Haitians in Canada proposed another excellent idea: government-paid leaves of absence to allow expatriates (employed in government or the private sector) to return and rebuild civil society in their place of birth.
There is more here. I am less sure about this one, largely for reasons of maintenance:
Instead of waiting for someone to build an expensive, centralized power grid, donors could think more flexibly on a smaller scale, using solar panels and LEDs to provide electricity and light cheaply, portably and quickly.
No is waiting to build a centralized power grid, expensive or otherwise. But a SMART power grid is very much needed so that your pie-in-the-sky solar panels and LED can become remotely close to economic by off-loading unneeded power to other areas.
“Return and rebuild civil society” is a phrase that includes many assumptions in this context.
Let’s get real… Haiti is without much hope. The best solution is to allow mass immigration to the U.S., Canada, France, and French speaking Africa. There’s 10 million too many in such a small area. An agrarian based economy cannot sustain all these folks. These people need jobs in t-shirt factories and the like. This Canadian plan will only prove fruitful, I think, if it encourages ex-pat Haitians to invest and start up businesses that can mass employ locals. If they just go there and simply do “volunteer work”, they’re just going to be spinning their wheels alongside their fellow Haitians.
Haiti needs business investment, not volunteerism.
I’m generally not a fan of solar power for infrastructure (at its current stage of development), but this is a case where I think it can work very well.
The latest generation of LEDs are amazingly energy efficient. I have a pocket flashlight using a CREE LED that can put out a lumen of light (enough to read by) for 40 hours on a single AAA cell. That kind of current draw makes it completely feasible to provide a cheap, solar powered light that can provide an entire night’s worth of illumination from a day’s worth of charging, and provide it for $20-$50 per unit. And, all the parts other than the battery should last for decades, including the LED bulb.
Units like this are already in tens of thousands of homes in the 3rd world. As a similar example, many of these countries are skipping over the typical 20th century telecom and power infrastructures, and going directly to cell phones, local micro-generators, and other technologies that allow rapid development without the need for a nationwide infrastructure.
At $50/unit, $5 million dollars would provide lighting for 100,000 dwellings. It seems like a fairly cheap way to quickly improve the quality of life for the Haitians as they build their way out of the rubble.
If the return of expatriates is a good thing, why did the U.S. declare a moratorium on deportations?
Food, shelter, clothing — Haitians need investment into all of these.
What about “tree-planting” for money? I would expect that EU countries should be able to get some carbon offset cash for supporting tree planting, and Haiti apparently still needs a lot of that.
On the site http://www.justhaiti.org/
they mention both coffee growing and mangoes. I’d expect other tropical fruit trees to do OK, too, but not sure.
Let’s also remember that there is an excellent objective measure for ‘sustainability’. That measure is ‘profit’. Companies need to make profits to be sustainable.
It would be fantastic if Haitian reconstruction could include increasing awareness of the link between company profits and sustainability.
Lower-cost, high-efficiency power and light project have been gaining steam in Haiti for quite a while. Light Up the World is one http://www.lutw.org/, as is Sun Energy Power International http://www.sunepi.org/SunEPI/Welcome.html. Sadly, Walt Ratterman, the CEO of Sun Energy, is missing from the Hotel Montana where he had been staying.
I suppose the theory is that it is easier to build anew, a la Japan after WWII. But I think a lot about a solar system for myself and it never seems feasible. I imagine people there are thinking of recurring costs now less than ever. So, we are talking about long-term aid centrally planned. What the heck, add solar power to my sea-tainer condo idea and fill them with all the books and old computers we throw away. Legalize Haitian Marijuana.
I din’t know if this question has been asked but why did these Americans venture down to Haiti to transport the children instead of their Haitian partners? Where there any local staff (Haitian or Dominican) with the group crossing the border? Because I can’t understand why Americans, soley (if there were no local staff accompanying), had to transport the children. The sense I get is this is one of those stupid short mission trips where nothing good gets accomplished, you go down for a week, and come back home so you can say you “helped† in the name of the Lord. Except in this case they accomplished getting thrown in jail.
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