DEVELOPMENT: NATION ON ENVIRONMENTAL BRINK SCRAMBLES FOR A LIFELINE
(Greenwire, 11/09/2009)
Nathanial Gronewold, E&E reporter
First of a four-part series.
PORT-AU-PRINCE, Haiti -- A hard rain can be deadly here. A family of four was reported killed late last month when rushing stormwater loosened soil under their hillside house and brought the structure down on them.
The denuded slopes around this city of 2 million turn stormwater into lethal torrents. Trees, shrubs and other vegetation that anchor soil and buffer runoff are rare here. They mark private compounds of the wealthy, islands of green protected by fences and armed guards in a sea of slums that have sprawled up sandy hills as the city's population tripled over the past 20 years.
"They are informal human settlements with very, very weak construction methods," said Stephanie Ziebell, an aid worker with the Mission des Nations Unies pour la Stabilisation en Haiti, or MINUSTAH, the United Nations' only peacekeeping mission in the Americas. "There's nothing to protect them from water flooding down from the hillside."
Haiti -- the developing world's first and oldest independent nation -- is today a ward of the United Nations, dependent on foreign aid and the $612-million-a-year peacekeeping operation that only recently managed to smother the violence that has long plagued this country.
But it is violence done to the environment that is haunting Haiti now. Degradation of natural resources here is both a consequence and an amplifier of poverty and disorder. The country has become a poster child for environmental neglect, and many fear Haiti is close to total ecological collapse. Haiti has few and weak environmental laws. Its dense population has just two small national parks where no agency protects resources. Its forests have been overharvested, its marine resources overexploited.
"The environmental degradation has gotten to such a point that there's danger everywhere," said Jean-Cyril Pressoir, a Haitian native and owner of a new tour company here.
But the response to the growing crisis does not involve massive World Bank-financed industrial projects that were common in the past and put wads of cash into the pockets of U.S. or European experts. Instead, money and resources are now being diverted to smaller-scale pilot projects designed mostly by Haitians themselves, with a goal of saving their country and perhaps creating a new development paradigm.
"The crucial thing, because we're a country facing both an energy security crisis and a food security crisis, is how can we reconcile energy security and food security?" said Gael Pressoir, Jean-Cyril's brother and founder of a new nonprofit setting out to do just that.
Haiti's greatest challenge by far is deforestation. At the heart of the problem: the demand for charcoal. The country's 10 million residents meet 60 percent of their commercial and residential energy needs with charcoal. It is used in most household cooking but also runs bakeries, laundries, sugar refineries and rum distilleries. Charcoal production is a major factor in the deforestation that experts say has felled 98 percent of Haiti's tree cover, with the remaining 2 percent disappearing fast. While mature trees provide the best material for charcoal production, the scarcity of wood has forced people to take smaller and smaller trees and shrubs. Today people are even pulling roots to make charcoal.
Haitians are aware of the damage being done to their landscape, but they say the deforestation for charcoal persists because there are few employment opportunities. About 80 percent of the population survives on less than $2 per day in income; the country ranks 149 out of 182 nations on the Human Development Index, a comparative measure of the quality of life. But that drive to extract more and more from diminishing resources is only adding to the Haitians' problems.
There is "a very high rainfall-to-casualties ratio in Haiti -- mudslides, flooding, flash floods, etc.," said Matthew Marek, an official with the American Red Cross who has lived here for seven years. "It's probably fair to say that ... Haiti has experienced natural disaster-related fatalities regularly."
From security worries to biofuel development?
Concerns about Haiti's environment have risen recently as security has improved.
U.N. troops arrived in 2004 following the latest in a series of U.S. military interventions, prompted when armed factions took over several rural towns and demanded the removal of former President Jean-Bertrand Aristide. Aristide was eventually forced out, but mass insecurity continued until last year. Gangs took over municipalities and much of Port-au-Prince, which endured 30 to 50 kidnappings per month before U.N. forces took control. Crime continues to be a problem, but kidnappings are down; at least eight a month on average were reported during the first six months of this year.
