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haiti reforestation mauby
Haiti Reforestation - Mauby
As part of the Reforestation Programme that UCT
seeks to establish Nurseries that will nurture Mulberry tree, Mauby
Tree and Fruit Tress that will be planted as part of the Ecological
Re-forestation.
There are various reasons for the deforestation
of Haiti:
• The need for fuel.
• The need to earn a living.
• Ignorance.
• Lack of motivation to reform.
• Haiti has no fuel except wood. People cook
with charcoal. This requires massive amounts of wood to provide
fuel for 6 million people. Thus the demand on wood as a crop is
the immediate cause of the denuding of the mountains of Haiti.
• The immediate motivation of much of the
cutting is economic. Peasants are hungry. They have little available
work. But wood is in constant demand as charcoal, or to sell to
others to make charcoal. Peasant wood-cutters who do understand
the soil erosion problem will argue that they have no alternative.
They either cut and sell wood or they starve. Mainly they are right.
Haiti suffers massive unemployment and most peasants have inadequate
access to farm lands.
• Because of the problems of illiteracy and lack of education
detailed above, Haitian wood cutters do not really understand the
extent of damage their cutting does. These uneducated peasants have
little sense of history. In their generation Haiti has always looked
denuded like it does today. Thus to convince them that they are
contributing to Haiti's misery by cutting the few trees which any
one of them cuts, is not a very convincing argument. When compared
with the alternatives of hunger or even starvation facing the wood
sellers, the argument fundamentally makes no sense.
• There is little motivation for wood cutters to replant more
trees. Mainly they do not own the land. They cut here or there as
sharecroppers or renters, then move on to other lands. The land
owners are often city people or more wealthy village folks and they
do not keep a close watch on their lands. Were they to replant,
it is likely that the neighbors' animals would eat the seedling
trees since there is little forage left in Haiti. The land tenure
system--the way land is owned and used in Haiti--provides little
motivation to anyone to replant the trees. Of course, it is in the
interest of the nation as a whole to replant trees. But, no individuals
who own, share-crop or rent lands are personally motivated to do
this costly and troublesome, and non-economic work.
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