Haiti, poor Haiti.

I worked on a project while at the Oak Ridge National Laboratory in the mid-1980s on charcoal briquettes and deforestation issues in Haiti. Back then it was a dreadfully destitute, illiterate, and poorly run country with very high unemployment and massive deforestation. The economic, political, energy and environmental situations of the country were just plain awful back then. Haiti never escaped the poverty and other traps it was caught in.

Unemployment in Haiti just prior to the earthquake was about 50-60 %. The main legal industry of the island was putting clothing together for the US markets. The main illegal, and much larger, industry on the island was drugs and drugs running. Organized crime was rife. It still is. The gangs are still there.

The cancerous ruination of the country via corruption, neglect, mismanagement and just plain venality has been in good part due to the power of the gangs. The weak government has contributed much to the human-caused devastation of what should be a fairly well off place.

Only about 55 % of school-age children had been enrolled in school prior to the earthquake. Illiteracy was over 50%. About 70% of the schools had no form of accreditation. I wonder how many of those schools are still standing.

Skilled labor was very scarce before the disaster, most particularly the skilled labor that will be needed to rebuild this sad place. Most of those with skills left the country.

Prior to this nightmare close to 80% of the people in the country could be counted as impoverished and have been living on $2 or less per day. About 60% lived on less than $1 a day.

There is no way that most people in Haiti can afford to rebuild their houses and their lives without serious and long term economic help from somewhere. You cannot save money when you are that poor. Actually the people of the poorest parts of Haiti, as in many other poor countries, pay much more for water and energy than some pay even in much richer countries. About 70 percent of all Haitians have been in a poverty trap that most Americans can hardly imagine in their worst nightmares.

Haiti was one of the least energized countries on earth before the disaster. It used about the same per capita amount of electricity as some of the poorest Sub-Saharan African countries. Only about 13% of the population had legal access to electricity prior to the earthquake. About 55 percent of the electricity generated was stolen prior to the earthquake. Administration and management of the electricity system was one of the worst in the world.

The electricity system of the country has been likely quite damaged by the earthquake. The small thermal power plants and the 1 hydropower dam, the Peligre Dam, near the border of the Dominican Republic were all in great disrepair and way below their nameplate capacities prior to the earthquake. I have a hard time imagining what they, and their interconnections to the country, might be like now. The dam is some distance form the epicenter, but a decripid hydro dam connected to busted infrastructure is a big problem.

Rebuilding will require energy and lots of it. Much of the energy generation capacity will need to be shipped in and used in distributed power, rather than grid power, in order to get things up to speed. Solar power is a distinct option for some neighborhoods and villages. (Most people in Haiti live in rural areas.) Wind power is also an option, but will likely be less effective than solar in many places.

In the longer runs much more electrical power will be needed to be produced in the country. It will also be a requirement to maintain the plants better and to manage the entire electricity system much better, including investments, security, and training – all of which were egregiously neglected for decades. Geothermal and waste-to-energy plants could also be used.

Electricity is also needed to keep medicines cool to keep them effective. Solar clinics could do the trick for a while, but in the longer run much more needs to be done.

Electricity is also needed to treat dirty water, move water, and to supply so many other things that are simple basic necessities of the country.

Water treatment on the island had been mostly minimal if non-existent for most areas, especially the slums and the poorest parts of the rural areas before the earthquake. Dirty water was often the norm, especially in the countryside.

Most people in Haiti had no access to clean water and a large percentage had no access to basic sanitation facilities. On average, about 15 percent had access to running water. Water supply before the earthquake was unreliable and of poor quality for the grand majority of Haitians. I cringe to think of what it is like now.

The major source of energy for almost all Haitians has been biomass. Most of this has been in the form of wood, charcoal (slow cooked trees underground), agricultural waste, or just about anything one can find to burn for cooking, etc. The Haitians’ needs for biomass have denuded the forests and other green areas. Some attempts have been made to bring things back, but these do not seem to be making huge headway.

As the deforestation occurred the land eroded. As trees become scarcer the rains could not be contained as well in the soil. There were land slides and mudslides and there will likely be more of them. The best soils in many areas washed into the sea. Some of that sediment ruined some of the coral reefs and damaged the fisheries that were the livelihood of many poor Haitians.

The reliance on wood fuels, charcoal and other biomass has also ruined the health of many Haitians, especially the women and the children who are in the houses most of the time during the cooking. (The number three source of deaths and disease in Africa is indoor cooking.) There are some simple and inexpensive energy remedies to this, including solar cookers and clean cooking gels.