"The security situation in Haiti today is very stable, absolutely under control compared to what we used to have along the years since 2004," Maj. Gen. Floriano Peixoto Vieira Neto, the Brazilian force commander of MINUSTAH's roughly 7,000 troops, said in an interview. "We have reached such a stable condition that all the national and international agencies can really work in order to restore the country to a normal situation."
As security normalizes, a Haitian nonprofit is proceeding quickly with a plan to stabilize degraded hillsides, which threaten entire neighborhoods now as well as the nation's future development.
Gael Pressoir, a plant geneticist, believes the answer to the nation's deforestation and energy woes lies in Mexico and with a nontoxic variety of the jatropha plant that grows wild there.
A former researcher at Cornell University, Pressoir passed on the opportunity for a lucrative career in U.S. agribusiness to return to Haiti and establish CHIBAS, a nonprofit biofuel venture featuring jatropha. He flew to Mexico two weeks ago to find the jatropha seeds he will need to begin his experiment, which he maintains could solve Haiti's deforestation and fuel problems.
Jatropha has the same protein concentration as soybean, meaning that like soy, its seeds and oil can be transformed to biodiesel and other fuels.
Last year, Haiti spent nearly $380 million importing diesel fuel to power its electrical generators, almost all of it from Venezuela and at a discount under Venezuelan President Hugo Chávez's Petro Caribe initiative. Mass production of jatropha-based biodiesel could potentially offset this entirely, freeing those funds for other sectors of the Haitian economy.
Jatropha can also be used to make straight vegetable oil, which could power electrical generators in rural areas. The pulp waste generated from creating biodiesel and vegetable oil is rich in nutrients and can be turned into either compost for crops or animal feed for chickens, pigs, and even tilapia in small aquaculture operations.
Moreover, jatropha is an extremely hardy bush. The plant can thrive in poor soil that other plants cannot take root in, including Haiti's eroded hillsides. Funding has been secured from the Inter-American Development Bank, and Pressoir is scouting sites in the outskirts of the capital for pilot growing projects slated to begin early next year. He fully expects others to rapidly copy him if the pilots turn out to be a success.
"We are going to be conducting a mapping of Haiti to characterize where we can grow jatropha without affecting food production. That's strategy No. 1," Pressoir said. "Ultimately, the success of the pilot project is what's going to make the success or failure of the whole industry."
The government is also interested in what CHIBAS is doing. Though Brazilian diplomats have been working hard to sell their sugar-cane ethanol model for energy independence, officials here have reportedly dismissed it in favor of jatropha and possibly sorghum. Haiti already grows a lot of sugar cane, but the crop consumes a lot of water and competes with food crops for prime growing land.
Initiative features small, local projects
While CHIBAS works on deforestation on one track, the Haitian government is receiving gentle encouragement from one of the United Nations' smallest agencies on another.
Antonio Perera, a program manager with the U.N. Environment Programme, is working with officials on a comprehensive plan to restore the nation's lost forests. Having set up shop in the country just eight months ago -- after MINUSTAH troops and police officers made it safe to do so -- Perera has been undertaking a painstaking survey of the Haitian territory to determine where tree cover can best be restored without upsetting food production or incurring the wrath of various landowners.
A report spelling out one course of action is now under review, and the hope is to launch a concrete program early next year. While the details are being kept under wraps, Perera said the plan involves a collection of locally designed, incremental projects expected to take at least 20 years to complete and cost some $1 billion.
Perera's team is starting out by working with other agencies with more extensive experience here, most notably the World Food Programme. Several food production efforts are already under way, but UNEP is trying to devise ways that forest protection and restoration can be incorporated.
Organizers of the reforestation campaign insist the government must quickly take charge, lest the campaign be dismissed early on by the citizenry as more uninvited meddling by foreigners. Though UNEP is now taking the lead, it aims to turn the scheme entirely over to Haitian officials by the end of 2010 or early 2011. But given the chaotic state of government institutions, highlighted further by last month's dismissal of the prime minister after a raucous 10-hour Senate session, that is easier said than done.
"The problem is not the lack of enthusiasm," Perera said. "The challenge is to create the capacities inside those ministries in such a way that they can lead an initiative like this in the near future."
