Dreaming Together on the Border

by Aly Lewis

"When we are dreaming alone it is only a dream. When we are dreaming with others, it is the beginning of reality." ~Dom Helder Camara

Last week, Annie Fikes, our PR and Marketing Intern, blogged about the renewed hope and reconciliation that is taking place between Haitians and Dominicans as a result of Plant With Purpose's program on the border between Haiti and the Dominican Republic. This week I'd like to share a story about a Dominican farmer from the border region who is working--and dreaming--with Plant With Purpose to overcome poverty and build a better future for his family.

Antonio Guarionex Soto, a farmer from the village of Angel Feliz, is quite the innovator. With Plant With Purpose's encouragement, he continues to add new components to his agroforestry farm. He currently grows bananas, two types of avocados, zapote, oranges and beans. As a result of his agroforestry efforts, he has seen his soil quality and his crop yields improve. Avocado is by far his most successful crop because of the high demand for avocados in the region, and his farm is lush with the valuable fruit.

Antonio and his son, Jendis, show off one of their avocado trees.

Building on his success, Antonio would like to acquire more land in order to plant more fruit trees and see his business grow and thrive. His greatest dream is to provide better opportunities for his son so that he will not have to migrate to another region. As Antonio continues to improve and invest in his land, enabling him to enhance the quality of life of his entire family, we believe that he is well on his way to turning his dream into a reality.

Our innovative Trans Border Project has given hundreds of dedicated, hardworking farmers like Antonio the skills and resources needed to improve their farms, provide for their families, and realize their dreams for themselves and their children. Through Plant With Purpose's Sponsor A Village program, you too can dream together with rural farmers from around the globe and partner with them as they work to turn their dreams into a reality. To learn more, Click Here.

Above: a truck full of avocados makes its way to the local market. An abundant crop means farmers like Antonio can feed their families, improve their living conditions, and send their children to school.

Plant With Purpose Featured in the New York Times

Plant With Purpose/Floresta is featured in the New York Times today! In his informative article, reporter Nathanial Gronewold delves into the many environmental and economic problems that plague the border region connecting Haiti and the Dominican Republic. Check out the article and see how Plant With Purpose is working in the region to provide much needed jobs and restore the devastated environment.

Environmental Destruction, Chaos Bleeding Across Haitian Border

By NATHANIAL GRONEWOLD of Greenwire

MALPASSE, Haiti -- In October, three Haitian men were shot dead and a fourth was wounded just across the Dominican Republic border from this dusty and impoverished town.

The men were gunned down, investigators say, by vigilantes or a rival criminal group for cutting down trees for charcoal. The remains of the three dead men were found burned inside the very furnaces they were using to produce Haiti's most sought-after fuel.

The episode was the most violent recent confrontation between people along the border and a sign of worsening tensions, with Haiti's environmental problems sprawling into the Dominican Republic. The spread of deforestation, land degradation and erosion across the border is the surest sign yet that Haiti's ecology is being pushed to its limits.

"The incursions into Dominican territory are creating pressure," said Max Antoine, director of Haiti's border development commission. "The Haitians are creating pressure on their land, creating pressure on their economic space. ... It's a competition between the Haitians and the Dominicans."

Haiti has lost 98 percent of its forests to destructive land use, mainly from the clear-cutting of trees for charcoal production. As vegetation disappears from Haiti, an illegal market for charcoal from the Dominican side is exploding.

The Dominican Republic long ago banned the production of charcoal to protect its forests and began subsidizing propane to wean its population from fuel wood. But that has not stopped desperate Haitians from risking their lives for more charcoal, which provides more than 60 percent of their nation's energy.

Conservative estimates put the weekly volume of illegal charcoal exports at 105,000 kilograms, or 115.7 tons, but the actual number is probably higher. Investigators say they know of at least 10 truckloads that cross the border every week. As Santo Domingo struggles to get a handle on the problem, Dominican authorities say they are getting little help from the Haitian side of the border.

"We don't have the support from the government of Haiti," said Héctor Garibaldis Perez, an environment director for the border province of Jimani. "We are trying to make all possible efforts to face this situation."

The Jimani murders led to a crackdown. Days after the shootings, 46 Haitian charcoal traffickers were rounded up in Los Haitises National Park, a protected zone deep in Dominican territory just north of Santa Domingo. The Environment Ministry said the group had "wrought enormous damage to the flora, fauna and water resources of that important protected area," according to the English daily Dominican Today.

