Haiti

Overview

Haiti is located in the high latitude tropics, between 18 and 23o north. Its position and mountainous terrain, with peaks up to 2 684 meters and few arable plains, have created extremes of weather and temperature regimes which vary greatly with altitude. Haiti's land area of 27 700 km2 is primarily mountainous, 63 percent of the land has slopes greater than 20 percent, over 40 percent of all lands are above 400 meters in elevation and only 29 percent has slopes less than 10 percent. Rainfall ranges from 300 mm in the northwest peninsula to 3 000 mm in the mountains of the southwest. Extreme events such as hurricanes, droughts and floods are quite frequent.

Due to its mountainous nature and its high population of almost eight million persons on the relatively small surface area, Haiti relies upon a disproportionate amount of steep hillsides to meet much of its agricultural production. Erosion is thus the most serious problem affecting the agricultural sector, with an annual soil loss of about 36 million Tons. The overwhelming environmental problem of the country is thus soil erosion. This has led to declining crop yields, damage to downstream lands and water development projects and the destruction of coastal marine resources. Most hillsides are highly eroded and most widely practised cropping systems encourage continued erosion.

With limited economic growth and resources, and severe infrastructure problems, Haiti remains vulnerable to environmental degradation. Two or more crops a year are grown in most areas under the bimodal rainfall distribution with its possibilities of multicropping.

Institutions responsible for the management of the environment in Haiti

Table 1 shows the institutions responsible for management of environmental resources in Haiti and their respective functions.

Hot spots

Since the major part of the territory, including the mountains, is used for agriculture, the MARNDR has always been considered as primarily responsible for renewable natural resources management. The newly created Ministry of the Environment (1994) should be able to play a major role in that matter as well, but its organic law has not yet been approved by the Parliament,

so that its mission is not very clear. Moreover, there is a National Commission for the Environment" (CNE) consisting of the Prime Minister and the Ministers of the MDE, the MARNDR and the MTPTC. A National Environmental Action Plan (PAE) has been elaborated, the implementation of which requires structures and funds not really guaranteed so far. The main institutional problems are, therefore, a dispersion of the responsibilities regarding natural resources management, lack of a coordinating authority, lack of financial resources and lack of spatial and temporal continuity regarding natural resources management.

TABLE 1

Institutions1 responsible for management of environmental resources in Haiti and their respective functions

Ministry	Directorates, services & satellite organizations	Types of interventions
MDE	Minister's Staff Direction General Technical Direction OSAMH	Policies & Strategies for Environment Management ATTPF: Forest management and conservation, natural parks, buffer zones, legal and institutional aspects Water policies: management of used waters.
MARNDR	Natural Resources Directorate SNRE, SPNS, SDRT, SRF, SIGR	Management of: lands, forest, surface and groundwater, watershed, marine, meteorology.
MPCE	DAPTE (Directorate of Territory Management and Environment Protection)	Global and functional zoning of the national territory; Definitions of management strategies for the territory
MTPTC	BME, EDH Directorate of Urbanism Directorate of "Cleaning/ Assainissement") SNEP	Mineral and energy resources exploration and exploitation ; Hydroelectricity; Runoff, industrial and used waters; Drinking water distribution

¹ Ministries: MDE - Environment; MARNDR-Agriculture, natural Resources and Rural Development; MPCE - Planning and External Cooperation; MTPC - Public Works, Transport and Communications. Services : SNRE - National Water Resources; SPNS - National Parks and Wildlife; SDRT - Land Conservation and Rehabilitation; SRF - Forest Resources; SIGR - Irrigation and Engineering; SNEP - National Drinking Water. Others: ATPPF - Technical Support for Protection of Parks and Forests; BME - Bureau of Mines and Energy; EDH - Haiti; Electricity; OSAMH - Monitoring and Management Unit for Morne de L'Hôpital.

In addition, uncertain land tenure has contributed to the land management problems as land users have no sense of ownership and are thus unwilling to invest in sustainable land management practices.

Bright spots/natural resources management

The MARNDR has recently elaborated a watershed management policy for the country. There is now a better understanding of the natural resource management issues, as the concerned institutions are more involved.

Haiti currently has a number of NGOs operating in the country, collecting important information on its natural resource base. There is therefore the possibility to collect these data from the NGOs and other institutions.

The assignment of responsibilities to the local authorities is also seen as a bright spot.

Issues on data availability

Since 1986, there have been serious political and administrative problems resulting in the depletion of data collecting systems. Nevertheless, there are agricultural production data for at least 10 years, economic data and about 60 years of rainfall data for some stations. Recently, efforts are being made to rectify the data availability problems.