Cultivating jatropha on barren hillsides and a variety of other targeted reforestation efforts can, over time, go far in reducing Haiti's extreme vulnerability to the storms and powerful hurricanes that routinely sweep over the nation. But ultimately, experts say the nation has to find an alternative or outright replacement for charcoal, the dominant source of energy here.
"With any reforestation campaign, you have to find first a solution for energy," Perera said.
'A very sensitive moment'
Energy figures prominently in CHIBAS and the efforts of a community group to change household fuels.
CHIBAS says some pulp fibers from processed jatropha could be converted into burnable material, and households could use that for cooking.
And the community organization is transforming urban trash into burnable bricks of recycled paper (see related story). That initiative also started at a very small scale, but domestic demand for the charcoal substitute is growing fast, helping the pilot project gain notice throughout the country and abroad.
These proposed solutions to Haiti's environmental and energy crises seem almost too good to be true. They require relatively little financial assistance to get started and produce marketable, commercially competitive materials that could transform whole segments of the economy.
But what is needed most is a government capable of providing security and the fiscal and administrative incentives to see them through.
Though no one has been willing to admit it publicly, U.N. officials and locals both quietly speculate that Haiti could easily become another Somalia if MINUSTAH troops and police left today. But all acknowledge that they cannot stay forever, either, meaning that eventually the Haitian leadership will have to step up and assume the responsibilities that it has shirked for decades.
"I feel that we are in a very sensitive moment," said Didier Le Bret, France's newest ambassador to Haiti. "The prerequisite is that we have to keep the country stable, to keep in the people a feeling that they are not risking their lives every day. And if this is to be consolidated, then I think everything will follow."
Tuesday, November 10, 2009
ARTICLE - NYT - RECYCLING IN HAITI
Recycling is catching on here in Haiti! One of the biggest problems here in Port-au-Prince that is also the most visible is the amount of garbage everywhere. Here is an article that the New York Times published today. We've been making briquettes here at Coram Deo on a small scale for several years. When we had more handicapped people living here it was a make work project for them. Willy and Joel are trying to set up a project in Cite Soleil for people there. Pray for recycling to catch on here in Haiti! What a great way to get rid of garbage!
RECYCLING IN HAITI EASES TENSIONS IN "A VERY VIOLENT NEIGHBORHOOD
By NATHANIAL GRONEWOLD of Greenwire
Published: November 9, 2009
PORT-AU-PRINCE, Haiti -- Two years ago, the Carrefour Feuilles (pronounced "kar-ah-fur fay") neighborhood was considered too dangerous for U.N. peacekeepers who were not protected by armored vehicles. And even today, a dozen or so Sri Lankan troops garrisoned here nervously stand watch behind heavy fortifications. But Carrefour Fueilles has turned out to be perfect for an experimental solid waste processing and recycling plant set up by people who live in the neighborhood.
"We helped to create the conditions that made it possible for [U.N. peacekeepers] to come and protect us," said Patrick Massenat, the president of the group that opened the recycling plant in 2007.
The recycling initiative could also be key to ending Haiti's dangerous overreliance on charcoal for energy -- responsible for the loss of 98 percent of the nation's forests. The plant converts waste paper collected from the streets to hockey puck-sized "briquettes" that burn hotter than charcoal and cost half as much. It also employs 385 people, paying each about $4 per day, comparable to pay for government workers.
The United Nations has been helping neighborhood leaders organize and finance the recycling plant and other environmental initiatives in slums that were scenes of heavy gun battles between Brazilian and Jordanian troops and gangs that controlled much of the capital. Such jobs produce fuel for cooking, control flooding from denuded hillsides and grow desperately needed crops.
"Carrefour Feuilles is a poor neighborhood, populated neighborhood, with people in a precarious situation there, and before the project settled, it was known as a very violent neighborhood," said Eliana Nicolini, a Brazilian U.N. aid worker coordinating the recycling project. "So far, it is a small little setup."
What is most notable about these projects is that they do not fall under the jurisdiction of U.N. environmental experts or urban specialists. They are overseen by the community violence reduction arm of the 10,000-strong peacekeeping operation, MINUSTAH. The specialized unit, established in 2006, is most active in Port-au-Prince but has also mobilized efforts to build drainage canals and enhance fishing in rural areas.
