From: Christic Institute <christic@igc.apc.org>
Subject: HAITI ACTION ALERT ENVIRONMENT
Followup-To: alt.activism.d
Originator: daemon@pencil.cs.missouri.edu
Organization: ?
Date: Mon, 27 Jul 1992 19:53:44 GMT

/* Written 11:45 am  Jul 27, 1992 by hrcoord in cdp:carnet.alerts */
/* ---------- "HAITI ACTION ALERT ENVIRONMENT" ---------- */
From: Human Rights Coordinator <hrcoord>
Subject: HAITI ACTION ALERT ENVIRONMENT

/* Written  6:08 am  Jul 27, 1992 by ewolpert in cdp:reg.carib */
HAITI COMMUNICATIONS PROJECT
11 INMAN STREET
CAMBRIDGE, MASSACHUSETTS 02139
TEL:  617-868-2900
FAX:  617-868-2395		Action Alert

Haiti is a beautiful tropical country with rich environmental and 
cultural resources.  It is also almost completely deforested and the 
recipient of toxic garbage produced in the United States.  Haiti's 
environmental problems cannot be separated from its economic and 
political situation.  And its environmental problems are compounded 
by specific U.S. policies.  By seeing how what we do in the U.S. is 
connected to the state of the environment in Haiti, we can begin to 
address the ecological crisis in the Third World by changing 
ourselves and our own country.

Haiti's environment is threatened because people are poor:
     The annual per capita income in Haiti is only 300 dollars.  While 
over 64% of the population is involved in farming, 60% are landless, 
and 620,000 farms operate on an average of only 1.3 hectacres per 
farm.  The poor and landless have consistently turned to Haiti's 
forested mountains in a desparate search for arable land.   Many 
steep and forested hillsides have been converted to fields, despite 
low fertility and problems of erosion.  The soil on these slopes 
quickly washes away when they are cleared, and fertility soon 
declines.  People are less able raise less food, and poverty increases.  
More poverty means more need for land under cultivation.  More 
hillsides are converted to fields, and the cycle continues.
       Despite the fact that poverty is the cause of much environmental 
degradation in Haiti,  U.S. efforts to halt the process of environmental 
degradation there have been consistently unsuccessful because they 
have failed to address the root cause.  In fact, although poverty is the 
cause of much environmental degradation in Haiti, U.S. efforts to help 
Haiti's environment have sometimes contributed to the growth of 
poverty.  
      In 1981, USAID, together with the US, Canadian, and Mexican 
Departments of Agriculture, began a program to eliminate the Haitian 
pig in order to eradicate a disease called "African Swine Fever."  The 
program had a devastating effect on Haitian small farmers, who 
depended on pigs for income to send children to school and family 
members to the hospital and to survive the seasons when no crops 
were produced.  Though a new, larger brand of pigs was imported to 
Haiti to replace the Creole pigs, the small farmers were not able to 
buy or keep these new breeds because of their high price and need 
for imported feed.  Without their Creole pigs, small farmers were 
forced to find other emergency sources of income.  Often that meant 
cutting down trees to make charcoal, farming fragile hillsides for 
cash crops, or moving to the cities to look for work.  Even many 
mango and avocado trees were cut down in the search for immediate 
cash needed for survival.  The net result has been the degradation of 
the natural environment and migration to the cities. By creating the 
conditions that result in environmental problems, the United States 
has participated in the destruction of Haiti's environment. 

