Port-au-Prince/Brussels, 28 April 2009: Haiti’s environmental destruction is a time bomb that needs urgent attention if the country is to preserve its social and economic stability.

Haiti: Saving the Environment, Preventing Instability and Conflict,* the latest briefing from the International Crisis Group, argues that the combination of environmental destruction and other factors such as weak institutions, extreme poverty and rapid population growth raise the risk of serious new trouble in the island republic. Concerted national and international action, both immediate and longer-term, is needed to avoid the country slipping back into instability.

“The catastrophic state of the environment is closely related to deep-seated institutional, political and governance problems”, says Bernice Robertson, Crisis Group’s Haiti Analyst. “Coherent national socio-economic development policies have been mostly absent, due to management and political limitations and the narrow interests of those holding economic power”.

For years, severe environmental problems have been among the roots of Haiti’s social, economic and even political crises. Haiti is one of the world’s most natural disaster-prone countries, due to its location in the high latitude tropics, mountainous terrain rising to almost 2,700 metres above sea level and severely degraded environment. Following the devastating floods of 2004, which killed approximately 3,000, Crisis Group warned about future ecological disasters. In 2008, a succession of hurricanes and tropical storms killed close to 800 and left some 100,000 homeless.

Efforts to halt the depletion of the natural environment are essential to prevent new instability. The government, with international help, needs to reach out to local communities to make them full partners in reducing environmental degradation.

Hurricane-preparedness is another urgent matter. With parliament’s approval of the 2008-2009 budget last week, the government should launch its announced pre-hurricane season program immediately.

“Success in environmental rehabilitation depends in large part on good cooperation between those over-using the natural resources and those seeking to better manage them”, argues Markus Schultze-Kraft, Crisis Group’s Latin America Program Director. “The approach to halting and eventually reversing Haiti’s environmental problems must contain that same strong social component that is fundamental for reducing the risk of renewed violent conflict”.