Actually, Celeste explains why knowing that value won't necessarily get us from A to B here. Though I will point out that the problem in Haiti actually isn't government land, it's private property that's too subdivided to manage properly.

What Haiti does is show us the validity of "eco-services" as an economic concept. Flood and hurricane losses are certainly part of that value, and the Dominican Republic (see the Yahoo! article) offers a stark contrast that really hammers the point home.

Now, can we translate that into action on the ground?

Not until stuff like inheritance laws change, and ways can be found to either substitute for the charcoal technologically via things like cheap solar heaters, or find another source for charcoal that spares the trees.

Meanwhile, Crumb Trail's posts about needing to work with locals and use aligned incentives rather than hoping they act against their economic interests (which they won't) offer us guidance on useful vs. unproductive approaches. If you then use eco-services to help set some economic values for reforestation, you now have some basis for calculating what sensible limits those incentives might have.

I started out with this post thinking perhaps there would be some way to donate charcoal to Haiti, but on further consideration didn't think that would help, since it would remove the sole source of income for a lot of residents. I've looked around, and read about projects to donate solar stoves to Haitians, but they can't work every day, and again, this doesn't address the fact that a lot of Haitians make the money that buys their food by selling charcoal.

Sugarcane charcoal is something Haiti can produce without imports from other countries. It would allow Haitians to continue cooking with charcoal, so there would hopefully be less resistance to the change. It's a low-tech operation that fits in line with their current methods for charcoal production. It's my response to "find me other work. And another way to cook."

Good post.

I read something recently about China starting to develop a satellite account system, but don't remember where. The U.S. BEA had an effort underway, led by William Nordhaus, but alas the Bush Administration yanked it.

What's a "satellite account system"?

A couple of things strike me as odd concerning the issue with Haiti and deforestation.

1) 1950 - 10,700 sq. miles 25% forest = 2675 sq. miles. According to the link it's really 10,640.98+ sq. miles of land the remainder is water but I'll work with what's given.

2) In 1994 - 4% of 10,700 sq. miles = 428 sq. miles of forest remained

3) In 2004 - 1.4% of 10700 sq. miles = 149.8 sq miles of forest remains.

4) How many trees per sq. mile? I suppose we could estimate by what is currently available but this doesn’t take into consideration density due to soil and environmental differences.

5) How many briquettes per average tree?

6) How many briquettes per family per meal per day? I can tell you I certainly use more than 10 briquettes and probably less than 30 per cook out. Worst case 365 × 3 x 30 = 23850, best case 365 × 3 x 10 = 10950.

7) We’re planting 60 million and they are cutting 20 million a year. That's better than the 2 to 1 ratio proposed by the Haitian government.

Given a population of 7.6 million somehow the math just doesn’t add up for me at any rate. I can’t help but imagine a lot of Haitians should be eating raw foods at this time simply because they don’t have a sustainable fuel to cook with. 7.6 million divided by 6 per family = 1,266,666.6+ (1.27 million cookers at 90 briquettes a day!)

I haven’t researched any of these questions but to me it certainly gives rise to the thought that all of this is possibly exaggerated.

I'm also interested to know why the majority of the data on the link to the instructions for making charcoal from sugar cane is stricken through.

Satellite accounts are one way of doing green accounting. Rather than trying to monetize, say, the economic value of forests, you simply keep track of acreage or board-feet or something along with regular GNP.

So in the case of Indonesia, you'd say Indonesia lost X acres of forest this year, but GNP was up Y%. The alternative is to say that an acre of forest is equivalent to some amount of depreciation in natural capital, and so to get the Green Net National Product you would take GNP minus capital depreciation minus natural capital depreciation. Then you'd know whether Indonesia's growth was really making the country better off in the long run. An (imperfect) analogy would be: if in a given year your personal salary goes up by $5000, but your house suddenly needs a new roof costing $10,000, are you truly better off?

For my part, I don't think the valuation methods we have are solid enough quite yet to merit the latter approach, which is why I prefer satellite accounts for now.

Joe,

“Flood and hurricane losses are certainly part of that value, and the Dominican Republic (see the Yahoo! article) offers a stark contrast that really hammers the point home.”

I assume your referring to this part:

From the Yahoo - Associated Press article:

“The difference in vegetation also is reflected in the death tolls. The Dominican Republic lost just 19 people to Jeanne, including 12 people who drowned in swollen rivers.”

First a bit of technical information on the storm

“The storm hit the island Thursday as a hurricane but weakened as it slowly moved across the island of Hispaniola, which encompasses both the Dominican Republic and Haiti.”

“Jeanne hovered over the country's north coast for some 10 hours Thursday night, pounding the area with horizontal sheets of rain …”

I would argue that the author is unqualified to make the assessment that “The difference in vegetation also is reflected in the death tolls”. A relief map of the island shows a “stark contrast” in the topography of the two countries in the storm area. The article also stated "when it rains, there's little to soak up the water". You will have to excuse my skepticism, but it seems that the ability to soak up water before saturation occurs is not addressed. I don't doubt the deforestation was a contributing factor but without quantitative evidence were all just guessing. The implication that the disaster was primarily caused by deforestation appears to me to be more activism then thoughtful analysis.

Greg - Fair point re: the Yahoo! piece. Good contribution.

Note that credit for this (very good) article should go to the author Celeste Bilby.

