For Haiti's Recovery, Sustainability is Key

If you know people who think that ecology should take a back seat to economic development, tell them to look at Haiti. According to the group Sustainable Haiti, Haiti is an example of what might happen to the rest of the world if we keep consuming natural resources recklessly.

Did environmental abuses cause the recent, devastating earthquake? No. But decades of unsustainable development drove one-third of Haiti's population out of the countryside and into Port-au-Prince. As a result, more than two million people in the city had no access to potable water even before the quake. Add a natural disaster to those kinds of conditions, and you go from bad to unconscionable.
Before the quake, 72 percent of the land in Haiti was considered severely degraded, according to the FAO. Ninety-eight percent of Haiti's forests had been cut down for fuel, leading to soil erosion and dangerous flash floods. The Haitians who still lived in rural areas depended on imported food routed through Port-au-Prince.

Understandably, most aid groups are in crisis mode and are dealing with meeting survivors' basic needs. But the actions taken by some could pay long-term dividends. World Water Relief, for example, is deploying teams to bring self-sustaining water filtration systems to Haiti. To provide for the long-term well-being of the people of Haiti, other governments and NGOs ought to start thinking sustainably, too.