Coming back from Haiti

Sometimes photos say as much as thousands words. Here are some photos form Port Au Prince, the capital of Haiti. I uploaded not the worst as I saw in Port Au Prince and not the best of course.
As IDB colleagues told me, a lot of the disaster waste has been removed and the situation in collection of waste and cleaning - beautification of the city has been recently improved.
However, despite recent imrpovements, the situation remains very risky for the public health and it seems that there is no easy way out, due to several political, insitutional and of course  economic - financial barriers.

 The conditions I met in Port Au Prince, an urban complex of more or less 2,5 million people, are probably better that the rest of the country, while some other cities like Cap-Haitien and Gonaives are facing much more serious waste collection and disposal problems.

Scavenging, as it is obvious at the photos, is an activtity for thousands people in Port of Prince, not only around the landfill but also in many small and bigger waste disposal points within and around the city.

 However, plastic bottles are almost 100% recycled, due to a local industrial firm which has developed a relevant technology.

The same is true for the plastics and metal pieces that are found within the debris waste. It is supposed that within next 6-10 months all the debris waste will have been removed, although the standards for their current disposal are not always suitable. Soon I will have more information about it.

Last but not least, it seems that the main problem related waste management is a cohesive strategic approach that will unify all the involved parties (goverments, donors, banks, NGOs etc.). Although IDB has started a valuable project to rearrange waste collection, provide institutional development and radically imporved waste disposal with a new sanitary landfill, several local conflicts and controversial strategies create at least barriers and serious delays.

Next days I will write more details about the Troutier dumpsite and the informal sector there. Until then, I ask everyone to think more about it. Can we do something for Haiti? Can we support a waste management change? And how this could be done? 

Going to Haiti

On my way to Haiti, changing one airplane after another, I was obliged to stop thinking my usual activities and focus to a usually forgotten reality.

According Wikipedia, with a Gross Domestic Product (GDP) estimate of US$6.56 billion in 2009, Haiti is routinely regarded as one of the poorest nations in the western hemisphere. Based on estimates by the World Bank in 2005, the percentage of people living below the US$1 per day poverty line in Haiti is 54%, and the percentage of people living below US$2 per day is at 78%!

Trying to understand the situation in the country, I discovered that it has the world’s lowest electricity coverage, just a little bit above 12%! And the high Infant Mortality Rate of 64 deaths per 1000 live births is a result of the poor healthcare system, and the lack of a well-planned education system is the cause of low literacy rates (45%) in the country.

And regarding waste management, the situation is maybe even worst. The current waste management system includes collection of maximum 35% of waste generated. The rest is left in the streets where it is usually burned.

In Port-au-Prince, Haiti’s capital and major urban centre, the inefficiency of the solid waste management system represents a critical risk to public health. The current solid waste management system has never been fully integrated into the metropolitan public services system; instead, it is characterized by a high level of institutional instability, poor governance, limited human and financial capacity, and improper solid waste-disposal practices by urban communities. Moreover, the 7.3 earthquake that shook the capital city on January 12 of 2010 and destroyed over a quarter million homes and businesses has further compromised an already strained formal and informal waste management sector. And of course it left more or less 20.000.000 tons of debris waste that are still waiting to be managed.

Well, going to Haiti, just before my airplane will be landing, I realize once more that what is called Poverty Trap is very real and very strong and it concerns more or less 50% of the planet’s population.

I am also feeling deeply in my heart that the Poverty Trap and the Environmental Degradation (what a nice scientific phrase we use to describe the daily misery of living within any kind of waste, without access to clean water and elementary sanitation rules) will never be separated. As long as the Trap exists, it is further reinforced by Environmental Degradation and vice-versa.

But there is something more. Does anyone from the western world thinks or speaks about the situation in Haiti today? Does any NGO campaign for it? Or the countries trapped at the Poverty Trap simply do not provide business opportunities, not even for NGOs, so there is no reason to campaign about them?

I am thinking much more but I will write them after some days, as soon as I will have finished my trip to Haiti and I will have a much better idea about it.

Until then, please do not forget that if we leave Haiti alone, it will never be able to escape the Trap.