HAITI

COUNTRY REPORT: FORESTRY OUTLOOK STUDY FOR THE CARIBBEAN

By

Serge Antoine

Emmanuel Prophete

INTRODUCTION

The Republic of Haiti occupies the western third of the island of Hispaniola. The other two thirds are occupied by the Dominican Republic. The island is situated between 18 and 22 degrees North latitude between Cuba and Puerto Rico. The Republic of Haiti has about 27 000 square kilometres and the population is estimated at 8 million inhabitants. 75% of the territory is composed of hillsides and mountains. The highest peak in Haiti, Morne La Selle, is 2667 meters of altitude.

CURRENT STATUS OF THE FOREST SECTOR

CURRENT FOREST COVER

In 1492, when Christopher Columbus arrived in Haiti, the island was well covered with forests. The Spanish colonization followed by the French colonization started the deforestation process that has continued to this day. Up till the end of the nineteenth century, Haiti exported logwood like Haematoxylon campechianum.

Given its topography, the island should still be covered with forests. However, the current forest cover of the country is less than 10%. An evaluation made in 1990 by BDPA* produced the following results:

Land cover and wood stock in Haiti

*BDPA: Bureau de Developpement et de Production Agricole, 1990

The former statistics dated from 1990. However, current evaluation suggests that in 1999 forest cover have been reduced to about 3%.

FOREST PRODUCTS AND SERVICES

Wood products

Wood is mainly consumed for construction (scaffolding, timber), furniture, woodcarving and fuelwood.

Construction

Timber - In the 1940's, the Pine Forest in the south-eastern part of the country was given in concession to SHADA (Société Haïtiano-Americaine de Developpement Agricole) for the production of timber. By 1960, the forest's sawmill was turned over to Haitian private companies. They did not harvest timber in a sustainable manner. Since the middle of the 80's, Minister of Agriculture has closed all the sawmills. Nonetheless, the people living within and close to the forest, continue illegal harvesting, and, of course in an unsustainable manner.

Hardwood like Lysisoma latisilica, Catalpa longisima, Ocotea sp, Cedrela odorata, Switenia mahogani and even some fruit trees are utilized as timber.

There is a crucial lack of data about the volume produced in the country. However, local production is far from enough, since we import every year, millions of dollars worth of forest products:

Scaffolding - Poles of various species growing especially in the south-western region of the country are used for supporting roof concrete casing until it has hardened. We have no statistics on the volume or number of poles used every year. But an estimate should be possible if we had the surface of concrete built annually, 4 poles being used per square foot and apparently two consecutive times.

Furniture and carving

The hardwoods mentioned above are furniture woods and S. mahogani is the only one used in carving.

Fuelwood

Fuelwood is used in three forms: firewood and charcoal and `bois gras'.

Firewood is used in the suburb area as well as in urban area respectively for cooking and for dry cleaning. Again we face the same problem of statistics. In the past, it would have been possible to gather data on this type of utilisation since anybody cutting had to be authorized by the nearest forest field agent. This structure being no longer in place, the volume is more and more difficult to estimate.

Charcoal is produced in the country and is used by about one million families in the urban regions. About 26 million bags of charcoal are estimated to be consumed every year. This is the equivalent of 5 million m³ per year. However, we import charcoal for barbecue.

It is estimated that more than 5 000 people are involved in charcoal-related business. Effort has been made by Haitian government to promote the utilisation of propane gas as a substitute to charcoal. But two drawbacks keep people from adopting these measures:

­  the propane gas burners are very expensive. From 150 gourdes when they were financed by government, their price has increased to at least 750 gourdes. (1 US dollar = 17.5 Haitian gourdes);

­  the bad experience that we had known during the political crisis of 1991 and the embargo that has followed forcing people to go back to charcoal use.

`Bois gras' are pine pieces of wood with a certain amount of resin extracted from pine trees to start charcoal combustion. Being done without a management plan, it is very harmful to the trees and therefore to the forest.

The next table 1 gives a better idea of what Haiti imports as wood products.

