Gene Rosow

Haiti and Afghanistan:  The Dirt Is Dying ... How We Can Help

 

Dirt is dying in Afghanistan

 26 years of chaos will do that: constant warfare, extended drought, deforestation, de-vegetation, declining soil fertility, falling water tables, salinsation, widespread wind and water soil erosion, a nightmare.

 Afghanistan now faces the complete eradication of its forests. So there will be more floods, avalanches and landslides. And millions more displaced Afghans.

 Afghanistan’s long-term environmental degradation is caused, in part, by a complete collapse of local and national forms of governance.

 The Taliban controls wide swaths of the country. Government corruption is fueled by an industrial monocrop agriculture that provides most of the heroin to the world - while all other agricultural production plummets 50%.  The result:  Food shortages, millions of Afghanis displaced, and according to UNEP’s Post Conflict Assessment for Afghanistan: “a future without water, forests, wildlife and clean air.” 

 In Haiti too, dirt is dying. 

 And the government equally inept. According to a survey, 70% of Haitian farmers say “te fatigue” - the earth is tired.  No wonder, given the bad history of the Island of Hispaniola.  When Columbus arrived in 1492, the island’s fertile soil offered rich croplands and lush forests.  First, Spanish, and then, French colonial masters ignorantly chose monocrop agriculture - with African slaves laboring the single cash crops - and cutting down trees. Later, freed but desperately poor Haitians were forced into paying their former masters off by cutting down more forests.  Modern plantation economies and the need for fuel finished off the rest of the dirt in Haiti. 

 Less than 4% of forests remain and soil throughout Haiti is eroding down to bedrock.  When the bedrock erupted into the catastrophic earthquake, people around the world felt moved to help the people of Haiti.  There is talk of much more aid and of rebuilding Haiti.

Please remember:  It's all about dirt.

 Afghanistan and Haiti: One country destroyed by war.  The other ravaged by natural catastrophe. Both mountainous and poor, with agricultural based economies. The soil and the people in these poverty-polluted countries are in terrible shape. No matter how many soldiers, NGO’s and nation builders the world provides to help the people in these devastated countries --- nothing will succeed unless it starts with healthy dirt. 

Below are some dirt-aware solutions we believe can help. We believe in dirt.  

 

Rebuilding From The Ground Up

 

Return and recuperate organic matter to replenish top soil in terraces and other depleted areas.  

• Use every possible composting method: e.g. Sustainable Organic Integrated Livelihoods (SOIL), a nonprofit group builds and provides composting toilets to rural Haitian communities to restore soil fertility with organic matter.
• Prepare terraces in mountains including adequate irrigation (living soil holds water!)
• Put local markets and fresh food back at the center of the food system. 
• Grow subsistence crops first.
• Stop deforestation and land clearing.
• Reverse the concentration of meat production in factory farms and reintegrate joint animal and crop production.
• Integrate dirt in green rebuilding of destroyed urban areas, including urban farming, vegetation to help capture water, reduce heat island effects.
• Recovery and rebuilding with dirt in mind will also contribute to mitigating the effects of climate change by as much as 50%.

*Note to the U.S. State Department and the United Nations and all NGO’s that want to help rebuild/repair Haiti and Afghanistan:

It's all about dirt.

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