Let Haiti Live!

Deforestation in Haiti is responsible for many of the problems (flooding, famine, etc.) the Haitian people are experiencing today. The process of deforestation occurred in different stages, one of the more recent incursions into the forests happened because of demand for US rubber..

Here's some info on the effect od rubber plantations on Haiti's forest ecosystem;



"During those months in a remote corner of Haiti, I learned a little about the environmental damage wrought by the United States in pursuit of natural rubber near the outset of WWII. Then, as now, we were securing the materials required to sustain our national economy. But the native trees we cleared for the cultivation of new rubber plantations were not replaced when the rubber trees we planted failed to grow. The subsequent decades of tropical rainfall onto dead stalks and rootless dirt took the topsoil with the runoff. Haiti was then, and remains, an environmental and social disaster; a country mired in misery and unlikely to improve within our lifetimes."

above from;

http://www.rmi.org/sitepages/pid958.php





other info on rubber plantations in Haiti;

http://www.geocities.com/CapeCanaveral/9972/haitipai.htm - 67k

http://www.dnr.state.oh.us/recycling/awareness/facts/tires/thruwwii.htm

http://www.webster.edu/~corbetre/haiti/notes/wdavis.htm

http://www.webster.edu/~corbetre/haiti/misctopic/minerals/rubber.htm

if american office workers did not use so many rubberbands
this eco-side would not have happened. who knew that stealing office supplies could have this far reaching results.