The Dominican army was also deployed to the border region to destroy charcoal furnaces and stop trucks from carrying charcoal to Haiti. And last month, a Haitian man was shot dead in an altercation with a Dominican border guard near the Haitian town of Anse à Pitres.

But Dominican officials say their efforts have stemmed the trade by no more than 30 percent.

Perez, who is heavily involved in investigations into the illegal charcoal trade, said no one can say for sure who is behind the trafficking, but officials believe that a network of cartels has emerged to drive the trade. Both Haitians and Dominicans alike are suspected of involvement.

Sharecropping at issue

The island of Hispaniola is still marked by a famous dividing line seen prominently in satellite photos: brown, deforested Haiti on one side contrasted with lush green Dominican Republic on the other.

But brown patches are now spreading into the Dominican side.

"What I've noticed to the north of Jimani ... is essentially Haitian land-use practices marching further and further into the Dominican Republic," said Scott Sabin, executive director of the Christian nonprofit Floresta USA. "The land is being completely and progressively cleared."

Floresta is devoted to spreading environmentally friendly land-use practices as a means to combat poverty. Its efforts include sustainable agro-forestry and the "Plant with Purpose" reforestation effort. The California nonprofit actually first began work in the Dominican Republic but eventually migrated to Haiti as it saw environmental degradation there spilling over.

Sabin said the Dominican Republic's deforestation problem is not only related to the charcoal trade. Dominican landowners are letting impoverished Haitians share crops near the border, he said, and Haitians quickly revert to their practice of clearing trees for charcoal. And with Haitian labor dirt cheap, Dominican landowners have allowed sharecroppers to abuse their properties, he said.

Floresta has planted about 350,000 trees in the border region and is scrambling to find alternative means of employment for the Haitians, but the lack of any strong central authority in Haiti has made its task extremely challenging, Sabin said.

"I lost track of how many governments I've seen go by," Sabin said. "I have seen almost zero impact outside of Port-au-Prince of any of them, because they don't have the money, they don't have the power, they don't have the attention span."

Border crossings

Antoine, Haiti's border commission director, is trying to change how things are done in his zone of influence.

Haiti's border with the Dominican Republic is among the poorest parts of the country. Though Malpasse is a major border-crossing point lying along the most direct route between Port-au-Prince and Santo Domingo, this town is little more than a collection of wood and tin shacks and market stalls.

Antoine's group has recently gained support from the Canadian government, which is pouring funds into developing the border region. Malpasse now hosts a modern customs and immigration-processing center built with Canadian money. Other facilities are slated for Belladère farther to the north of here and for Anse à Pitres in the extreme southeast.

The commission hopes that by modernizing and formalizing these border crossings, the region will attract greater and more diverse economic activity on both sides, creating desperately needed jobs. Though clamping down on illegal charcoal trafficking can have some impact, only alternative sources of income will ultimately put an end to the practice, Antoine said.

"It's important to concentrate more funds on activities on the Haitian-Dominican Republic border so that we can provide jobs and create more work," Antoine said. "We need rapid intervention from all the actors working at the border so that we can restore the environment and protect the people living in the area from hurricanes and storms."

The Haitian border commission is also interested in establishing a special economic zone to run the length of the border. Antoine is traveling frequently to the Dominican Republic to discuss the plan with private-sector actors there and is reaching out to the Dominican government for support.

But Perez and his team say the Haitian government must first immediately establish a program to replace charcoal with propane and other alternative fuel sources, the same solution that saved Dominican forests from the fate suffered by the Haitian forests.

Hopeful signs

Meanwhile, as the illegal charcoal trade exacerbates tensions between the two countries, the ecological damage done to Haiti's landscape threatens to pull the neighbors further apart in another unexpected way.

Rapid erosion caused by deforestation is spilling large quantities of silt into Lac Azuei, raising lake levels and flooding the road connecting Port-au-Prince to Malpasse. The original road already lies 2 feet below the water line, but the government has been piling sand on top of it to keep the critical passage open. The lake is rising still.

The government is considering reforesting the hillsides to halt the erosion and dredging the lake and a drainage canal, but thus far, its best hope for a permanent solution is a plan to build a new road on the north side of the lake. That project would cost at least $40 million, and there is no source of funding yet.

