Illegal Deforestation: Death by a Thousand Cuts
Al Jazeera (2017)
Film Review
This documentary concerns entrenched corruption, exploitation and deforestation on Hispaniola, the Caribbean island shared by Haiti and the Dominican Republic (DR).
The filmmakes specifically investigate the illegal production and smuggling of charcoal, referred to as “black gold” from DR forests. Haiti, which has destroyed all but 2% of its native forests, relies on illegally smuggled charcoal for 90% of its energy. The DR, in contrast, is reaping the benefits of an aggressively enforced 1960s environmental program to reduce deforestation. The end result is a distinct difference in rainfall between the two countries sharing the island of Hispanola. Thanks to low rainfall and soil degradation, even subsistence agriculture is impossible in most of Haiti.
Poor Haitians survive by providing a cheap immigrant workforce for the DR. Despite their vital important to the country’s economy, right wing DR president Danilo Medina, has solidified his political base by stoking vicious anti-immigrant sentiment (like Trump).
Unsurprisingly nearly all DR anti-charcoal smuggling efforts are directed against poor Haitians who transport charcoal in Haiti on pack animals. The DR government does nothing to address the industrial scale charcoal smuggling by fleets of trucks controlled by DR crime bosses.
The video can’t be embedded but can be view free on-line at the Al Jazeera website:
Illegal Deforestation: Death by a Thousand Cuts
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Exactly, Rosaliene. Excellent point. I find it scary how much of this obvious corruption I see happening here in New Zealand – only here it’s foreign oil and gas corporations doing it to us.
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