Fwd: Re : Thinking About a New Haiti
Leon David
From: Pierre Brunache Jr <bruna...@yahoo.com>
Date: Mon, Feb 1, 2010 at 9:41 PM
Subject: Re : Thinking About a New Haiti
To: bruna...@yahoo.com
Greetings from Port-au-Prince. Please read below a NY Times Editorial
regarding a New Haiti.
Peace,
Pierre Brunache, Jr.
________________________________
February 1, 2010
EDITORIAL
Thinking About a New Haiti
Three weeks after Haiti’s earthquake, the search for survivors has
been called off, the TV crews are trickling home, and the celebrity
telethon is over — usual signs that the floodwaters of compassion will
be ebbing soon. The United States, Canada and other nations, meeting
in Montreal last week, vowed that wouldn’t happen. They began to map
out a 10-year recovery plan and set the stage for a big donor
conference in March.
Leaders there also acknowledged the difficult truth: It will take
years of sustained help, and aid alone will never pour the foundation
of a new Haiti.
In old Haiti there is still mostly horror. It is a nation of the
homeless and maimed. Despite a stunning global surge of aid, many
survivors still lack water, food and tents. Thousands sleep outdoors
in Port-au-Prince, in terror of aftershocks. Roads, ports,
communications — all in terrible shape before — are shattered.
Managers and civil servants needed to help run the recovery are dead;
the buildings they would run it from are flattened.
And yet there are reasons for optimism in the rubble. Well before the
quake, experts like Paul Collier, an Oxford economist who was a
special adviser on Haiti to the United Nations, were disseminating
sensible proposals for rebuilding Haiti. The quake altered the
landscape but not the validity of these ideas.
Here are a few that donor countries and Haitian leaders should take a
hard look at in coming weeks:
PROMOTE SELF-SUFFICIENCY Professor Collier has noted that Haiti has
considerable economic advantages, like low labor costs and a law that
grants its goods preferential access to the United States market.
Extending that law and encouraging investments in industries like
garment-making and tourism could swiftly create tens of thousands of
jobs. Rebuilding and modernizing agriculture to grow staples and
export products like coffee and mangoes would mean food, cash and
employment.
OPEN UP THE COUNTRYSIDE Dispersing the population beyond overbuilt,
overburdened cities, like the now-shattered capital, is a good idea
now cloaked in urgency. Haitians need to get out of disaster-prone
areas, and well-placed development could enable them to lead
sustainable lives in rural areas and new small towns instead of as the
huddled, jobless urban poor. They also need help with tree-planting
and topsoil restoration projects, which could create jobs and begin to
undo the profound environmental damage that has left the countryside
so impoverished and vulnerable to natural disasters.
REBUILD (AND MAINTAIN) INFRASTRUCTURE Haiti obviously needs homes,
schools, roads, a reliable power system — but it also needs the money
to maintain them, instead of the usual practice of building projects
and leaving them to rot. Technology offers hope here, too. Instead of
waiting for someone to build an expensive, centralized power grid,
donors could think more flexibly on a smaller scale, using solar
panels and LEDs to provide electricity and light cheaply, portably and
quickly.
TAP THE DIASPORA Haitian immigrants in the United States, Canada and
elsewhere already send home hundreds of millions of dollars every
year. They surely will be sending more, now that the Obama
administration has wisely, if belatedly, granted temporary protected
status to undocumented Haitians in the United States. Haitians in
Canada proposed another excellent idea: government-paid leaves of
absence to allow expatriates (employed in government or the private
sector) to return and rebuild civil society in their place of birth.
•
In a country scarred by endemic corruption and waste, relief funds and
projects need to be carefully monitored. Those who know Haiti well
note that in the years before this latest disaster, civil order had
already begun to take root. President René Préval is far more capable
than his predecessors, although we wish he would be a lot more visible
to his own people and a lot more assertive. Haiti needs strong and
honest leadership.
Expert analysts like Jocelyn McCallan, a Haitian-American development
consultant, noted an encouraging upswelling of political good will and
common purpose after the devastating hurricanes of 2008. This, he
says, helps explain why Haitians have endured these horrific weeks
with relative calm.
It will take a lot of money, creativity, and vigilance and sustained
commitment to rebuild Haiti — from Haitians and from the world. There
are smart people thinking about how to do it. And that is a start.
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