Even though troops have largely quelled gang violence, political and social tensions in the poorest neighborhoods persist. But residents say putting people to work on environmental cleanup projects is making life better and having a noticeably calming affect.
MINUSTAH's community violence reduction, or CVR, section is involved in more than 30 projects nationwide and has a budget of $3.4 million. Projects are conceived by the Haitians themselves and launched after being vetted by not only engineers and agronomy experts but also sociologists and psychologists.
The Carrefour Feuilles initiative is arguably unique, holding the potential to transform the national economy and halt Haiti's most serious environmental problem, deforestation.
Here is how it works:
Workers scour the neighborhood each morning to gather trash from bins they have set up and sometimes from households. Trucks haul refuse to a compound where recyclables are separated from the organic waste. Plastic, metal and glass are exported to recyclers in Taiwan, China, Canada and elsewhere, as there is no infrastructure in Haiti to process the materials. About 18 to 20 percent of the remaining refuse is hauled off to landfills.
What the plant is really after is paper and cardboard. After the paper is separated, workers mix it with water and sawdust and mash it into a cellulose pulp. The pulp is packed into PVC molds and compacted with a hydraulic press to squeeze out water, making a briquette that is left to dry in the sun for about a week.
The plant produces 700 to 1,000 briquettes a day this way, a fuel that burns hotter and cleaner than charcoal. And it is doing that with technology that is entirely Haitian and requires no electricity. The only fuel is gasoline for the trucks.
Mayors from all over Haiti have visited the facility, and government officials are eager to establish similar centers all over the country and expand the distribution of waste-paper briquettes.
"It's not yet sold massively on the street, but we know that as time goes by and in the next upcoming weeks, the distribution will go further and it will be more accessible," said Adam Otly, 40, who works at the plant.
Replacing charcoal
Otly and other workers here are confident the briquettes will be a massive hit throughout Haiti.
Two cans of charcoal -- what is required to cook enough food to feed the average-sized family for a day -- costs about 50 gourdes, or a half-day's income. But it would cost 11 gourdes to cook the equivalent amount of food with the center's briquettes.
"If you put 2 liters of water to boil with charcoal, it takes 17 minutes. With the briquette, the same quantity of water will boil in 11 minutes," said Jeanette Sejou, 36, a plant employee who has seven children. "So the savings is not only in our pocket, it's also in time."
The price is subsidized now in an effort to spread the product's popularity, and officials admit they eventually will have to double the price to stay profitable, but that still makes the briquettes less than half the cost of charcoal. But project developers are moving carefully to promote the briquettes. On the day the briquettes hit the market, charcoal vendors started to have trouble selling their wares, raising tensions between retailers.
Massenat, whose neighborhood committee opened the recycling plant, believes charcoal vendors will eventually switch to briquettes as they see the new fuel source is in their and their communities' best interest. "If we're cleaning the streets, we're cleaning their streets. If we're making briquettes by recycling something and protecting the environment, it's good for them," Massenat said. "We're building something for their future and their children's future."
CVR work expands
Meanwhile, the U.N. peacekeepers' community violence reduction section is pushing ahead with other projects. CVR is trucking young workers from the most violent Port-au-Prince neighborhoods, many of them former gang members, to hillsides to build dry walls that would slow stormwater rushing off the hills and steer it away from vulnerable neighborhoods.
And it is encouraging people to grow food in massive urban gardens, echoing a movement that is popular in U.S. cities.
"Over 4,000 families grow their food in the urban slums," said Jean Metens, a U.N. Food and Agriculture Organization officer in Haiti. "It's mind-boggling, because you'd think of the slums as an area of concrete and no life at all, and they actually grow food."
The growing environmental initiatives could hold the key to peacekeeping troops' eventual departure. Nicolini, the aid worker coordinating the recycling project, said the United Nations hopes to be out of the Carrefour Feuilles project by the end of next year.
"We see this, in a sense, as buying time until governance can kick in," said Stephanie Ziebell, a U.S. employee of the CVR section.
Copyright 2009 E&E Publishing. All Rights Reserved.
For more news on energy and the environment, visit http://www.greenwire.com/.
