In Haiti, Deforestation Grinds On And On And On

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"Sold by charbonniers to urban residents - for use in home cooking, bakeries and dry cleaners - charcoal accounts for 85 percent of Haiti's energy consumption. Electricity has never penetrated the rural interior where half the country's 8 million people live. Oil prices have risen dramatically over the last two years, making the dwindling forests the only fuel option for most Haitians.

But with every downed tree, this nation's natural legacy is going up in smoke. 'We're not fools; we know that this is destroying the land, but charcoal is what keeps us alive,' said Liberus Mesadieu, a 34-year-old farmer. 'This area used to be dense with trees, but we uprooted them all for the wood.'

The practice is not only decimating once-lush forests. The dearth of wood for homes has led to mining of rock and sand from Haiti's mountains to make cement, which intensifies erosion problems. In Port-au-Prince, at least 7,900 acres of land have been mined to build small homes in the expanding slums, according to the United Nations.

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The impact on local economies is similar to that of the coca industry in Colombia, where food crops are forsaken for the environmentally damaging plants and practices that provide the key ingredient in cocaine. The United States, foreign governments and international charities have been sponsoring reforestation projects in Haiti for decades. But the multimillion-dollar efforts are overwhelmed by Haiti's political instability and staggering poverty."

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http://www.kansas.com/mld/kansas/news/world/7503478.htm