Development & Aid, Environment, Tierramerica

A State Lost in the Trash

PORT-AU-PRINCE, Jun 20 2005 (IPS) - Mountains of garbage are an obvious indicator of the environmental disaster in Haiti, where half of the capital's population lives crowded into precariously built houses.

Uruguayan officers with the United Nations peacekeeping force in Haiti could not believe that the water pumped from 70 meters underground could be contaminated with colibacteria. But indeed it was — and once again they had to rely on their portable water filtration system.

The attempt to use well water was especially frustrating because the military base where it took place was not in a populous city, but in Port Salut, a small town on Haiti's southwest coast and surrounded by an abundance of farm production — at least by Haitian standards.

This small bit of natural paradise, where even the country's crisis of violence seems to be held back by the surrounding hills, now looks a little cleaner after the trash collection and planting of trees by the UN's ''blue helmets'' and the local population, to smooth over tensions and pave the way for peace, as one of the military officers described it to Tierramérica.

But the water purifiers only provide enough for the approximately 800 soldiers who traveled 5,000 km from Uruguay to join the United Nations Stabilization Mission in Haiti (MINUSTAH), which cannot be a substitute for the absent municipal government. Meanwhile, mountains of garbage continue to spill into the streets and the turquoise waters of the Caribbean.

The lack of a functioning state is sadly evident as soon as the newly arrived visitor leaves the Port-au-Prince airport and, surrounded by sewage water and nauseating odors, travels through that chaotic city. In contrast to Rio de Janeiro or Caracas, where the slums rise up the hillsides, here one finds cleaner streets and more walled-in mansions the higher up the mountains one goes.

In the last 20 years in this nation of 8.5 million people, trade liberalization contributed to the collapse of Haitian agriculture and triggered an exodus from rural areas, which doubled the capital's population and filled other cities with shantytowns.

The unregulated construction of shacks filled drainage areas, riverbeds and other sites affecting water resources, in addition to pushing Port-au-Prince practically into the bay, especially in the Bel-Air, Cité Soleil and Carrefour neighborhoods, which are the most violent areas today, along with the northern city of Gonaives.

No Haitian city has a sewage system in good conditions, and there are only a few isolated water treatment plants. The insufficiencies have led to contamination of nearly all water supplies in the capital, according to international institutions. (Local statistics are conspicuous in their absence.)

Figures are lacking, and garbage abounds. Every step of the way in Port-au-Prince, pedestrians have to walk in the dangerous streets to get around the enormous piles of rubbish on the sidewalks.

''Weeks can go by before a city truck comes,'' commented a long-accustomed official from the Uruguayan military's logistical center, located amongst stately old houses and embassies in the capital.

What's more, old cars are increasingly being brought in from the United States duty free in addition to the old vehicles already on the capital's roads, adding their exhaust to air pollution in this city where traffic control is non-existent and there are only a few traffic lights — and those aren't functioning.

''Water from the faucet can only be used for bathing,'' was the first warning received by a group of journalists from Uruguay, including Tierramérica, upon arrival in Haiti, invited by the peacekeepers. ''Nor should one eat any food sold in the streets.''

Only 50 percent of the population has access to this ''unrecommended'' water, through a much-lacking network of household connections or through public faucets.

In the cities it is not unusual to see adults and children bathing and washing clothes at the public faucets, and in rural areas people make similar use of the small streams that trickle down the mountains outside of rainy season, which is usually April through June, but this year is behind schedule. When it does rain, everything floods.

In this context, and with 80 percent of Haitians living in poverty, it comes as no surprise that infant mortality reaches 69 per 1,000 live births, as Anne Poulsen, a Danish woman working with the World Food Program, told the Uruguayan press contingent.

The main causes of death are diarrhea-related diseases, acute respiratory infections, and malnutrition, which affect 47 percent of the child population. Now, life expectancy at birth is barely more than 50 years.

Malnutrition has some environmental causes. ''There was depredation of nature to the point that only two percent of the original forest remains,'' said Poulsen. Every year erosion from rainfall drags an estimated 20,000 tons of soil from cultivable areas toward the sea.

''Therefore it is very difficult here to produce the food necessary for the population (it only supplies half), because there is no infrastructure for stable production,'' the expert explained.

Haiti, the poorest country in the Americas, faces numerous serious challenges, not the least of which is its vulnerability to tropical storms. For this year, 14 are predicted, and any one could turn into a hurricane like Jeanne, which in September 2004 killed 2,000 Haitians.