Before the recent earthquake in Haiti, I’d just read Collapse: How Societies Choose to Fail or Succeed by Jared Diamond. In it, he compares the adjacent countries of Haiti and the Dominican Republic.
Diamond’s study is based on five factors — four of which may or may not be significant to the society.
The four are: environmental damage, climate change, hostile neighbours and friendly trade partners. But as Diamond says, the fifth factor — “the society’s responses to its environmental problems, always proves significant.”
In the case of Haiti and the Dominican Republic, the limited resources of their shared island of Hispaniola itself are crucial to the long-term survival of the people. Diamond’s book was first published in 2005 — he stated then that 28 per cent of the Dominican Republic was still forested, whereas only one per cent of Haiti was still forested.
This may not seem significant, but when you read of the Dominican Republic’s ruthless rulers Trujillo and Balaguer, you realize that despite their many cruel and inhumane operations, they also had a long-term view for the Dominican Republic. Equally cruel and oppressive rulers in Haiti had only a view to their own self-interest.
In the 1930s, under Trujillo’s rule, the Dominican Republic began strict environmental policies; he set out large forestry reserves and although Trujillo participated in logging, he invested in sound forestry management techniques and built dams in a way that protected watersheds.
Joaquin Balaguer, in power in the Dominican Republic after 1966, recognized the need for hydro-electric power. He saw that the people of the Dominican Republic were quickly deforesting the island. So he arranged for the import of liquefied natural gas from Venezeula and handed out free gas cooking stoves to all families and subsidized the cost so as to out-compete the use of charcoal (from trees).
He set up various forest preserves, banned all commercial logging and closed the country’s sawmills. He sent in the military and ruthlessly gunned down illegal loggers and drove bulldozers through the families of wealthy people who had built illegally in protected forests. He set up extremely stringent environmental legislation.
By contrast, Diamond describes how at the border between the Dominican Republic and Haiti are visibly different — the Dominican Republic side is green and lush; the Haitian side barren. The poor of Haiti scrape their forests to extinction for firewood for charcoal for cooking.
The Dominican Republic was at various times under Spanish or French rule. Thus, it has language and cultural norms consistent with Europe, meaning various skilled Europeans have settled there and built businesses, bringing their brains and innovations with them.
By contrast, Haiti was built on an African slave culture, voo-doo, its unique dialect of Creole, and though it blossomed as an agricultural economy earlier than the Dominican Republic, lack of management of natural resources lead to widespread destruction of the already more fragile soil; regrowth is slower due to less rainfall on the Haitian side of the mountainous range that divides the countries; and lack of skilled administrators and professions has led to a wasting of precious resources and foreign aid.
These inherent problems have been magnified by corrupt leadership over decades — which led to the loss of a people’s greatest natural resource, skilled people.
Indeed, Diamond states that “U.S. aid has put money into Haiti at seven times the rate … of the Dominican Republic, but the results in Haiti have been much more meagre because the country is deficient in people and organizations of its own to utilize the aid.”
Haiti is fraught with poverty, AIDS and is deemed a “narcostate” for its transport of illegal drugs.
The absence of skills and self-interest are visible in the terrible destruction this earthquake has wrought.
David Brooks, in a recent op-ed in the New York Times, states that a 7.0 earthquake in California in 1989 killed 63 people; contrast that same 7.0 earthquake in Haiti where an estimated 50,000 died outright, and where now perhaps hundreds of thousands will die as a result of starvation, dehydration, or anarchy.
California’s building codes were designed by professional engineers and implemented by self-interested, capable professional urban administrators. The codes are designed to maximize building safety during earthquakes and this was largely responsible for the minimal deaths in a comparable earthquake.
Furthermore, highly organized emergency response teams and stable state and municipal governments and police forces were able to quickly dispense aid and reach survivors in California. There were existing teams of trained professionals — doctors, nurses, engineers, construction companies and skilled labourers who could move in immediately to heal, restore, repair the damage. There were contingency plans.
None of this is true in Haiti.
Haiti today is equivalent to a war zone. No matter how much money we throw at Haiti, the country needs skilled managers, planners, administrators, and tradespeople it simply does not have.
Our NGO’s can’t work there safely if unprotected from the ensuing anarchy. Foreign aid will not help if there are no accountable politicians, skilled administrators, capable workers and rule of law.
Sadly, in the effort to create a safe and stable democracy, in the chaos that is unfolding now, the imposition of martial law by an outside democracy might be the only long-term hope for Haitian survival and effective reconstruction.
Michelle Stirling-Anosh is a Ponoka freelance columnist.