Dominican Republic and Haiti: Country Studies

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Dominican Republic and Haiti: Country Studies
dense forest canopy and two-thirds open forest. Between 1978
and 1984, monitoring of three representative sites characterized
as degraded, open, and closed forest showed rates of
deforestation ranging from 1.0 to 3.4 percent. It is clear that
the process of deforestation has continued unabated since
1978; it was thought in 1993 that forests represented as little as
2.2 percent of the land. In general, the remaining parcels of
forest today are highly fragmented and concentrated along
watershed divides and on steep slopes vulnerable to erosion.
The primary cause of deforestation is the sheer scale of agricultural
occupation of the landscape; however, demand for
woodfuels is another significant contributor to deforestation.
Per capita consumption of fossil fuels is the lowest in the hemisphere.
Haiti is currently 80 percent self-sufficient in energy
based on wood as the primary cooking fuel in rural areas and
wood charcoal in urban areas.
Fuelwood alone constitutes 70 percent of the national supply
of energy. Residential consumption makes up more than 50
percent of total energy demand. Fuelwood, bagasse, and wood
charcoal also supply 63 percent of industrial demand. Twothirds
of national charcoal consumption is attributed solely to
Port-au-Prince. Ninety percent of Port-au-Prince households
use wood charcoal for cooking. To a certain extent, growing
national demand for charcoal parallels the growth of Port-au-
Prince as an urban center.
Charcoal production is
an important source of off-season
employment for an estimated 67,000 small farmers. Its production
is decentralized and produced by traditional methods.
Since the 1970s, production has shifted from traditional supply
zones of the arid northwest and lie de la Gonave to a much
broader range of production sites in all nine administrative
departments of the country. Charcoal is generally acquired at
prices far below its actual replacement cost. This fact significantly
limits market incentive to manage w T ood as a renewable
resource base for charcoal production. The mining of wood
resources therefore contributes to degradation of the environment.
Mining
There is little mining activity in Haiti except for construction
materials. Deposits of bauxite on the Rochelois Plateau near
Miragoane and copper near Terre Neuve were mined in the
past; the bauxite mine closed in 1982 and the copper mine in
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