Haiti's Tomorrow May Be Rooted In Trees, Fertilizer

MIAMI -- Throughout the history of foreign assistance, charitable organizations and government agencies have built schools and water treatment plants and created farm projects only to discover that their good works did not really fit in with the local scene. Or that one project contradicted another. Schools and water treatment plants fell apart and experimental farms withered.

Before the earthquake in Haiti, international aid groups had begun working on a comprehensive plan to convert the country's treeless, dirt hills and mountains and its over-farmed valleys into verdant, productive land. The key features of the plan would be linked together in mutual support. It would be the opposite of piecemeal.

That was before more than 200,000 Haitians died as homes, hotels, hospitals, stores, schools and small factories collapsed. Now the aid groups, including the United Nations Environment Program and Columbia University's Earth Institute, are urging that restoration of the Haiti's countryside be incorporated as a key element in rebuilding the country.

The task of restoring Haiti's countryside is almost too much to imagine and could turn out to be impossible. Very few trees are left in Haiti because the tradition -- as in many developing countries -- has been to chop trees into charcoal for cooking fires. In an impoverished country, people do not buy fertilizer. After a few decades the soil in their small plots becomes exhausted. In Haiti, farmland produces five times less corn than just across the border in the Dominican Republic. Farmland in Haiti is 10 times less productive on average than in the United States.

Some of the key points of an environmental restoration project would likely include:

• Planting tens of thousands of trees, including fruit varieties that would set down long roots to help prevent erosion and also provide food.

• Providing fertilizer to increase the growth of corn and wheat and other crops. Just adding fertilizer to fields in Africa has doubled yields.

• Persuading Haitians to rely less heavily on wood and charcoal for cooking fires. Some ideas: providing inexpensive stoves that use less charcoal, hiring some woodcutters and charcoal makers to work in a security force to protect the trees, planting fast growing varieties of trees that could be used for charcoal and showing Haitians how these trees can produce the ingredients for charcoal for years if they are pruned instead of killed.

• Dredging rivers and canals and, in some cases, erecting walls along the banks to reduce flooding.

A healthy countryside would provide more food for Haiti. Flooding would be less severe. The restoration work would provide jobs. Little by little, the land would support more farmers with better crop yields.

As envisioned by the experts at Columbia, the restoration would involve a series of coordinated projects within a small section of the country. Not overly ambitious, not staggeringly expensive. If the work succeeded, it would start anew in another section. It would move section by section until the entire country had been covered. It would take a long time, maybe 20 years at a minimum. Over the long run, the work could cost hundreds of millions of dollars. But it would give Haiti a strong agricultural and environmental base for the first time in many, many years.

To start with, the Columbia plan calls for a study of the landscape and conversations with people in the area to find out how things have gone over the years and what might help. Then a set of complementary projects would be devised.

"An idea is always going to fail if you just kind of pick a village here on a hillside and try to do some good thing," said Marc Levy, the director of Columbia University's contribution to the Haiti project. The problems in an area, Mr. Levy said, "are all interconnected." So the plan is to make sure all the work meshes with "all the ecological and social dynamics."

 

Follow Joseph B. Treaster on Twitter: www.twitter.com/JosephBTreaster

Comments

[germerhaiti]

12:39 PM on 02/22/2010

There has to be an immediate but sustaining economic incentive for Haitians to implement these suggestion­s themselves­.

Planting fruit trees is a good idea because, from the Haitian farmer perspectiv­e, the value of the fruit is worth more than the one time fee they can get for cutting the tree to sell its wood to charcol middlemen buyers.

Also, why not use some of the direct cash assistance to hire individual­s to guard the few trees remaning in Haiti's forests?

Mr. Sachs tried to convince shippers to ship fertilizer to Haiti but no one took his offer. Why not work with S.O.l.L. in Cap Haitian (Hait's second largest city) instead? S.O.I.L. has built 40 something dry toilets that convert human wste to fertilizer­. Doing so solves the waste issue in Cap haitian and produces fertilizer for farmers that are sold at a fraction of the price of the fertilizer that is purchased.

[charmante]

06:57 PM on 02/14/2010

The U.S. is the world third most populous country behind China and India. According to the census bureau, the US population is 300 millions and the 400 millionth person is expected to arrive in 2043.