Source: Haitian Customs data gathered by Haitian Forest Resources Service cited by FAO

Non-wood forest products

Based on the use made of these products in Haiti, they can be classified in two categories: edible and medicinal products.

Edible products

Honey. Mostly produced in the Northeast region of the country, last year stock would have been of about one million gallons. But this stock faces a problem of marketing.

Edible Mushrooms. We have six edible mushrooms in the Pine Forest. One of them (the girolle) has a high market in Port-au-Prince (200 gourdes per kilo) as well as in other countries But there are not really systematically harvested and marketed . The next table will tell more about it.

Hunting is regulated in Haiti, but on paper only since there is no agent to enforce the laws just like in other fields. Snail harvesting is still at its beginning.

Medicinal products

These few products presented over more than 50 used are very useful to the people in two ways:

­  they do not have enough money to spend in occidental medicine;

­  they live in remote areas where there is no hospital and no healthcare Centre. Going see a physician is really time-consuming.

Real effort has to be made in assessing the potentiality of all of these products, the way there are being harvested in order to manage them in a sustainable manner.

Non-biological forest products

In addition to the material benefits we can expect from Haitian Pine forests, it can valued for its uniqueness, its species richness, its protective and recreative role.

Uniqueness

The island of Hispaniola is the only natural growing place of Pinus occidentalis. In the past, botanists thought that Cuba Sierra Maestria Pinus was the same as the one of the island of Haiti. But botanical differences lead them to rename the Cuban Pinus maestrensis.

Species richness

There is a great variety of species. The number is over one hundred of which some colourful and beautiful plants (Agava antillenum).

Protective role

We have three `big' forest areas in the country. The Pic Macaya and the Parc La Visite measuring respectively 2 000 and 4 000 hectares and the Pine Forest of 32 000 ha (but 15 000 in actual forest). Those woodlots are a kind of shelter for the South-western (Macaya) and the `Plaine du Cul de Sac' (Foret des Pins) areas. For example Foret des Pins being partly depleted, the small town of Fonds-Verrettes situated at the foothill of the forest has been half destroyed by the last two hurricanes Gordon and George.

In addition, the Forest is the `chateau d'eau' of Plaine du Cul de Sac. Although, no accurate figures can be yielded on the topic, the numerous trucks involved daily in water trade at Port-au-Prince is very indicative.

Recreative role

Two regions have certain capacity for tourism: Foret des Pins and La Visite. Facilities at La Visite are a private initiative while we inherited the bungalows in the Pine Forest from SHADA that passed them to the government as stipulated in the contract.

At Foret des Pins, we receive about 1 tourist a day. But a lot remains to be done to increase the number of tourists. Effort should be focused on:

­  transportation. The road to this area is in very bad shape particularly after the passage of the hurricanes;

­  increasing and improving the bungalows.

In a short period of time, contracts will be passed with private business to manage those bungalows.

INSTITUTION STRENGTHENING

So far, the Forest Resources Service can not cope adequately with the numerous data to collect because of the weakness of its capacities: lack and misuse of the trained staff and budget problem

Lack and miss-use of personnel

The Service used to have field agents dispatched all over the territory. These agents could have helped in gathering data we need for better management. But since 1991, those agents have been suspended and nothing is done yet to reactivate the system

Moreover, out of thirteen Post-graduates in the field that used to work for the Service , only two for the moment are really involved in forestry matters. Same thing for the undergraduates who are at least 50 trained; only thirteen got a forest-related job.

The problem could have found a solution at least for the undergraduates - 50 more undergraduates are being trained-, had it not been the funding constraint.

Funding

Funding has known some ups and downs over years. Ups when the World Bank, together with the Japanese Fund, accepts a loan or a grant to the country. This was the case in the late 80's and this the case now. Downs when there is no international assistance, budget falls to the salaries of some fifteen cadres between the financing of two projects.

Structural adjustment keeps government from hiring more people. This situation is not of any help for the Forest Resources Service and forestry sector.

Other funds must be available in the private sector or elsewhere in order to make ends meet during the period of shortage. Also, cadres should be used according to their training and experience.