Land Management Comes Full Circle in the Pearl of the Antilles

haiti

In a country that was once referred to as “The Pearl of the Antilles” due its vast land productivity, poverty in Haiti is now widespread and agricultural productivity low due to declining soil fertility and extensive soil erosion. Meeting people’s daily food needs is one of Haiti’s greatest and long-standing challenges. The massive earthquake that hit the island in January 2010 worsened this situation dramatically, and recovery has been painfully slow.

Soil fertility urgently needs to be improved to meet the dietary needs of the rural population. But it’s not just food insecurity that is putting people’s health at risk. Haiti also faces a sanitation crisis. People are forced to find other ways to dispose of their wastes, often in the ocean, rivers, ravines, plastic bags, or abandoned houses. This was one of the causes of the cholera outbreak in late 2010, which quickly turned into an epidemic that has since claimed another 8,000 lives.

In 2006, Sustainable Organic Integrated Livelihoods (SOIL) started addressing these challenges using an integrated approach called ecological sanitation (EcoSan). EcoSan uses specially designed toilet facilities to collect human waste, which is turned into safe, nutrient-rich compost that can be used to regenerate depleted soils and improve agricultural production. This technology is not only environmentally sustainable, it is also affordable—a great asset in a country like Haiti.

More than 30,000 people in Haiti have used SOIL’s EcoSan toilets or similar sanitation facilities set up by other organizations with SOIL’s expertise.

Waste treatment centers collect all the waste products and process them into compost, in accordance with the highest public health standards. The soil quality and yields have improved on many farms, nurseries, and gardens that use the compost. SOIL has set up experimental gardens to show that the quality of the compost improves output. The gardens are also used to test and demonstrate other sustainable land management practices and cultivate seedlings for reforestation.

In 2012, SOIL won the Land for Life Award with a cash prize of US$40,000. They are using the award to develop an integrated agricultural livelihood learning center. The center will include a full-scale composting operation, fruit tree nursery, and a solar-powered drip irrigation demonstration farm near Cap-Haïtien on the northern coast.

“We live by the Haitian sayings painted on the back of the SOIL Poopmobile: ‘Pwoteje anviwonman an se pwoteje tet ou’—‘Protect the environment and you are protecting yourself’ and ‘Chanjman tout bon an komanse nan mwen avan’—Change begins with me,” says Sasha Kramer, Executive Director of SOIL.

Web site: http://www.oursoil.org