FHAS, Inc.

What explains the vulnerability of Haiti?

One of the key reasons for the greater frequency of disasters in Haiti is the effect on the environment of human activity in both developed and developing nations. In Haiti, the major problem is the deforestation.

Environmental degradation

Deforestation occurs when people cut down too many trees without replanting. In some instances it happens when companies and governments plot large areas for commercial purposes.

Deforestation can also happen when poor communities clear land to grow crops, build houses or gather firewood for heating or cooking.

Deforestation in Haiti and its negative effects has been the result of poor communities seeking a means of survival.

Deforested land is more likely to flood severely because heavy rain on newly bare land moves much faster than on forested areas. With too few trees to hold the soil together, landslides and mudslides can occur.

Deforestation endangers lives and property at stake, as essential topsoil is washed away. When farmers rebuild, they may find their crops don’t grow as well as before.

Pollution and global warming

Global warming is believed to be changing weather patterns around the world. As the Earth’s average surface temperature rises, due to the increase of carbon dioxide in the atmosphere created by human activity, the Earth’s climate is changing. The icecaps are melting, rainfall patterns are changing, and storms are becoming more frequent. Country like Haiti, due to his geographical position and it inadequate emergency structure, if any, is often more affected by this phenomenon, i.e., more frequent and destructive hurricanes.

Can we prevent natural disasters?

It may seem that mankind has no control over natural disasters, but in fact there’s a great deal that can be done to reduce their impact.

The Haitian Foundation for Social Assistance recommends a ten-year project of reforestation. This project will offer monetary incentives to the farmers who plant trees. As a source of incomes for the farmer, he will be self motivated in getting the highest numbers of trees.

More affluent nations such as Canada, England, France, Brazil, Germany, Japan and United States will be asked to assist in this project according to their means. We will need seeds, grains and economics support.

Who’s most vulnerable?

Drought, floods, cyclones, tropical storm, and hurricanes are some of the many natural disasters in Haiti. When one of these disasters occurs, it affects the whole country in general. Drought leads directly to more famine in Haiti, especially in the western region of the country. Injuries and deaths from natural disasters always happen, by tens of thousands, as has happened in recent years.

Most victims of natural disasters live in poor cities where emergency services like first aid, fire brigades or ambulances do not exist. Doctors or hospitals facilities do not often available to treat the injured. It is a total impossibility for the poorest Haitian people to have insurance to help them rebuild their homes. Inefficient government representatives in a poor country like Haiti cannot financially support anyone when droughts or floods strike farmers and inhabitants. Naturally it is the people with the least that are at risk of losing the most.

Often a population exodus of poor from rural villages to larger cities results increasing the risk of epidemics in certain areas called “slums”. The powerlessness of these desperately poor to afford proper building materials, their houses are often unsafe and more likely to be destroyed.

So that when disaster strikes more people are affected.

What is a slum in Haiti?

A slum “called bidonvil or tin city” is an urban settlement of makeshift houses with few or no basic services and crowded, unhealthy living conditions. Usually slums are inhabited by people who can’t afford to live anywhere else.

They are often found on the outskirts of cities or in dangerous areas where no one else wants to live. Crimes in these areas sometimes become a source of incomes.

About 40 % of the Haitian population lives in slums, most of them for their whole lives. They are generally neglected by governments and residents often have few of the rights of other citizens for their aggressive tendencies.

Slum dwellers sometimes try to fight back to gain basic rights and opportunities, because they really do not like their mode of life. Sometimes all it takes is a few resources and skills training. But, in Haiti even those with skills don’t have the same opportunities.

Why are there so many slums in Haiti?

The number of people living in cities has grown dramatically in Haiti over the past three decades and often governments or city authorities in the country haven’t made plans to cope.

With little affordable housing, the poorest people often have no choice but to set up their homes on vacant land or to rent a tin walled room in an existing slum area.

What life is like in a slum?

Since they are unplanned, slums usually have no basic services like running water, sanitation and electricity. There are no toilets, garbage bins, street lights, postal deliveries, roads, parks, playgrounds, appropriate schools or valuable healthcare centers.

Accommodations are often made out of cardboard, tin, plastic, wood or other materials. In a typical house, five or six people live or are confined in one room.

Lacking sewers or clean water and with people squashed together, epidemical disease spreads easily. There is no trash collection. Rubbish piles up around the slums, or is burnt, causing smog and air pollution.

Help changing life

Even though slums are often full of rubbish and pollution, the people that live there are just as anxious as anyone else to live in a clean environment. Many slum dwellers keep their houses, no matter how modest, immaculately clean and tidy. Families are proud to refurbish their aluminum cups and pots and expose them in the sun.

They often use water from the canals, for cooking and washing themselves and their clothes. (See pictures15 and up). But it’s hard to avoid dirt and disease when you have an open sewer for your ‘backyard’.

It is a fact that government representatives in Haiti, after their elections, tend to ignore slums and the millions of people that live in them after their elections. But, if they could work with slum dwellers to provide skills training and improve living conditions, many of the Haitian unfortunates will find a way to change their lives forever.

Those living in urban slums are desperate to find relief services in order to help change their problems. They can not do it by themselves. This is one of the reasons that the Haitian Foundation for Social Assistance plead for everybody’s help.

A Project that can save lives & environment

Haitian people are in a catch-22 situation. Their environment suffers so they can survive in the short term; but everyone knows long-term survival depends on a healthy environment.

We confidently believe that there are ways to improve living conditions and grow enough food without destroying the environment that people depend on.

Often, the most vulnerable people end up living on the least fertile or most hazardous land. Most Haitian families do not have clean water and proper sanitation systems.

In struggling to exist and grow enough food, they may be forced to damage their own environment. Cut the trees to buy food and seeds to plant which results in a catastrophe, because there is no water to help these plants to produce.

The consequences are driven to a more severe over-farming, for cutting down trees because cooking fuel is unaffordable, or contaminating waterways because they lack basic sanitation like toilets.

By learning appropriate ways to manage their land, vegetation and water sources, some of the poorest people can make a living now, and for years to come.