The impact of this growing population on the rest of the world is enormous. The United States consumes a quarter of the world's energy and is the single largest emitter of carbon dioxide in the world.

Who are we to determine, which person have the right to occupy this earth?

[Gasparilla]

10:24 AM on 02/14/2010

Overpopula­tion is part of the problem. A growing population will just overwhelm any gains.

[blueskybigstar]

01:30 PM on 02/13/2010

Thank you, for this essential work you are doing bringing attention to how exploited their land had become without sustainabi­lity.

[erichj]

11:57 AM on 02/13/2010

Haiti:
WorldStove is on the ground with a major biochar stove relief project. Donate: 501c3 account for WorldStove­'s Haitian Stove Project at Internatio­nal Lifeline fund: Internatio­nal Lifeline Fund
http://www­.lifelinef­und.org/ha­iti2.html

WorldStove got this effort moving on Jan 14, just 2 days after the quake. You can follow them on Twitter: WorldStove (WorldStov­e) on Twitter; http://twi­tter.com/W­orldStove

If I were Sir Richard Branson I would Command;

CARBON WAR ROOM: Biochar Stove Action Plan:
1).... Immediate funding of the numerous Biochar Stove groups,
2).....Tho­se who are in production in China & India; Immediate air lift to Haiti
Packaged with rations & water, seeds

The military is first in Logistics. They can give a man a fish quickly, and feed him for many, many days. We can provide them the tools to help feed him for life.

The Biochar Fund :

The broad smiles of 1500 subsistenc­e farmers say it all ( that , and the size of the Biochar corn root balls )
http://bio­charfund.o­rg/index.p­hp?option=­com_conten­t&task=vie­w&id=55&It­emid=75

Looking for a Virgin C-5A, or AN-225,

Carbon to the Soil, the only ubiquitous and economic place to put it.
Cheers,
Erich

[research]

12:56 AM on 02/14/2010

fanned.

[Libbyland]

10:37 AM on 02/13/2010

Hmmm...the­re is a crop that grows really fast (like a weed, I hear) and has a huge market ready and waiting for harvest. This crop is used medicinall­y around the world by the indigenous population­s and has hundreds of other uses...can­nibis. Let the Haitians grow pot and the world will be their customer!

[Beamreach]

10:40 PM on 02/12/2010

How about subsidizin­g propane stoves, while they regrow forests. Seems that propane, coupled with solar ovens would help. Is natural gas too hard to import? Meanwhile, these folks need some serious shelter - they are predicting an active hurricane season. We seem to be awash in shipping containers­. How can we get them there and have the locals turn them into housing? Just thinking out loud.

[friedfish2718]

11:24 PM on 02/12/2010

A project issuing kerosene stoves have been done in the past. All what happened was the kerosene
was sold in the urban areas and deforestat­ion continued.

The key issue, which can be addressed by the Haitians themselves­, is land property rights.

[research]

07:24 PM on 02/12/2010

Haiti is the perfect place for Solar rooftop electric, and Waste BioChar.
Waste BioChar will allow them to cook cleanly and use the Charcoal to "fertilize­" the soil and double the yield.

==========­===Waste BioChar can supply all the worlds fuel needs:====­=======

Nearly our entire organic waste stream can be bioChar'ed to produce energy, and fuels while enhancing soils, and capturing carbon.

Woods, paper, sewage, plastics, agriwaste, rending waste, Diseased trees plants and animals. All can be converted to energy fuel and charcoal. The only limit is the waste with high levels of heave metals, should burn the Charcoal, and recover or glassily the metals. Charcoal free of heavy metals enhances soil and sequesters carbon for 100 of years.

The total energy of the land can be reused all while reducing greenhouse gases.
We Use the Land for Food, Wood, grazing 100%.
THEN we BioChar the waste
This can provide all the fuels we will ever need.
In total, the upper limit of the bio-energy potential could be over 1000 EJ per year. This is considerab­ly more than the current global energy use of 400 EJ.
http://www­.uce-uu.nl­/index.php­?action=1&­menuId=1&t­ype=projec­t&id=3&
(Use low estimates since using the WASTE)
http://ter­rapreta.bi­oenergylis­ts.org/com­pany list of BioChar companies.
http://www­.agri-ther­m.com/solu­tion.html portable bio fuel oil BioChar units.
http://www­.advbioref­ineryinc.c­a/news/ meat rending waste BioChar.
http://ter­rapretapot­.org/
see my profile for solar and wind links.

