In Haiti, we are torn between the natural instinct to help our fellow humans, and the knowledge that conventional aid seldom delivers long-term solutions. Once people are pulled from the rubble and fed, the immediate question becomes whither now for Haiti?

Haiti has a mixed history. Their own revolution and establishment of a republic followed close behind the American revolution, but their nation was beset by the colonial powers from its beginning until the modern day. The French demanded war reparations at gunpoint in 1825, which Haiti continued to pay until the end of the second world war. More recently, Aristide was elected and deposed twice by factions in his own military, with the standard allegations of American involvement behind the scenes. Government in Haiti has often fallen to almost unimaginable lows – the Tonton Macoute of the Duvalier era are a candidate for the world’s nastiest death squad. In short, government both foreign and domestic has done the people of Haiti no favors at all, and now nature and lousy building have leveled their capitol, killing some 2% of the population.

The phrase on many lips is state failure. Can Haiti rebuild effective central government with aid from the intentional community, or will it slide into some form of violent anarchy winding up as a US or UN protectorate? A US exit strategy from Haiti may turn out to be hard to find as an exit from Iraq or Afghanistan: at 10 million people, Haiti is half the size of Iraq and likely no easier to govern or leave if central government does not return swiftly and surely.

Given the risk of state failure, extended governmental crisis, or long-term ambiguity about the status of the state in Haiti, a conscious push to substantially free people from dependence on central government for essential services seems wise. Success would mean that however the political process plays out, ordinary Haitians can continue to feed themselves and enjoy good health. Within certain limits, this is entirely realistic.

The most important constraint we must face is money. Haiti has an average income around $2 or $3 per day, and a substantial fraction of the population regularly suffer from hunger. About half the population is under 20, many with little access to education. The life expectancy is around 60. There are something like one million homeless in Haiti right now and most of their big buildings in the capitol are simply gone.

If the post-earthquake international aid war chest reaches $500 million, a very high estimate, that is still only $50 per Haitian. There is no way, given the severe immediate needs, and the limited funds available, that $50 per head will make Haiti look like it did before the disaster. Even if that was done, the living conditions would still be terrible for many people. The aid money needs to help the people of Haiti simply survive unreliable access to government services, poor infrastructure, and simple grinding poverty. We need to help people stand on their own feet, because there is nobody else they can count on.

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There are six ways to die: too hot, too cold, hunger, thirst, illness and injury. Infrastructure like water treatment plants and natural gas terminals provide the vital services which reduce the risk of dying from these basic risks. Haiti is not Minneapolis, where a massive centralized infrastructure is required for sheer survival lest one freeze to death in winter. Rather, it is a hot, damp, potentially fertile land, substantially suitable for life. Just getting people fed and provided with drinking water should not be too expensive to do, if it is made a direct and explicit goal rather than a side-effect of a less focused and more conventional reconstruction effort.

So let’s think about how the international community could best help the ordinary Haitian in the long run. Something like two thirds of Haitians are farmers, and they tend to use fairly unsophisticated techniques. The land reforms following the revolution gave most people land ownership, and two hundred years later Haiti is still largely characterized by small holdings – hundreds of thousands of tiny farms. The people are incredibly poor, but they generally speaking have better access to land than most of their peers in other countries. Maximizing the effectiveness of the assets that ordinary Haitians own is the first step in real help for the people of Haiti.

What can be done?

One Acre Fund is a farming modernization group operating in Africa. They charge farmers for agricultural tools and training, with a loan to the farmer to get them started. Their results are astonishing: doubled agricultural output and halved infant mortality, which usually leads greatly reduced long-term population growth. It happens to be a charity, but it is a charity with a business model: farmers pay back the loans with the profits from better harvests. One Acre Fund is operating in Africa, but Cubans have extremely sophisticated farming methods, developed after they lost support from the USSR at its collapse to feed themselves. Cuba is close to Haiti in both miles and climate. Scaling agricultural training for smallholders from existing pools of expertise is manageable on the available budgets, but only if it is made a priority over wasteful reconstruction of building shells that feed no-one. The One Acre Fund program costs about $100 per family, which is paid back in a year or two. Improving local agriculture and therefore financial self-sufficiency and food security should be the core of the reconstruction program in Haiti.

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Drinking water and sanitation are similarly amenable to a bottom-up individually-led approaches. Even before the earthquake most Haitians lacked access to drinking water and sanitation. There are excellent technologies which can be built on the budgets of even the very poorest which provide these basic services, and the improvements in health and longevity that they bring. The Sulabh toilet from India is basically two brick-lined pits, but has an excellent service record. It is incredibly cheap to build and can be made locally from common materials. The biosand filter is basically a concrete bucket filled with layers of gravel and sand, but it produces good quality drinking water from contaminated sources and has years of rigorous scientific testing behind it. AMURT Haiti has microenterprise factories in Haiti that produce them. The Potters for Peace Filtron has similar properties, but is made from clay. It can be made by hand or pressed out in large factories with equal ease. All of these technologies can be mastered locally, becoming businesses and skilled trades which keep people safe for generations to come.

We do not know what will happen in Haiti in the future. If large, centralized sewage plants and water systems are built another earthquake, economic collapse or violent change in government may destroy them. Simply enabling Haitians to maintain essential services on a household level to insulate them from any problems in governance that Haiti may experience in the future would be an enormous step forwards for the people of Haiti.

The Hexayurt Project Haiti Reconstruction Plan faces all of these risks squarely. By working with the ordinary people to transfer the skills and technologies they need to shelter and feed themselves, and rapidly provide themselves with essential infrastructures for water and sanitation, the world could genuinely help individual Haitians stand on their own two feet. What more can we do for each other?

February 4, 2010