1492-00-00: (Haiti’s Environment, From the Lush Forests That Covered Hispaniola When Columbus Arrived to the Less Than Two Percent Forest Cover That Remains …

1492-00-00: (Haiti’s Environment, From the Lush Forests That Covered Hispaniola When Columbus Arrived to the Less Than Two Percent Forest Cover That Remains Today, a Catastrophe Driven by Charcoal Dependence, Colonial Extraction, and the Failure of Reforestation Without Alternative Energy Sources): When Columbus arrived in 1492, Hispaniola was covered with lush forests and home to more than 6,000 plant species. Today, less than two percent of Haiti’s territory is forested. That collapse is one of the most dramatic environmental catastrophes in the Western Hemisphere, and its causes are not mysterious. In 1920, roughly sixty percent of Haiti was still forested. As the population grew through the twentieth century and no alternative energy infrastructure was built, Haitians turned to charcoal as their primary cooking fuel, which required cutting down trees. By 1980, forest cover had dropped below twenty-five percent, and the decline has continued relentlessly since. The consequences cascade: deforestation causes soil erosion, which reduces agricultural productivity, which deepens poverty, which increases dependence on charcoal, which accelerates deforestation. Hurricanes and heavy rains, which would be manageable with intact tree cover, instead trigger deadly mudslides. Since 1990, USAID has planted over sixty million trees in Haiti, but most have been cut down for charcoal because no one addressed the underlying energy problem. Reforestation without alternative fuel sources is an exercise in futility, and the fact that this obvious point has not been acted upon by the international development community tells you something about how aid often works: treating symptoms while ignoring structures.