LONDON (AlertNet) - When Tropical Storm Jeanne deluged the tiny Caribbean country of Haiti in mid-September, killing up to 2,500 people and displacing thousands more, Haiti’s vulnerability to even the weakest of storms was laid bare for all to see.

Disaster experts were quick to draw contrasts with near-by Cuba, which weathered the most powerful hurricane in living memory just days earlier without a single casualty.

They pointed out that Haiti’s lack of an early warning system had left people unaware and unprepared. They also highlighted the country’s extensive deforestation, caused by the impoverished population’s need for wood to use as charcoal for cooking.

Deforestation has proved deadly time and time again. On an island stripped of trees, heavy rainfall cannot be absorbed. Instead it sweeps down mountains and hills, swallowing everything and everyone in its path.

But does the story end there?

When catastrophe comes knocking, it’s natural to seize on those factors seen as contributing directly to the death toll. Blame the storm itself, blame the environment, blame the lack of evacuation plans.

But increasingly, disaster experts are widening their focus to include the underlying causes of a country’s vulnerability to natural disasters. In Haiti’s case, these include grinding poverty, an extremely volatile political situation and powerful external forces.

Ben Wisner, hazards specialist with the Environmental Studies Programme at Oberlin College, Ohio, and University of London’s Benfield Hazard Research Centre, makes the case for connecting the dots.

“The reason they (the root causes of vulnerability) cannot be overlooked is that without political stability and good governance, an early warning system and other preventive and preparative measures are unlikely,” he said.

“The broad sweeps of history and political/economic change always have specific consequences on the ground.”

Wisner cites the issue of Haiti’s charcoal production as a case in point.

Flash back to the 1960s, when tumbling world coffee prices prompted Haiti’s farmers to abandon coffee crops that had long been shade-grown, meaning that trees had been preserved as a matter of course.

As Haiti’s towns and cities swelled with migrants from the countryside, urban demand for charcoal grew accordingly. This helped charcoal production become ever more viable as a substitute for coffee income.

From 1986, with the overthrow of the Duvalier dictatorship and the collapse of governance in rural areas, even public forests became the target of charcoal production. The trend worsened with a military coup against Haiti’s first elected government in 1991, which brought more instability and less protection for woodland.

A subsequent U.S. economic embargo meant that even fruit trees such as mangoes started being converted to charcoal because farmers could no longer sell fruit to middlemen for export to the United States.

The result was a wholesale ravaging of forests, with devastating consequences for disaster mitigation.

CHRONIC LACK OF GOVERNANCE

But deforestation is just a symptom of Haiti’s chronic lack of governance.

Since independence in 1804, the country’s history has been one of autocratic rule and political instability. Today, Haitians live in a culture of violence and fear.

In the aftermath of former President Jean-Bertrand Aristide’s forced departure from the country amid an armed revolt in February 2004, peace is tenuous.

The U.S.-led multi-national forces that moved in when Aristide left have been replaced by U.N. peacekeepers, charged with disarming rebels who helped oust Aristide as well as pro-Aristide militants, but armed groups still operate in outlying rural areas. Most of the country remains beyond the rule of law.

The economic situation is no better. An interim government has taken shape, but it has few resources to be effective. Corruption is rife, the country’s infrastructure is shattered. And government agencies are unable to provide Haitians with even the most basic services.

Haiti is the poorest country in the Western Hemisphere. It suffers from massive social deprivation and a high HIV/AIDS rate, affecting 4.5 percent of the population.

According to the World Bank, per capita income is considerably less than one-tenth the regional average. Half the population survives on subsistence agriculture. Life expectancy is just 52 years. Jobs are scarce.

As a result, Haitians are heavily dependent on remittances from relatives working abroad, mostly in the United States and Europe.

Efforts to turn things around have failed.

With the goal of jumpstarting growth, in the mid-1990s Haiti adopted neo-liberal economic policies supported by the international financial institutions.

Haiti hoped to benefit from the fruits of economic globalisation but found that a smooth integration into the world economy was unlikely without economic stability and sound governance.

What’s more, focusing too much on integration runs the risk of diverting human resources away from urgent development priorities such as education and health care. According to the U.S.-based Grassroots International, Haiti wound up reducing much-needed government services.

No wonder, then, that disaster mitigation remains a luxury Haiti simply cannot afford.