[Lapg] Haiti A Country Without a Net/Better Aid Models Needed/Permaculture?

Fri Jan 15 08:44:39 PST 2010

In 2006, Santa Barbara Permaculture Network 
convened a three day conference in Santa Barbara 
called: Permaculture & Sustainable Aid for the 
21st Century;  How to Change the Paradigm of 
Emergency Disaster Relief and Development to a 
Model of Life Affirming Assistance.  America had 
just experienced Katrina in New Orleans the year 
before, and closer to home, deadly mud slides in 
the small community of La Conchita just south of Santa Barbara.

The keynote speakers for the conference were 
Geoff and Nadia Lawton, and Andrew Jones, who had 
worked with CARE International on a project in 
Macedonia, and as a result of that work, were 
exploring the possibility of forming a non-profit 
to be a permaculture disaster response 
organization, with trained permaculture people 
ready to respond at a moments notice to immediate 
needs of countries in trouble, but also with

longer term regenerative landbased strategies based on permaculture.

With Haiti, we see the need is great.  We have so 
many PDC grads now, many looking for where their 
life focus can be.  Many long term 
permaculturists have extraordinary skills in this 
area, so much to offer.  In 2001 there was a 
brief opportunity to convert a 5000 acre army 
supply base in Lousianna that was being closed to 
a green industrial park, but also a center for 
permaculture disaster training.  But when the war 
in Iraq started, that opportunity was 
lost.  Geoff Lawton and others were seeing the 
idea of training sites as essential, maybe a time to re-explore that idea.

There is a need to think very deeply about the 
kind of aid offered, especially when a nation and 
country is so vulnerable.  In the next couple of 
days we will send out articles written by key 
people, including Bill Mollison, Rosemary Morrow, 
Robyn Francis and others on the subject.  John 
Calvert is putting together and launching soon a 
website called "Permaculture Haiti" to provide a 
place for all things permaculture in Haiti, how 
to help, and a place for a forum and articles 
people want to share.  Thanks John for this very 
positive effort.  Margie Bushman, Santa Barbara Permaculture Network.

 From the New York Times:
Country Without a Net

[]

By TRACY KIDDER
New York Times
Published: January 13, 2010

THOSE who know a little of Haiti’s history might 
have watched the news last night and thought, as 
I did for a moment: “An earthquake? What next? Poor Haiti is cursed.”

But while earthquakes are acts of nature, extreme 
vulnerability to earthquakes is manmade. And the 
history of Haiti’s vulnerability to natural 
disasters  to floods and famine and disease as 
well as to this terrible earthquake  is long and 
complex, but the essence of it seems clear enough.

Haiti is a country created by former slaves, 
kidnapped West Africans, who, in 1804, when 
slavery still flourished in the United States and 
the Caribbean, threw off their cruel French 
masters and created their own republic. Haitians 
have been punished ever since for claiming their 
freedom: by the French who, in the 1820s, 
demanded and received payment from the Haitians 
for the slave colony, impoverishing the country 
for years to come; by an often brutal American 
occupation from 1915 to 1934; by indigenous 
misrule that the American government aided and 
abetted. (In more recent years American 
administrations fell into a pattern of promoting 
and then undermining Haitian constitutional democracy.)

Hence the current state of affairs: at least 
10,000 private organizations perform supposedly 
humanitarian missions in Haiti, yet it remains 
one of the world’s poorest countries. Some of the 
money that private aid organizations rely on 
comes from the United States government, which 
has insisted that a great deal of the aid return 
to American pockets  a larger percentage than 
that of any other industrialized country.

But that is only part of the problem. In the 
arena of international aid, a great many efforts, 
past and present, appear to have been doomed from 
the start. There are the many projects that seem 
designed to serve not impoverished Haitians but 
the interests of the people administering the 
projects. Most important, a lot of organizations 
seem to be unable  and some appear to be 
unwilling  to create partnerships with each 
other or, and this is crucial, with the public 
sector of the society they’re supposed to serve.

The usual excuse, that a government like Haiti’s 
is weak and suffers from corruption, doesn’t hold 
 all the more reason, indeed, to work with the 
government. The ultimate goal of all aid to Haiti 
ought to be the strengthening of Haitian 
institutions, infrastructure and expertise.

This week, the list of things that Haiti needs, 
things like jobs and food and reforestation, has 
suddenly grown a great deal longer. The 
earthquake struck mainly the capital and its 
environs, the most densely populated part of the 
country, where organizations like the Red Cross 
and the United Nations have their headquarters. A 
lot of the places that could have been used for 
disaster relief  including the central hospital, 
such as it was  are now themselves disaster areas.

But there are effective aid organizations working 
in Haiti. At least one has not been crippled by 
the earthquake. Partners in Health, or in Haitian 
Creole Zanmi Lasante, has been the largest health 
care provider in rural Haiti. (I serve on this 
organization’s development committee.) It 
operates, in partnership with the Haitian 
Ministry of Health, some 10 hospitals and 
clinics, all far from the capital and all still 
intact. As a result of this calamity, Partners in 
Health probably just became the largest health 
care provider still standing in all Haiti.

Fortunately, it also offers a solid model for 
independence  a model where only a handful of 
Americans are involved in day-to-day operations, 
and Haitians run the show. Efforts like this 
could provide one way for Haiti, as it rebuilds, 
to renew the promise of its revolution.

Tracy Kidder is the author of “Mountains Beyond 
Mountains,” about Haiti, and “Strength in What Remains.”

Santa Barbara Permaculture Network
    an educational non-profit since 2000
(805) 962-2571
P.O. Box 92156, Santa Barbara, CA 93190
margie at sbpermaculture.org
www.sbpermaculture.org

"We are like trees, we must create new leaves, in 
new directions, in order to grow." - Anonymous

First Annual Southern California Permaculture Convergence August 2008
http://socalifornia.permacultureconvergence.org

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Santa Barbara Permaculture Network
    an educational non-profit since 2000
(805) 962-2571
P.O. Box 92156, Santa Barbara, CA 93190
margie at sbpermaculture.org
www.sbpermaculture.org

"We are like trees, we must create new leaves, in 
new directions, in order to grow." - Anonymous

First Annual Southern California Permaculture Convergence August 2008
http://socalifornia.permacultureconvergence.org
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