches and baseball superstars of “Dominican Republic”. The comparison of Haiti and the DR jumps out in the environment as well. Even a tour through Google Earth will reveal sections of borderlands with sparsely wooded Haiti to the west and lush DR forests to the east.

Haiti covers about one third of the island of Hispaniola, but it’s a high, steep third compared to some of the wide river valleys in the DR. Prevailing winds from the east (think of all those hurricane track graphics you’ve seen on the Weather Channel) tend to get hung up on the central mountains and dump more rain on the DR. Both countries have just under 10 million people, but Haiti’s infant mortality rate of 42/1000 is nearly double that of DR, and the average GDP per capita in Haiti is only $1,200 compared to $9,300 in the Dominican Republic and $48K in the US.

History, or to be more precise, choices, have played a major role in the fate of the two nations’ natural capital. Some experts point to the DR’s European flavor as attracting more foreign investment and infrastructure than Haiti’s more xenophobic reaction to exploitation which led to an admirable scaling down of agriculture, but fewer and later international relations. Even with these differences, both countries have seen their share of cruel and fickle colonialism followed by ruthless multi-generational dictators in the 20^th century. Haiti’s Duvalier family literally bled the country to starvation. Dominican Republic’s Trujillo and later, Balaguer were equally damaging and violent. Nevertheless, Joaquin Balaguer’s heavy hand did a lot for the DR’s environment. Some of his policies, such as requiring fence posts to be replaced by live trees were impossible, but the ones that were enforceable led in part to the Dominican Republic’s 70-some national parks and large portions of relatively intact forest. Haiti has far fewer examples of natural capital, though one of its few gems, the Park (or “Pic”) Macaya is located a few hours outside Les Cayes in the southwestern finger of the country. The park boasts soaring cloud forests and species found nowhere else.

No doubt about it, Haiti’s environmental circumstances and political instability made for a rough go even before the 2010 earthquake. One of the most important historical lessons of Haiti, however, is that Haiti itself has risen from hardship again and again, against losing odds. These problems are ultimately fixable. Economies can be rebuilt, diseases can be checked, ecosystems can be restored. As Pete Seeger once said: “There is no hope…but I may be wrong.”

CB

This blog entries draws from both the CIA World Factbook (online) as well as Jared Diamond’s Collapse: How Societies Choose to Fail or Succeed.