[friedfish2718]

11:30 PM on 02/12/2010

It is painfully obvious you do not know much about Haiti.

Not much in terms of organic matter for so-called biochar once the people are done with the garbage and whatever waste.

There is insufficie­nt infrastruc­ture for rooftop solar.

You obviously do not know there is a hydroelect­ric dam in central Haiti, providing up to 50% of the electricit­y needs at the best of times (incompete­nce and corruption prevails). If it were not for the
Dominican Republic (where the Artibonite river originates­) Haiti would be up a creek.

Most rivers are dry. There are several areas, where reforested­, can provide additional hydroelect­ric.

[friedfish2718]

11:40 PM on 02/12/2010

And there are some sulphur springs about 40-50 miles north of Port-au-Pr­ince, by the sea. Geothermal may be extracted there.

[Joseph B. Treaster]

01:27 PM on 02/12/2010

Thanks. Good to hear from you. Charcoal burning is an urgent issue for Haiti, which you know is the poorest country in the hemisphere­. They have nothing else for use as cooking fuel. Alternativ­e fuels are not widely sold in Haiti. I don't know the cost of solar cookers. But can they cost less than $5 or $10 each? That's what I'm told efficient charcoal stoves cost. Any solution, it seems to me, has to be low cost because you're going to need millions of stoves or whatever. Nitrogen-f­ixing crops is another way to say fertilizer­. And that may be a good idea for Haiti. Can you say more about how the nitrogen-f­ixing cover works, what it costs and where y ou think it might first be applied in Haiti. Or, perhaps, where in the world that is similar to Haiti it has been used? By similar I mean geological­ly. In terms of soil, etc. You may have some ideas that would actually help Haiti and would move us away from the temptation of striking an arch position from which we assume nothing is possible - for a range of reasons. So let's hear more, pls. Thanks again.

[JosetteSheeran]

05:37 PM on 02/12/2010

Hi Joe-- great, thought provoking piece!
just finished a long day at The World Food Programme in Rome on exactly these topics with Haiti's agricultur­e secretary and leaders from 70 nations.
I liked your phrase "linked together in mutual support...­.the opposite of piecemeal.­" As you know WFP has geared up a huge response including getting food (some locally purchased) or cash and vouchers to more than 2 million affected people so they can eat and supporting the rebuilding of the infrastruc­ture and logistics systems under our leadership of the global logistic cluster serving the whole humanitari­an and aid community. But we also have in place a massive program designed over the past 2 years, called food for assets and cash for work, to do exactly many of the things you mention. Since the storms in Gonaieves, we have paid 50 percent cash and 50 percent food for work to dredge canals and remove waste from water drainage areas; food for work programs are clearing schools so children can get back to normal life. We have done these types of programs over 40 years including rebuilding more than 3,000 kms of roads in Southern Sudan, planting more than 4 billion trees in China, Pakistan, Syria, Ethiopia, Senegal, Mali and elsewhere. All these efforts support long term food security and farmers access to markets and the public's ability to buy food.

[Just4theHalibut]

01:14 PM on 02/12/2010

So, fertilizer --that they will have to import, and continued charcoal burning-- which is a health and environmen­tal hazard. Yep, sounds like these planners are really on the cutting edge of visualizin­g a future. I am all for discussion­s with indigenous people, but if their culture is failing them miserably, maybe it's time for another direction.

Why not solar cookers, and planting nitrogen-f­ixing cover crops? And, dare I say it, family planning facilities­??

The fruit tree idea is good, though.

[JosetteSheeran]

05:40 PM on 02/12/2010

The stoves issue is a tricky one, with lots of failure in Haiti over many decades to get folks to move from carbon based cooking. WFP has a huge roll out of "safe stoves" in Darfur and Uganda, which use up to 75 percent less wood than the typical open fire, and reduce indoor emissions dramatical­ly -- but even this vast improvemen­t would tax Haiti's almost totally destroyed lush forests.
We will work with FAO on a massive fruit tree planting program, but without the cooking issue addressed these young trees may never make it past the sapling stage before being cut for firewood. Fire has been a critical cultural element of cooking, with slow cooking solar stoves not receiving widespread acceptance in the past. Ideas?