Although the past half-century has seen the most deforestation - and new studies show that the rate of forest destruction worldwide has accelerated 80% since 1980 (Linden, "Endangered Earth" 54) - Haiti suffers from two centuries of econo-environmental myopia. The island's economy has always been based on peasant agriculture. Founded by the French in 1697, up through the last century it was the richest sugar-producing colony in the Caribbean (Matthews n.p.). This was accomplished by slash-and-burn deforestation to build huge plantations tilled by imported African slaves. In the first of many ecological disasters created by this type of agricultural production, African slaves had to be imported because the majority of the indigenous Amerindian

Wallich, Paul. "The Analytical Economist: The Wages of Haiti's Dictatorship." Scientific American (1994, December): 36.

Elmer-Dewitt, Philip. "Rio: Summit to Save the Earth - Rich vs. Poor." Time (1992, June 1): 42-48.

Critics of the SAPs from within Haiti note that, in the Third World countries now embarked on their programs, there is an eighty percent failure rate ("Outcome of Policy Capitulation" n.p.).

"Chache lavi, detwi lavi" - Searching for life, destroys the essence of life: the Haitian Creole saying does not have to be so. It is the basic proposition of international organizations that humankind is intelligent enough to learn from its past mistakes - and smart enough to create solutions for the new ones. The Haitian econo-ecological disaster of deforestation is a laboratory specimen awaiting experimentation.

Maternowska, Catherine. "Real Lives: Haiti." People & The Planet 3, #4 (1994): n.p. World Wide Web: http://www.oneworld.org/Archives/radio/Mirrors/OneWorld/patp/pp_haiti.html.

Charcoal is the major source of fuel in Haiti. A thin layer of soot falls continuously on Port-au-Prince, the nation's capital. The black charcoal dust is not the fallout of the two years of recently-ended oil embargo (stemming from Aristede's ouster and restoration to power by U.S. force of arms), rather, it is the power source of choice for those Haitians who can afford it. Made indiscriminately from any wood, charcoal powers dry-cleaning plants, bakeries and the cookstoves of the rich. Meanwhile, the sad irony is that the poor who destroy their own forests to make the charcoal cannot afford to buy it - they burn their wood only once. More than ninety percent of Haiti has reportedly been denuded, leaving the country bereft of natural resources crucial to its economic survival (Wallich 36).

Kates, Robert W. "Sustaining Life on the Earth." Scientific American (1994, October): 114-122.

"Environm