Haiti Environment Profile 2012

Haiti faces serious environmental degradation, which has negative social and economic effects and increases the country’s vulnerability to natural disasters. There is a link between the decades-long trend of environmental destruction and the country’s problems of instability and violent conflict. However, the government still fails to take environmental concerns adequately into account. Of the country’s 30 watersheds critical to abating the impact of natural disasters, 25 are without natural cover. The remaining forests, covering only about 1% of the territory, are unable to play any significant environmental or protective role. Deforestation and land degradation undermine efforts to improve agricultural production, and in concert with the high level of poverty, weak infrastructure and a general lack of investment in risk reduction activities, exacerbate Haiti’s already high vulnerability to natural disasters. Considerable efforts have been made to strengthen national capacities for natural resource protection.

Natural disaster management has also improved significantly with the implementation of an early warning system that helped reduce fatalities in the 2008 Hurricane season to less than 1,000; however, these efforts have not mitigated the macroeconomic impact of large natural disasters, or integrated environmental issues into broad economic and political planning. Cooperating and sharing experiences with other countries in the region that also face yearly hurricane threats could enhance Haiti’s preparedness and mitigation capacity.