Jul
15
Toward a Sustainable Future for Haiti
The challenge of rebuilding Haiti, already the most impoverished country in the Americas [1], after the earthquake is an enormous one, but it is also one that offers enormous opportunities to envision a new and more sustainable future. To the extent that it is possible to make a decisive break with the failed policies of the past, the opportunity for both public and private investment to flow into the sustainable redevelopment of Haiti is a significant one. Already a number of initiatives are being proposed, and in some cases acted on, even in the absence of an overall coordinated vision.
This site is provided on behalf of the Sustainable Haiti Coalition, to promote the principles of sustainability in Haiti, to provide a means of communication and real-time information amongst the members of the Coalition and the projects that are happening on the ground, and to support our projects of (a) facilitating a robust sustainability dialog amongst all sectors in Haiti, (b) restoring the higher education sector, and (c) mobilizing greater private sector involvement, entrepreneurship, innovation, and socially-responsible practices and reporting.
It is built on the shoulders of an earlier site, developed on behalf of the Working Group for a Sustainable Future for Haiti at FairleighDickinson University. That site has important information, some but not all of which is reproduced here, so if you are looking for our work to date in support of Haiti, please visit that site as well as this one.
[1] Michael Pradieu, co-founder of the Edeyo Foundation, has noted that there’s a big difference between being “the poorest country” and being “the most impoverished.” Haiti’s problems are not inherent in the environment or in the culture or in the people; they’re a consequence of disastrous national and international policies over many decades. It is these policies that now need to change. [Back to text]