Environmental Innovation Could be Haiti's Salvation

Anyone who has been to Haiti knows that its environment has been devastated. In fact, one of the first things a visitor notices when flying into Haiti are sandy, rocky mountains that used to be covered with trees. The erosion not only makes the soil less productive, but it also makes villages more susceptible to flooding, mudslides, and other natural disasters.

We've written on this site before about how environmental preservation must be linked to livelihoods to be sustainable. People are hungry and will continue to use charcoal until they have an alternative they like as much and costs less.

President Elect Preval, an agronomist by training himself, announced plans to diversify Haiti's sugar industry. In terms of crops, sugar is worth next to nothing. Sugar cane is not indigenous to Haiti but was widely planted throughout the Caribbean by European colonizers. When Germans invented a technique for withdrawing sugar from sugar beats, even Michigan could produce sugar. Sugar cane became a water-intensive, profit losing endeavor.
Or did it?

Preval intends to work with Brazil to covert sugar cane into ethanol and bio-diesel. If energy prices keep increasing, this could be a very sensible move. Haiti, being a small country, will never be an economy of scale. However, there is a huge need for alternate sources of energy in Haiti as the traditional ones arent working very well. If Haiti were able to meet its own needs, it could explore export to the DR and other countries as well.
There is hope. Jamaica has been producing ethanol for export to the US market since August 2005, through a joint venture between the state-owned petroleum refinery, Petrojam, and a Brazilian firm, Coimex. That Endeavour earned the company operating under the name Petrojam Ethanol Limited (PEL) $2.26 billion in revenues and netted a profit of $247 million for the seven months it has been in operation. For the current fiscal year, PEL is expected to generate a net profit of $381 million from $3.76 billion in revenue. You would have to sell a lot of pieces for sugar cane in the market to reach $381 million.

Haiti Innovation believes that projects which link income generation to the environment will positive impact Haiti's long term development. We encourage potential partners to submit applications in this exciting area.

Bryan