Taking the long view

Jared Diamond's recent book Collapse is fascinating for describing the way in which some societies have over-used their natural resources to the point that they have left themselves nothing to live on. Easter Island is a classic case: Diamond wonders what the islander who cut down the very last palm tree thought to himself as he did it. Did he not realise that, after that tree was gone, there would be no more - that he and his race would no longer be able to build canoes in order to fish, or even to protect their soil from erosion? That they were only impoverishing themselves by failing to look after what they had?

I thought of that last tree on Easter Island last week when, while hiking across the hills to the south coast of Haiti, my friends and I came across this man at work hacking wood from the trunk of this tree. This is not the last tree left on the island, or even in this immediate area - but they are certainly few and far between.

Unlike the hypothetical Easter Islander, however, my friends and I were fortunate to be able to talk to the gentleman in question. We tried to explain to him that he had to be careful with this tree: that he was in danger of killing it completely, and that its roots were holding the fragile hillside together. When the tree dies, the land on which he is growing his crops will slide away. But all this explanation was in vain - because the man already knew this. He knew better than us the long-term consequences of killing this tree. But what could he do? It was a cold and wet day, and he needed to make a fire to keep his house dry and his children warm. This was not a man who could afford to think in the long term.

When Christopher Colombus landed on the north-west coast of Haiti in 1492, he discovered an island paradise, covered in rich, dense jungle. Within a few years, the original human inhabitants were killed by European weapons and diseases, the jungle was cleared to make way for coffee and sugar plantations, and vast numbers of slaves were brought from west Africa to work the land. At its peak as a French colony, Haiti produced two-thirds of the world's coffee, and contributed for a quarter of the wealth of the entire French Empire.

This wealth came at a price. After forests were cleared to make way for plantations, the rich topsoil would be washed away in the rain, and farmers were obliged to clear more forest to find more productive land. Today, large areas of the country are almost completely treeless. Much of the land is dry and dusty, making agriculture only marginally productive - yet it is still the only means of making a living for many rural people. Most of Haiti's rapidly growing population still depend on burning charcoal for cooking: and of course, the only source of wood for charcoal is the few remaining trees.

Flying over Haiti can be a depressing experience: the country is criss-crossed by large dry riverbeds, which even 20 or 30 years ago were great rivers flowing from the moutains to the sea, irrigating the farmland in the valleys. This is the Grande Rivière du Nord just before it reaches the sea near Limonad - that is, at its widest point.

Large areas of the country already resemble desert. But, however desolate the landscape, it is always sprinkled with houses: there are people living even here, scraping a living on what the land can do for them.

This is how it happens. These trees are in a pine forest at 2000m above sea level, a forest which is designated (for what it is worth) as a national park. Local people are obviously careful to chop only a modest amount of wood from the trunk of each tree - but when the process of attrition finally leads to the death of a tree, then they are quick to cut down the tree itself and burn it to make charcoal.