Climate Disaster
Haiti is one of the 5 countries most exposed to environmental disasters, including earthquakes, hurricanes, drought, flooding, and landslides. The country’s extreme vulnerability is a result of the global climate crisis and a long history of foreign exploitation. Climate change has increased the frequency and severity of disasters which have had devastating consequences for the health, safety, and food security of Haitians. There is a significant risk that mining will exacerbate the impacts of climate change.
Denuded hills of Northwest Haiti. Photo: Ellie Happel, 2015.
Haiti is severely deforested. In the early 19th century, Haitians cut down their most valuable trees and shipped them to Europe to pay off the country's "independence debt." [Link bolded to PDF timeline]. In the 20th century, the Duvalier dictatorship chopped down forests out of fear that they provided a home to insurgents. Today, Haitian people lack access to affordable fuel, and cut down trees to burn as charcoal. Deforestation makes land uninhabitable, and contributes to natural disasters such as landslides and flooding.
Ragged coast of Abricots after Hurricane Matthew. Photo: Jessica Hsu, 2016.
Climate change has been linked to more powerful hurricanes which have had–and will continue to have–devastating consequences. In October 2016, Hurricane Matthew, a Category 4 hurricane, killed 546 people. An estimated 1.4 million people required humanitarian assistance.
Devastating flooding as a result of rising sea levels and severe storm surges continue to displace families, destroy infrastructure, and erode land, harming the many Haitians who rely on farming for their livelihoods.In January 2022, extreme flooding destroyed at least 2,500 homes in northern Haiti close to land under mining permits. Due to climate change, the sea level in the Caribbean is expected to rise between 0.42 feet and 1.83 feet by 2090. This greatly threatens the majority of Haitian cities, including the Port-au-Prince metropolitan area, which currently sits between zero and three feet above sea level and is home to more than 2.9 million Haitians.
Rising temperatures, drought, and increasingly sporadic weather patterns have also disrupted the harvest of Haitian farmers, exacerbating existing food insecurity. The Inter-American Development Bank anticipates that by 2050, the dry season in Haiti could double in length and rainfall could decrease by between 6-17%. Disrupted harvest seasons are particularly harmful in Haiti, where over 4 million Haitians suffer from food insecurity. A longer dry season and an unpredictable wet season will create unimaginable harm for Haitian farmers and the Haitian communities as a whole, who rely heavily on agriculture.It has been projected that global crop yields could decrease by as much as 35% by 2100 due to the impacts of climate change.
Drought Destroys Crops in Indonesia. Photo: D. Mahendra, 2009.
Mining threatens to exacerbate the impacts of climate change in Haiti. Mining often causes deforestation due to the need to build roads and clear land for exploration and mineral extraction. Deforestation frequently leads to soil erosion, landslides, and flooding and is detrimental to the health and safety of Haitians. Increases in the frequency or severity of landslides and flooding will place an additional strain on the already inadequate health infrastructure in Haiti. Drilling and sedimentation from mining activities can also interfere with the flow of groundwater and surface water, which can cause severe flooding.
Pueblo Viejo Mine, Dominican Republic. Photo: Ben Depp, 2013.
Mining also requires large amounts of land. Haiti is already the most densely populated country in the Western Hemisphere. Environmental disasters destroy farmland and communities, reducing the amount of land on which Haitians can live. Land is precious in Haiti and mining threatens to exacerbate the issue of insufficient farmland in the country. Given Haiti’s already vulnerable state due to historical man-made environmental damage and the disproportionate impacts of climate change, mining poses too significant of a risk to local communities to go forward.
Our environment is already the most vulnerable in Latin America, and we suffer from earthquakes, hurricanes and floods every year...Mineral exploitation is a potential disaster – it threatens our health, our water, our land, and the rest of the environment.
- Open Letter from Haitian Organizations in Morne Pele
We the undersigned—farmer organizations, workers, and citizens of the North Department, especially from Morne Pele—raise our voices to denounce gold and other metal mining in the North, particularly in Morne Pele, Quartier Morin.