ecoyear

I came across this detailed, level-headed article by someone who worked many years in Haiti. It was recently referenced in a Harper's Magazine online article by Ken Silverstein, who also recently wrote about Haiti for Harper's Magazine.

The post I wrote about NGOs also summarizes, this, but the article I just linked to is much more detailed and authoritative.

It has been fascinating and disheartening to read about the history of Haiti.

Some sources I have used include an interview with Randall Robinson on Democracy Now (especially 28:30 minutes in), an article by Tracy Kidder in the New York Times, and a not-so-sympathetic article from The Atlantic (that does nevertheless concur that Aristide was democratically legit).

Basically, Haiti was formed in 1804 when rebel slaves overthrew their French "owners". Napoleon's France exacted unreasonably huge reparations to leave them alone, 150 million dollars, which Haiti had to borrow at enormous cost, leaving the country destitute for almost a century.

This rebellion did not sit well with other nations, least of all Jefferson's United States, for obvious reasons. It seems, however, that Haiti has been viciously persecuted by the world community ever since, for being the first to dare overthrow colonial rule.

In 1915, Woodrow Wilson's USA invaded Haiti and occupied it for 20 years, treating it as a possession of the US, siphoning off fees and taxes, leaving it poorer yet. The US went on to support dictators in Haiti, not democracy. In fact, in 2004, democratically elected Jean-Bertrand Aristide was undermined by Bush policies, and whisked away on a US plane. See this New York Times article for the gory political intrigue details.

Recent USAID involvement has been just as disastrous, instituting an economic program based on gutting the local agriculture and herding people into sweatshops. Once again, this sort of intervention benefits multinational corporations far more than it benefits Haitians.

To top it all off, it turned out that there were not enough jobs, so imported food became unaffordable last year. Then Haiti got hit by 4 hurricanes within 30 days, and we stopped hearing about them.

Curiously and maddeningly, there are an estimated 10,000 NGOs in Haiti, the most of any impoverished country on Earth. Still, half the population is illiterate, has no safe water and only a minority have adequate sanitation.

What are the NGOs all doing? Given that 80% of Haitians live under the poverty line, they would each have to make 800 lives stable in order to rescue the entire country. They all claim to support self-sufficiency, teaching the locals to repair wells, giving micro-loans, training teachers and health workers.

Kidder does note that some American NGOs are required to return an unusual percentage of their money back to the US government. He also points out that NGOs should ideally coordinate their work with each other, and support local public institutions, and that it appears most of Haiti's NGOs are unable and/or unwilling to do this.

This paints the picture of one more type of exploitation - helping do-gooders feel better about themselves, while ultimately undermining the confidence, prosperity and independence of this nation.

Kidder is familiar with, and supports Partners in Health. I also read good things about Oxfam, and about the Haiti Emergency Relief Fund.

Think about this as you donate, now and in the near future when Haiti's "reconstruction" begins. What sort of New Haiti would we support? Our dollars are needed now, but will be needed just as much in months to come.

Listening to the news in my car, I felt a very deep sense of grief today. Half of me just screams that I want to go help. I am healthy, I am a physician, I speak French. The other half of course feels that I can't put myself at risk because I have three little kids, still.

So I started Googling around today. How to help Haiti? For some reason, the idea of just sending money was unappealing. There is a crucial overwhelmingly enormous short-term problem - water, food, medicine, sanitation. And there is a long-term problem that dwarfs it. The island cannot support much life at all, and certainly not 9 million.

The basic question in our minds should be: why is this happening to Haiti? Why were they already eating mud cookies last year? Why was their underfive mortality the worst in the Americas (7%) until recently, while on the same island, in the Dominican Republic, this mortality is less than half?

It became clear to me last year, that our country's policy of dumping cheap subsidized corn (subsidized with our taxes, you know) on poor Third World countries has the effect of destroying their local agriculture. The fact is that it works the same here in the US - family farms continue to die because they cannot compete with industrial farms. We are not only accustomed, but to an extent dependent on cheap "food" prices. The first shock upon arriving at a farmers' market, is how expensive everything is.

So you can imagine that a Third World country doesn't stand any sort of chance when it comes to subsidizing their own agriculture to compete with American imports. The resultant utter dependence on food aid from rich countries is inevitable. As is the disappearance of a viable economy of any sort.

So people pile up in Port-au-Prince, lacking the ability to feed and shelter themselves. Any sort of natural disaster would then reach unimaginable proportions. People carry the wounded in wheelbarrows, trying to reach non-existent medical care. Bodies pile up at now-useless rubble hospitals. One NPR correspondent saw children sleeping in the courtyards of these hospitals, near the dead bodies of their relatives. There is no place to go from here.

