"It is difficult to get a man to understand something when his salary depends on not understanding it."
Border of Haiti (on left) and the Dominican Republic (on right). "Most Haitians are descendants of African slaves brought in the late 1600s by French colonizers, who destroyed tens of thousands of acres of virgin forest to plant the cane that made Haiti the world's largest sugar producer. More wood was cut to fuel the sugar mills. Entire forests were shipped to Europe to make furniture of mahogany and dyes from campeachy.
When rebellious slaves defeated Napoleon's army and Haiti became the world's first black republic in 1804, great plantations were divided among the slaves.
Under an inherited French law, land in Haiti is shared among a man's heirs. One of the fastest growing populations in the world — Haitian women average five births each — has reduced the average holding to little more than a half-acre. That's not enough to support a family of seven, even in a good rainy season.
Pressed for income, farmers chopped trees to make and sell charcoal."
- Haitian floods blamed on deforestation
Haiti suffered extensive human loss and land damage from floods through light rains in May 2004. It seemed only natural that the Butterfly Effect came to mind, and the scope of including minute social, economic factors into this increasingly complex domino effect spanning generations of actions. A recent article by Jeffrey Sachs in the Scientific American looks into this oft-forgotten link.
An analysis of this little island, with one of the sharpest border contrasts in the world.