There is no refinery in Haiti. All refined products have been imported, including the fuels for the thermal plants.

The port in the capital city is seriously damaged and is in need of fast repair to get the trade in refined products and other good moving more quickly and efficiently. This is also needed to help with the import of medicines, food, material for building houses, road fixing material and equipment, equipments and more to get rid of the damage and waste from the earthquake and its follow on, and more.

Most of the length of the roads in Haiti had not been paved prior to the earthquake. This may prove to be a lucky thing for some. Dirt roads often prove to be easier to fix than paved ones.

Haiti had the worst communications infrastructure in the Western Hemisphere even before the disaster. What is it now? Even more important: what could it be in the future and how could this help the people of Haiti in so many ways.

Public services have been always mostly of poor quality and unreliable. The government has been weak and hardly developmental. Politics in Haiti have had a past of violence and instability. This is one of the last things a country coming out of a disaster like this needs. When the Presidential Palace collapsed it seemed that the teetering government also did. Where are they in all of this?

Haiti needs great leadership in the trying times to come, but I am not holding my breath for it to arrive in the new or rebuilt presidential palace.

Aid has often defined survival for Haiti. Aid from the US has proven to be the most important at times. When the US imposed sanctions after the coup in the early 1990s the economy began to collapse quickly. As the UN imposed even further sanctions soon after the economy collapsed even more. Haiti has been on a slow, uneven, and uncertain winding path to “recovery” ever since, even though the recovery has hardly been noticeable to most Haitians.

Haiti also has lived off of the remittances that have been sent by overseas Haitians, mostly in the US. Without these remittances and aid it is hard to think what Haiti would be now – maybe even worse. The country has been living precariously on life-support from its hard working expatriates and aid. Now the earthquake has struck and much more is needed.

How has the response been? We need to look at the response in the context of the dreadful aspects of Haiti even before the earthquake. It had poor energy, transport, and communications infrastructures. Now even these are badly damaged. Its economy was anemic at best and near economic cardiac arrest at times. Its government has been mostly unresponsive to the needs of its people, anti-developmental and corrupt.

The initial international response seems to be about as imperfect and problem-ridden as one could reasonably expect given the speed of the disaster and the sheer immensity of it -- and given the initial conditions that existed prior to the disaster Again, one needs to look at this in context – and think toward a better future. The initial events could easily overwhelm even the toughest development and disaster response professionals. The emotional context of this can also be quite overwhelming, especially for the Haitians. The victories, both large and small, in all of this should not be forgotten in the midst of the difficulties.

The real test will be what happens when CNN, the BBC, and other TV and media outlets move on to the next big story and when the governments involved start to refocus more on their other problems.
Rebuilding Haiti could take many years. Building Haiti up to what it could be could take much longer (if it ever happens). Both will also require a lot of building up of Haitian human capital via education and training, and also a lot of hard work, and positive and creative thinking by all involved.

Why is it important for the US to help rebuild and help develop Haiti? For humanitarian reasons this is important. Also, Haiti is right off our coast. Rebuilding Haiti could help stem some of the criminal and other elements that could get much stronger there (and elsewhere, such as in Miami) if Haiti is allowed to rot in its present hell of poverty and neglect. Haiti could be a source of really big security, health and other problems to the US if this situation gets worse rather than better. It would be great if one day we could see Haiti as a thriving and peaceful ally of the US, and a country with whom we could work together effectively on many issues of common concern.

Also, one could look at it this way: the US has had a rough time of it in the world lately. Many are angry at us for our policies. This is an opportunity to bring more light, and less darkness, to world perceptions of the US. Doing well by doing good works, and showing the best of the US when it comes to private and public charity, and investments, could go a long way to repairing our image (and our realities) and also helping out our neighbors to the southeast.

This could also be an opportunity to reinvigorate and energize some of the better policies and institutions of our past. USAID and the Peace Corps come to mind immediately.

This could also be a way to help the US refocus its efforts more on the south. Can we be a good neighbor? Sure. Can we help the Haitians? Sure. Our private, public, university, think tank, and NGO sectors all could contribute. Helping Haiti could also help our relations with Africa, Europe and more. It could also undercut some of the arguments of the extremists.

An Arab friend of mine sent me an email stating how shameful it seemed that the big, powerful, and rich US had such a destitute and disaster-prone neighbor. I never heard a word from him before about the Caribbean or Latin America. That certainly gave me pause to think.

The whole world is watching.

Including the 51 percent of Haitians under 21, who will be the future of Haiti, some of whom are stuck under buildings and crying for help.