RECYCLING IN HAITI EASES TENSIONS IN "A VERY VIOLENT NEIGHBORHOOD
By NATHANIAL GRONEWOLD of Greenwire
Published: November 9, 2009
PORT-AU-PRINCE, Haiti -- Two years ago, the Carrefour Feuilles (pronounced "kar-ah-fur fay") neighborhood was considered too dangerous for U.N. peacekeepers who were not protected by armored vehicles. And even today, a dozen or so Sri Lankan troops garrisoned here nervously stand watch behind heavy fortifications. But Carrefour Fueilles has turned out to be perfect for an experimental solid waste processing and recycling plant set up by people who live in the neighborhood.
"We helped to create the conditions that made it possible for [U.N. peacekeepers] to come and protect us," said Patrick Massenat, the president of the group that opened the recycling plant in 2007.
The recycling initiative could also be key to ending Haiti's dangerous overreliance on charcoal for energy -- responsible for the loss of 98 percent of the nation's forests. The plant converts waste paper collected from the streets to hockey puck-sized "briquettes" that burn hotter than charcoal and cost half as much. It also employs 385 people, paying each about $4 per day, comparable to pay for government workers.
The United Nations has been helping neighborhood leaders organize and finance the recycling plant and other environmental initiatives in slums that were scenes of heavy gun battles between Brazilian and Jordanian troops and gangs that controlled much of the capital. Such jobs produce fuel for cooking, control flooding from denuded hillsides and grow desperately needed crops.
"Carrefour Feuilles is a poor neighborhood, populated neighborhood, with people in a precarious situation there, and before the project settled, it was known as a very violent neighborhood," said Eliana Nicolini, a Brazilian U.N. aid worker coordinating the recycling project. "So far, it is a small little setup."
What is most notable about these projects is that they do not fall under the jurisdiction of U.N. environmental experts or urban specialists. They are overseen by the community violence reduction arm of the 10,000-strong peacekeeping operation, MINUSTAH. The specialized unit, established in 2006, is most active in Port-au-Prince but has also mobilized efforts to build drainage canals and enhance fishing in rural areas.
Even though troops have largely quelled gang violence, political and social tensions in the poorest neighborhoods persist. But residents say putting people to work on environmental cleanup projects is making life better and having a noticeably calming affect.
MINUSTAH's community violence reduction, or CVR, section is involved in more than 30 projects nationwide and has a budget of $3.4 million. Projects are conceived by the Haitians themselves and launched after being vetted by not only engineers and agronomy experts but also sociologists and psychologists.
The Carrefour Feuilles initiative is arguably unique, holding the potential to transform the national economy and halt Haiti's most serious environmental problem, deforestation.
Here is how it works:
Workers scour the neighborhood each morning to gather trash from bins they have set up and sometimes from households. Trucks haul refuse to a compound where recyclables are separated from the organic waste. Plastic, metal and glass are exported to recyclers in Taiwan, China, Canada and elsewhere, as there is no infrastructure in Haiti to process the materials. About 18 to 20 percent of the remaining refuse is hauled off to landfills.
What the plant is really after is paper and cardboard. After the paper is separated, workers mix it with water and sawdust and mash it into a cellulose pulp. The pulp is packed into PVC molds and compacted with a hydraulic press to squeeze out water, making a briquette that is left to dry in the sun for about a week.
The plant produces 700 to 1,000 briquettes a day this way, a fuel that burns hotter and cleaner than charcoal. And it is doing that with technology that is entirely Haitian and requires no electricity. The only fuel is gasoline for the trucks.
Mayors from all over Haiti have visited the facility, and government officials are eager to establish similar centers all over the country and expand the distribution of waste-paper briquettes.
"It's not yet sold massively on the street, but we know that as time goes by and in the next upcoming weeks, the distribution will go further and it will be more accessible," said Adam Otly, 40, who works at the plant.
Replacing charcoal
Otly and other workers here are confident the briquettes will be a massive hit throughout Haiti.
Two cans of charcoal -- what is required to cook enough food to feed the average-sized family for a day -- costs about 50 gourdes, or a half-day's income. But it would cost 11 gourdes to cook the equivalent amount of food with the center's briquettes.