But there are growing signs of hope in Haiti. The population seems more receptive than ever before to messages promoting environmental protection, aid workers and U.N. officials say. Storm barriers are springing up to protect urban centers from deadly flash floods, and community groups are experimenting with alternative sources of fuel.

Safety and security seem to be improving, as well, encouraging Haitians to venture out more and tying the nation more closely together. That security is also giving space for the government and nonprofits to focus on solutions to the country's numerous environmental challenges.

But Ron Daniels, founder of the New York-based Haiti Support Project, warns that the nation's stability is still fragile. U.N. peacekeepers and aid workers can only do so much, and the country's political leaders have yet to end their zero-sum game for dominance and come together, he said.

"Given the right political scenario -- I mean by that the political class deciding that it's in its self-interest to embrace the masses of the people and to have progressive policies and so forth -- then this country is going to emerge as a dominant force, at some point, in the Caribbean," Daniels said.

Celebrate this 4th with Hope for the future

by Corbyn Small

July 4th, 1776, the Declaration of Independence is adopted and the United States proclaimed its sovereignty from Great Britain. Fifteen years later the First Amendment declares the importance of securing civil liberties such as freedom of speech, religion, and the press. In 1865 the Thirteenth Amendment is passed, stating, “Neither slavery nor involuntary servitude... shall exist within the United States, or any place subject to their jurisdiction.” We continue our blogging celebration of  freedom parade through the week leading up to the 4th of July, and pause the celebration for a moment of consideration for two countries that Plant With Purpose works with in the Caribbean.

Basic Freedoms for Haiti and the Dominican Republic Earlier this month, the U.S. State Department released the 2009 Trafficking in Persons report. Human Trafficking is something thought by most to be a thing of the past, and you may never have heard of such a report. In fact, human trafficking is considered to be the fastest growing criminal industry in the world and an estimated $32 billion dollars a year are collected in revenue. The Trafficking in Persons report has been generated by the U.S. State Department for the last nine years and outlines the efforts, attempts, successes and failures of international governments' abilities to react and stop human trafficking in their respective nations.  Haiti, the poorest country in the western hemisphere, remains a special case for the fourth year in a row and has been unable to be included in the report due to governmental instability. Believe it or not, in Haiti there are still forms of human trafficking that aren’t illegal. Because of political instability there has not been policy or law making in Haiti to even provide avenues to prosecute people who are trafficking Haitian men, women, and children into the Dominican Republic, the United States, Bahamas and other nations in the Caribbean. Its neighbor, the Dominican Republic, remains on the Tier 2 watch list, which means they do not meet minimum the requirements of the Trafficking Victims Protection Acts and that it "is a source, transit, and destination country for men, women, and children trafficked for the purposes of commercial sexual exploitation and forced labor.” Forced labor is possibly the most common form of trafficking between Haiti and the DR due to the racial prejudices that exist between the Dominicans and the Haitians. The Haitians are considered by many Dominicans as inferior because of their darker skin and the extent of poverty in Haiti versus the Dominican Republic. Many Haitians seek economic opportunity by putting themselves at risk and illegally crossing the border into the Dominican Republic where the farmlands are still producing crops. This is merely an introduction to the longstanding rivalry between the two countries that has created a harbouring center for people to be taken advantage of. (To learn more about the history and cultures of the two countries, read on in this report titled "Illegal People" by Human Rights Watch).

Human trafficking and involuntary servitude is something that neither my generation, my parent's, or my grandparent’s generation have witnessed here in the United States of America because of  our nation’s steps to ensure that people are treated as equals(not to say that the U.S. has a clean slate; there are many places where it still exists right here in the U.S.). 

While we celebrate our freedom and the people who committed their lives to providing us with the liberties we have today, this Independence Day let us stop and remember the people all over the world who have not had the chance to be treated as an equal but instead are marginalized because of race, ethnicity, or social status. Let’s remember that regardless of nationality, we have all been created as equals and all deserve one of the most basic human rights, freedom. 

I can speak of these things with hope for the future as Plant With Purpose does everything we can to restore relationships between countries and people. Whether it be our transborder project at the Haitian and Dominican border, or helping Burmese hill tribe refugees living in Thailand receive Thai citizenship, Plant With Purpose is working as a voice for those who have none.