USMC - Yes, those are the sort of numbers to crunch I think if we want to get a handle on this. Though I suspect your BBQ uses a LOT more briquettes than a poor Haitian family does. We can tell from satellite photos what the forest cover is over time, and country energy percentage ratios aren't usually off by much. I'm inclined to take them as reliable.

RE: planting rates, note the timelines. 60 million planted over 20 years - 20 million per 1 year = a major deficit. I know, they could have made that much clearer than they did and said "average of 3 million planted per year." MSM math!

Praktike - thanks for the clarification. Actually, the whole Eco-services article referenced above is a n attempt to make GNNP calculations possible. I hope it gets refined enough to do that, and the number of citations the original article by Costanza et. al. got makesme cautiously hopeful on that score.

I am a soil scientist and agronomist who has worked in Haiti. A few points need clarification.

The worst deforestation by far is in the north and central parts of the country. In the south, from Jacmel on through Cayes and west the situation is not too bad. Hurricane Ivan worked the south of Haiti over fairly well, but we heard almost nothing of the damage and death.

The French heritage of Haiti is an important factor. Amongst former colonies around the world those colonised by England generally have the best time of it--in inverse proportion to the degree that they adopted socialism after independence.

Former Spanish colonies are in the middle of the pack in terms of having things "together." For many reasons those with former French masters have the worst time of it, by a large margin. Not least of the matter is that the French almost universally sought to exploit a country rather than (as was the case with both Spain and England) populate it to some extent.

Much of the difference between the DR and Haiti is the result of different colonial masters and the attitudes they instilled. Haiti also for many years treated its forests as a common resource, whereas in the DR it was always held privately.

Enough analysis. As for answers, it is not as easy, especially in those parts of Haiti where there is essentially no longer any soil worthy of the name.

One important step that can be applied almost nationwide is the planting of vetiver grass to stabilise slopes. North of Jacmel this has produced excellent results. Vetiver produces an exquisite and highly valued essential oil used in soaps and parfunerie. Lime trees are another soil-holding source of revenue, as the essential oil is used in various soft drinks.

Here I must acknowledge the remarkable work and dedication of my fellow agronomist Pierre Leger who is now a relatively wealthy man with no need to fence his property, so highly regarded is he by the population. Landless peasants are allowed to cultivate the land between his lime trees, and he pays them for harvesting the leaves. At his vetiver factory near Cayes he has installed reliable electric lights and benches, and local students gather there to study at night. I could say more--Leger is an unsung hero.

There is also the work of another agronomist, American Rodney Babe who has lived in Haiti for almost 20 years. He has done ground-breaking work in the culture of tilapia as a high-protein cash crop resource. Along with tilapia, both Babe and Leger have used vetiver extensively for land reclamation.

The important thing to note is that reforestation alone will not work. The soil is not stabilised and most trees do not "take" or thrive. Once stabilised with vetiver and left to settle for several years, reforestation is much more successful, and tens of thousands of acres north of Jacmel have already proven.

There is so much more I could say, but Haiti is not really the hopeless place it is portrayed to be. The weak link as I see it is lack of access to capital for female entrepreneurship. There is no clear title to property, and consequently a great deal of real wealth is tied up in "capital dormant" --sleeping capital. Women are by far the better and more responsible entrepreneurs and it is there that the greatest leverage is probably to be found.

Vetiver grass, reforestation, fruit trees, and micro-loans for women. It won't solve everything or turn Haiti into Hong Kong in a generation, but in the circumstances it's not a bad place to start.

.

Bart Hall -

Thanks muchly for all of the additional information and analysis. Given your experience with Haiti, do you think sugarcane charcoal production would be feasible there? I looked around online, but couldn't find any information to show that anyone there was actually trying it. I can see that reforestation alone wouldn't be enough, but without providing Haitians with an alternative cooking fuel, I can't see any easy ways to prevent them from continuing to cut down the trees they have remaining.

The problem with sugar cane is that in general it is too wet. Once the juice is pressed out it becomes 'bagasse' but that is nevertheless wet enough (and sweet enough) to ferment rather badly.

The best low-tech destination for bagasse is to feed it to cattle.

I cannot at present imagine a scenario in which bagasse could be turned into charcoal in any sort of a net-energy-positive fashion. Basically you're trying to make charcoal out of grass.

Bart Hall

”The worst deforestation by far is in the north and central parts of the country. In the south, from Jacmel on through Cayes and west the situation is not too bad.”

”There is so much more I could say, but Haiti is not really the hopeless place it is portrayed to be.”

Thanks for chiming in. Is there any validity to my math that if I read the article correctly they are talking about 149.8 sq. miles of forest remaining?

Keeping in mind 1 sq mile = 640 acres you mentioned tens of thousands of acres in your note which translates to 15.6 sq miles per ten thousand acres.

149.8 sq. miles * 640 = 95872 acres of forest. Personally I don’t care what yard stick we use to measure the forestation of the area. I’m just curious as to whether the article is valid or not.

I find such an assessment pretty negative, given Chardust Ltd has a plant in Kenya processing bagasse into canecoal already. From their website: "Chardust Ltd. is an alternative energy company headquartered on the outskirts of Nairobi, Kenya. We've developed innovative techniques to convert biomass wastes into low-cost charcoal briquettes. We sell over 180 tonnes per month into institutional and domestic markets in Kenya, displacing an equivalent amount of unsustainably harvested lumpwood charcoal. At the same time as providing a cheaper energy alternative, this contributes to job creation, waste recycling and environmental conservation."