Haiti's environment is threatened because Haiti has 
traditionally been ruled by governments that ignore the 
needs of the majority of the people and the land:
     Conservation and democracy have always gone  hand in hand in 
Haiti.  From 1957 to l986, Haiti was governed by the repressive 
Duvalier regime.  Under the Duvaliers, the peasants were subjected 
to the viciously oppressive "squeeze and sap system" (Sistem peze-
souse in Creole) by big landowners and corrupt government officials 
in the countryside.  In the mid-seventies,  peasants began to organize 
themselves to confront this system of extortion.  They formed 
marketing cooperatives to avoid exploitative middlemen and credit 
unions to avoid moneylenders.  From the beginning, these 
organizations were involved in conservation efforts.  Because the 
peasants depended so directly on the land, they could not afford for 
it to erode or to become desert.  Grassroots groups planted trees, 
constructed terraces for soil conservation, and organized communal 
forests.  These local initiatives, multiplied many times over 
throughout the country, amounted to a full-fledged environmental 
movement that was directly tied to peoples' well being.
      The democratic processes begun in the countryside finally 
reached the national level with the election of Jean-Bertrand Aristide 
in December, 1990.  Aristide received 67% of the popular vote in the 
internationally supervised elections.  Under Aristide, the peasants' 
organizations flourished, aided by a literacy campaign and extensive 
anti-corruption program.  For the first time, the national government 
supported the citizens' efforts to improve their own lot.  
      Because to take care of oneself is to take care of the land in 
Haiti, 
the opportunity for self-government resulted in a substantial 
increase in local conservation efforts.  All over the country, local 
chapters of peasants' organizations worked to combat erosion, plant 
trees, and restore the land to health and productivity.
      The rich and powerful who subsisted off of exploiting the 
peasants were threatened by these changes.  Opposition to Aristide 
grew among the traditional elites, and on September 30, 1991, the 
military staged a coup.  Immediately, Haiti's fledgling institutions of 
democratic self-government were attacked.  Aristide was ousted, and 
all self-help intitiatives, including conservation efforts, were 
targeted 
for repression.  
      Since the coup, reforestation projects, erosion control efforts, 
and 
communal forest projects have all been slowed down or stopped, 
primarily because small farmer groups are no longer permitted to 
meet.   In Haiti, where the democratic movement and the 
environmental movement have traditionally been linked, the 
repression of democratic intiatives has also been the repression of 
intiative to take care of the land.
    The United States government has failed to offer its full support to 
the restoration of full democratic self-government in Haiti.  While the 
Bush administration has consistently stated a commitment to the 
return of Aristide, our country has often acted to the contrary.  Most 
recently, on June 6 the Bush Administration began talks on a political 
settlement that would involve an international peacekeeping force in 
Haiti and a prime minister selected with the participation of the 
army.  Aristide and other Haitian democratic leaders deplore this 
solution as unconstitutional.  Under such terms, many analysts 
believe, Aristide would become nothing more than a figurehead 
president.  Only by consistently supporting the return of full 
democracy to Haiti can we support the environmental movement 
that is based in the small, community based grassroots organizations. 

Haiti's environment is threatened because the United States 
takes advantage of its poverty and political instability to 
avoid addressing its own environmental problems.
     In January, 1988, the renegade waste ship Khian Sea dumped in 
Haiti about 4,000 tons of toxic ash produced at Philadelphia's 
municipal incinerator.  It was falsely labelled as fertilizer.  Corrupt 
officials in the Namphy military government accepted money in 
exchange for the dumping of the toxic ash on Haitian land.  It was 
left unprotected on a beach, where it remains to this day.  The 
government that accepted the ash is gone, and the individuals that 
received money are no longer in power.  Local residents suffer the 
health effects of living near this toxic material, but the current 
military government in Haiti refuses to take responsibility for the 
people's health problems.  
       The United States government refuses to address the issue 
unless it hears from the Haitian government.  While the garbage was 
produced in the U.S.,  the consequences of the waste for the health of 
people and the environment has been passed from the U.S. to Haiti, 
where people are too poor and powerless to avoid getting dumped 
on.   

People in the United States can do something about Haiti's 
environmental problems:
By focusing on our own government, we can help Haiti address its 
environmental problems.  Specific U.S. policies compound the current 
state of ecological crisis in Haiti, and it is these policies that we, 
as 
Americans, can change.

     1)  By supporting federal legislation banning the international 
trade in hazardous waste, Americans can both stop this country from 
contributing to Haiti's environmental problems and force ourselves to 
address the problems we face with waste disposal in a constructive 
way.  We need to solve the problem of garbage, not pass the problem 
on.  Write or call your representative and ask him/her to write a 
letter to the Rules Committee of Congress urging that the 
Amendment to RCRA offered by Representative Town's (D-MN) be 
allowed to come to a vote on the floor of the House of 
Representatives.  This amendment calls for a ban of the waste trade 
with non-OECD (less industrialized) countries.  Ask your 
representatives to support this amendment in the event of a vote.
     2)  Americans can support the movement for the restoration of 
democracy in Haiti.  Because the military represses conservation 
efforts in Haiti when it represses small community groups, the 
restoration of a democratic government there is necessary for the 
protection of the ecology and the land.  Call or write President Bush 
and your representatives in Congress, and ask them to support the 
quick and unconditional  return of President Aristide to Haiti.  
     3)  Finally, Americans can encourage the U.S. development 
agencies to integrate the needs of people into their environmental 
protection programs.  In Haiti, environmental problems are human 
problems.  People depend on the land for their survival.  The cannot 
afford for the environment to be destroyed, but neither can they 
protect their environment without the possibility of organizing 
democratically. Write to Paul Roe at the Haiti desk of USAID and ask 
that the U.S. support sustainable development in Haiti through 
working with the farmer groups and other community organizations 
that are struggling to survive in Haiti. His address is ARA/CAR, U.S. 
State Department, Washington DC 20520
Newsgroups: misc.activism.progressive