[Congressional Record Volume 155, Number 90 (Tuesday, June 16, 2009)]
[Senate]
[Pages S6646-S6647]
From the Congressional Record Online through the Government Publishing Office [www.gpo.gov]




                    HAITI REFORESTATION ACT OF 2009

  Mr. DURBIN. Madam President, in December 2008, Senator Bingaman, 
Congressman Meek, and I visited Haiti. We went to see the public 
health, economic, environmental, and political situation in that 
impoverished Caribbean nation.
  We traveled for hours into rural Haiti to the town of Cange to 
observe the incredible work being done by Partners in Health providing 
AIDS treatment and teaching mothers with newborns how to purify water.
  We visited a school in Cite de Solei--a teeming slum in the capital 
Port au Prince--where Father Hagan and the organization Hands Together 
is providing schooling and meals for some of Haiti's most vulnerable 
children.
  Unfortunately, despite these programs and the efforts of U.N. 
peacekeeping forces to bring some measure of security, the living 
conditions for average Haitians remain desperate: It is the poorest 
country in the Western Hemisphere, with nearly 80 percent of its 
population out of work; one-half of its 8.2 million people live in 
extreme poverty; Haiti's infant mortality rate is the highest in our 
hemisphere; 1 in 10 children dies before the age of 5 due to 
malnutrition; the HIV/AIDS situation in Haiti is among the most 
frightening in the world; the average life expectancy of a citizen of 
Haiti is 61 years, the lowest in the region.
  To add to these already desperate conditions, Haiti has been 
devastated in recent years by tropical storms and hurricanes. In 2004, 
Hurricane Jeanne struck Haiti, killing nearly 3,000 residents, and 
displacing over 200,000 more.
  Last year, the island of Hispaniola, which Haiti shares with the 
Dominican Republic, was hit by four major storms. These storms caused 
massive flooding and landslides that cut off land routes and hampered 
the delivery of aid to its desperate citizens. Nearly 800 Haitians lost 
their lives and as many as 1 million were left homeless.
  The world quickly responded to these catastrophes with millions of 
dollars worth of emergency food aid and disaster assistance. The United 
States alone provided $29 million in aid. This assistance helped Haiti 
cope with these immediate challenges.
  But one of the underlying causes of this devastation--and contributor 
to Haiti's larger challenge with poverty and disease--is the 
deforestation of the country's once plentiful tropical forests.
  This satellite image provided by NASA shows the stark difference 
between the amount of forest cover in Haiti and the Dominican 
Republic--countries that share the same island.
  The black line shows the border between the two nations. When you 
look at the lush green of the Dominican Republic and compare it to the 
stark desolation on Haiti's side of the border, it is easy to see why 
Haiti is so much more vulnerable than the Dominican Republic to the 
devastating effects of soil erosion, landslides, and flooding.
  It was not always that way. In fact, 85 years ago Haiti's tropical 
forest covered 60 percent of the country. Today less than 2 percent of 
those forests remain. In the past 5 years, the deforestation rate has 
accelerated by more than 20 percent.
  Some 30 million trees are cut down every year in Haiti. This 
staggering level of deforestation happens because 60 percent of the 
population of Haiti relies on charcoal produced from cutting down trees 
for cooking fuel and two-thirds rely on inefficient, small-scale 
subsistence farming for survival.
  While understandable, this deforestation has had terrible, unintended 
consequences. The soil erosion that has resulted from cutting down all 
of these trees has had the perverse effect of substantially reducing 
Haiti's already scarce agricultural land and leaving what remains less 
productive.
  This soil erosion also makes the island more vulnerable to floods and 
mudslides like the ones that devastated the country last year. The 
reality of this effect is that far more Haitians than Dominicans lost 
their lives and their homes during last year's storms.
  Haiti's tropical forests, if protected and re-grown, would fight the 
destructive effects of soil erosion. Saving old and growing new 
tropical forests would help protect Haiti's freshwater sources from 
contaminants, safeguard Haiti's remaining irrigable land, and save 
lives during hurricane season. Helping Haiti deal with its 
deforestation is something we can help do.
  Today, Senator Brownback joins me in introducing the Haiti 
Reforestation Act of 2009 in an effort to attack this deforestation. 
The bill aims to end within 5 years deforestation in Haiti and restore 
within 30 years the extent of tropical forest cover in existence in 
Haiti in 1990.
  While it is important to start putting trees in the ground, this bill 
is about more than just planting trees. Our government has tried that 
approach in the past and has failed miserably.
  This bill brings the expertise of the both the US AID and the 
International Programs Office of the US Department of Agriculture's 
Forest Service to help Haiti manage in a measurable, verifiable, and 
reportable way its conservation and reforestation efforts. It does this 
in three ways.
  First, the bill empowers these agencies to work with the Haitian 
Government to develop Haiti-appropriate forest-management ideas that 
can be implemented in an incremental way.

[[Page S6647]]

  Second, the bill seeks to bring to Haiti market-based reforestation 
projects that have been successful in other regions of the world. These 
projects are successful because they share certain characteristics. 
They: secure the cooperation and engagement of local communities and 
organizations; provide incentives to protect trees through sustainable, 
yet income-generating growth; and provide hands-on management and 
oversight of replanting efforts.
  Conservation groups such as Planting Empowerment, which is doing just 
this type of work in Panama, provide a model of success and this bill 
will encourage such groups to bring their efforts to Haiti.
  Third, the bill expands the ability of conservation groups to work 
with the Haitian Government and international creditors to trade 
Haiti's international debt for revenue in what are known as debt-for-
nature swaps.
  Groups such as Conservation International, World Wildlife Fund, and 
The Nature Conversancy have successfully used this mechanism globally 
to save other tropical forests--this bill will encourage such groups to 
bring their efforts to Haiti.
  Preservation of what remains of Haiti's tropical forest, and helping 
re-grow some of what has been lost, has numerous benefits for all of 
us, not just for Haiti. Tropical forests: play a critical role as 
carbon sinks to reduce greenhouse gases in the atmosphere; harbor a 
major portion of the Earth's biological and terrestrial resources; and 
provide habitats for an estimated 10 to 30 million plant and animal 
species, including species essential to medical research and 
agricultural productivity.
  But attacking the desperate effect of deforestation in Haiti is the 
main purpose of this bill. As Haiti's Prime Minister, Michele Pierre-
Louis, recently said:

       The whole country is facing an ecological disaster. We 
     cannot keep going on like this. We are going to disappear one 
     day. There will not be 400, 500 or 1,000 deaths [from 
     hurricanes]. There are going to be a million deaths.

  We must act to ensure that that day never comes. I urge my colleagues 
to support the Haiti Reforestation Act of 2009.

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