"If you put 2 liters of water to boil with charcoal, it takes 17 minutes. With the briquette, the same quantity of water will boil in 11 minutes," said Jeanette Sejou, 36, a plant employee who has seven children. "So the savings is not only in our pocket, it's also in time."
The price is subsidized now in an effort to spread the product's popularity, and officials admit they eventually will have to double the price to stay profitable, but that still makes the briquettes less than half the cost of charcoal. But project developers are moving carefully to promote the briquettes. On the day the briquettes hit the market, charcoal vendors started to have trouble selling their wares, raising tensions between retailers.
Massenat, whose neighborhood committee opened the recycling plant, believes charcoal vendors will eventually switch to briquettes as they see the new fuel source is in their and their communities' best interest. "If we're cleaning the streets, we're cleaning their streets. If we're making briquettes by recycling something and protecting the environment, it's good for them," Massenat said. "We're building something for their future and their children's future."
CVR work expands
Meanwhile, the U.N. peacekeepers' community violence reduction section is pushing ahead with other projects. CVR is trucking young workers from the most violent Port-au-Prince neighborhoods, many of them former gang members, to hillsides to build dry walls that would slow stormwater rushing off the hills and steer it away from vulnerable neighborhoods.
And it is encouraging people to grow food in massive urban gardens, echoing a movement that is popular in U.S. cities.
"Over 4,000 families grow their food in the urban slums," said Jean Metens, a U.N. Food and Agriculture Organization officer in Haiti. "It's mind-boggling, because you'd think of the slums as an area of concrete and no life at all, and they actually grow food."
The growing environmental initiatives could hold the key to peacekeeping troops' eventual departure. Nicolini, the aid worker coordinating the recycling project, said the United Nations hopes to be out of the Carrefour Feuilles project by the end of next year.
"We see this, in a sense, as buying time until governance can kick in," said Stephanie Ziebell, a U.S. employee of the CVR section.
Copyright 2009 E&E Publishing. All Rights Reserved.
For more news on energy and the environment, visit http://www.greenwire.com/.
Sunday, November 8, 2009
photos - november clinic - part 1
On Thursday Dr. Karen McCarthy and a medical team came and held a clinic here at Coram Deo. We give the Lord thanks for their willingness to help out the people here in the Delmas 31 community. Since our tree was chopped/trimmed, we hung up our large tarp to provide shelter from the sun for those who were waiting to register.
We had enough benches for everyone to have a seat while they waited.
This is the registration area.
The pharmacy was set up at the front. The team came with lots of medicine.
Jn. Eddy is helping to explain to this mother how to give the medicines to her child.photos - november clinic - part 2
After registering people waited on the bench to see a medical provider.
Dr. Karen McCarthy was one of the health providers.
Diane is a nurse practitioner. Our kitchen was used as one of the consulting areas.
Kez helped too. She regularly goes through the ravine by Sheri's place to treat children who have medical problems.
Pastor Pierre was the gatekeeper for the day.photos - november clinic - part 3
Lesita is a 43-year-old woman who looks very pregnant except she has been this way since 2007.
She needs to have a sonogram done to find out what is causing her abdomen to be so large. Pray that we can find out what is her problem and the solution for it.
This 9-year-old boy is malnourished and also severely handicapped. He has a g-tube in place but the mother can not afford to buy ensure. He is not able to eat. The mother has a difficult task in looking after him.
There were elderly people at the clinic. This woman was resting while she waited to see the doctor.
This elderly man has cataracts in both of his eyes.photos - november clinic - part 4
This young girl has a skin infection that needs treatment.
This boy is waiting with his mother.
Here is another photo of a mother and child who came to the clinic
This mother is sitting in the chair waiting for her consultation.
These 2 children received a pair of sunglasses too as their prescription!photos - Kings' Hospital - part 1
King's Hospital is located in the Petite Place Cazeau area off of Delmas 33. A surgery team came from the United States to perform hernia surgeries.
Cheristil Pierre lives in the mountains of Kenscoff and came down with Pastor Pierre and a few other people.
Louiton Charles was selected for hernia surgery as well. He lives here in Port-au-Prince.
Raynold Demostin is a young man who was also selected for hernia surgery.
Raynold Sene was selected for a hernia repair too.
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