Andres Oppenheimer
Devastation in Haiti
(c) Paul Tong
Presidents, rock stars and business leaders from around the world are
pledging hundreds of millions of dollars to rebuild
But they are making a potentially disastrous mistake -- focusing too much on bricks, and too little on trees.
I was alerted to this problem in a conversation with
Morales Troncoso was in
"What's the point of rebuilding
As a result of not having trees,
In addition, hurricanes and major storms have caused devastating floods that kill thousands after water flowed unimpeded down the mountains.
When you fly over
And, following the earthquake,
FAILED ATTEMPTS
What can be done? Foreign donors have tried almost everything to help
In the 1980s, the
International experts have come up with all kinds of sociological,
political and historic explanations for why much of
But Morales Troncoso told me that the explanation is much simpler:
"The first measure of [late president
My opinion: At a personal level, it would be nice if all of us could
donate one tree for
FIGHTING TEMPTATION
At the international level, it would be great if the big donor
countries that will meet in March at
That would be a largely cosmetic solution if it doesn't go
hand-in-hand with other measures to make the country environmentally
viable.
Haiti - Sometimes the Earth is Cruel
Leonard Pitts Jr
That is ultimately the fundamental lesson here, as children wail, families sleep out of doors, and the dead lie unclaimed in the rubble that once was Port-au-Prince, Haiti
Haiti - Tragedy and Opportunity for Haiti
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The January 12 earthquake that devastated Haiti's capital, Port-au-Prince, is the first test of the Obama administration's ability to mount a full-scale international disaster response, and it is no ordinary test. Haiti is the poorest nation in the hemisphere, with abysmal infrastructure, struggling to stabilize
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(C) 2010 Andres Oppenheimer