Well this site offers a poignant, short, timely way to tie loose ends. Of course, business-as-usual international politics had everything to do with this crisis. USAID was a key player.

So I think what I can do to help is to support Haitian agriculture. I'm donating to Heifer International. Whoever survives in that country will have to depend on raising their own food. Animals provide valuable nutrition for people and for the soil. In the Heifer model, they are prized for their ongoing contributions - eggs, milk, offspring that must be donated to neighbors - and not as meat. Feeding the animals themselves is an issue, but one that Heifer is quite familiar with.

There also appears to be permaculture training in Haiti, but some of it is very new. I hope they are working with Heifer International.

I'm still very sad, and horrified. There is not even an estimated number of casualties. A half a million, is a possibility I have heard. Too numerous to count, is probably more correct. What about thirst, starvation, and disease in the weeks to come?

It is difficult not to see the parallels between this island nation and the Earth as a whole. They deforested 98% of their island. We are well on our way to that statistic. They lost their ability to grow food through dependence on oil-based agriculture. So have we. The utter lack of resiliency in that model is now showing as the unbelievable impact of this "natural" disaster. So, I worry.

Today I came across this article on the Organic Valley website. It does not meet any sort of criteria for being "unbiased", but I think it does a nice job of summarizing credible research on the topic. It provides a well-reasoned answer to the doubts of people who would support organic if only they were reassured that it is not just an "elitist" movement.

The Oil Drum also had a recent article on the Food System. The discussion goes on and on about the various movements and how elitist they may or may not be, Local Food, Organic Food, properly raised animals, pros and cons of certain soil practices and how they may or may not impact the nutrient content of food. It is probably true that not enough research exists. I can see that a family may not be in a position to double or triple their food budget "just in case" well-raised food does have an impact on health and/or the environment. Some people take that for granted because it makes sense to them intuitively. Changing your entire existence is another matter. We do well to remember that some people don't even do the health-related things they already know are good for them (and I include myself here).

The conclusion I drew from The Oil Drum's discussion is that "walking your talk" as best you can, and avoiding trying to lecture others about what they should do is ultimately, as usual, the most effective strategy, and of course the one with the most integrity.

Happy holiday dinnertable discussions!

This is Boulder today:

I couldn't find much to eat...

...except, wait, I think I see a few berries...

 Well, anyways, I have figured out I don't like winter that much, but I don't give up at the first sign of a couple of feet of snow!!

What this type of day is good for, of course, is catching up on your internet offerings. I spent time looking at youtube videos of the Bioneers 2009 conference I missed.

Well, what a group of positive thinkers!! How exciting is that! People who can see the trouble I see, yet continue to work for change with some do-able ideas.

I still need to listen to Woody Tasch. Investing in new ways will start nudging this transatlantic liner in the right direction.

Kenny Ausubel is worth listening to. I would say he is a little too optimistic, but given how I'm feeling these days, perhaps that's not saying much.

Jim Garrison strikes the right note, in my mind. His depth of feeling for our precarious situation comes through clearly: he is actually moved to tears. Yet, he's still at it, with some stunning developments, such as Amazonian governors agreeing to decrease clearcutting in the Amazon by 80% by 2020.

Jason McLennan discusses more stringent criteria for "green" building. I haven't spent much time looking at this, as remodeling continues to be infinitely less stressful on the environment than new building (even on sites with a previous building, as he advocates). Nevertheless, he makes good points, and much of what he describes could be incorporated into remodels.

Annie Leonard is the most lovable, outrageously effective advocate for some pretty simple principles: why trash the planet, and each other, if we're not even going to have any fun doing it? Well said, well thought out. Way to go!

Jerome Ringo is focused on jobs, and on the disparate way in which the crises upon us are affecting the poor. I would have liked for him to recognize that there won't be full employment again, and certainly not without further trashing the planet, unless "the poor" can be involved in low-tech, must-have parts of the economy.

And Michael Pollan, who of course talks about the food system, makes three straightforward recommendations:

1. We must change farm policy (incentives)

2. We must change the marketplace and focus on local foodsheds

3. We must change the food culture, which means learn to cook, and teach kids properly about food - no tater tots in school cafeterias and 10 minutes allocated to lunch.

Most importantly, and I think this bears repeating if you're already an activist: what we are doing is not enough of a movement for President Obama to make significant changes, even if he were on our side (which he might be, now that he has got (presumably) a taste of homegrown tomatoes).

They can't hear us just yet in Washington. We need to get much, much, LOUDER!

Not that we didn't make a start: have you seen the 350 video of the actions on International Day of Climate Action?