NEWS RELEASE
FOR IMMEDIATE RELEASE Contact Joy Chesbrough-Berry
September 25, 2004 858-274-3718
In a sea of death and destruction in Haiti, a shining light is found from a local environmental non-profit organization working to stop deforestation
SAN DIEGO (September 21, 2004) – Mudslides and flooding triggered by Tropical Storm Jeanne has killed over 2000 in the city of Gonaives, and there are still bodies missing. This is an all too familiar picture on the island of Hispaniola. Mudslides due to torrential rain buried over 3000 people near the border of the Dominican Republic and Haiti in May of this year. With hurricane storms constantly tracking through the Caribbean, flooding and deaths may continue throughout Haiti unless deforestation is reversed.
A local international environmental agency located in San Diego has been working in 20 communities in Haiti to reverse deforestation and poverty. They have a number of environmental and agricultural programs working in the country, and have witnessed firsthand how agroforestry projects work to bring about sustainable communities. “Haiti would not be experiencing massive flooding and mudslides if the countryside was not stripped by the deforestation of subsistence-level, slash-and-burn agriculture. The answer is to work with the local communities in Haiti and show them other agricultural techniques or an alternative to chopping down trees for charcoal,” said Scott Sabin, Executive Director of Floresta.
Besides planting trees, Floresta empowers Haitians to plant crops and increase livestock. Everything gets affected when the ground becomes saturated with rain and there is no topsoil to soak it up." Mudslides wash away everything, including homes, crops, and livestock. Entire lives are destroyed, unless we share solutions on how to steward the land and reverse deforestation,” said Joy Chesbrough-Berry spokeswoman for Floresta USA in San Diego. “It's all a vicious cycle -- deforestation, leads to denuded hillsides and unproductive soil, leads to hunger, leads to sickness and disease, leads to more poverty, leads to more deforestation. And then they get a natural disaster like the rains this spring and the hurricanes this fall, and there is nothing left to hold the soil in place, so the rain and wind bring landslides, which destroy villages, which contaminate the water supply, which leads to more sickness and death.”
There is hope to this vicious cycle, and Floresta is making a difference by planting over 2.3 million trees. Floresta is a local non-profit set-up to alleviate poverty and deforestation in Haiti, Dominican Republic, Tanzania and Mexico. Floresta has been working in Haiti since 1996. Sabin mentions, “By providing small business loans and agricultural techniques to teach rural farmers how to provide for their families and plant trees, we reverse poverty and massive flooding and deaths due to deforested land.”
The country will be a pure desert by the end of the decade unless successive governments take reforestation seriously. The Dominican Republic’s government has taken action by giving out free trees. They also have a very aggressive reforestation plan for the country. This may be the key to the huge difference in the death toll in the D.R. and Haiti. Only 19 people died in the Dominican Republic verses over 2000 in Haiti. For every tree planted in recent years, seven were chopped down to make charcoal in Haiti. Charcoal is burned for cooking because most of the rural areas are without electricity.
Floresta’s mission is to meet the physical, economic and spiritual needs of the rural poor by reversing the cycle of deforestation, poverty and migration. It also arranges for micro-enterprise loans to help to start small businesses and finance farms. Floresta also has projects in the Dominican Republic, Tanzania and Mexico.
Floresta is located at 4903 Morena Blvd., Suite 1215, in San Diego. Its website is www.floresta.org.For more information on Floresta’s deforestation story, call Joy Chesbrough-Berry at 858-274-3718.
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