Environment

Prime Minister, Lamothe, visited Cul de Sac to review the Riviere Grise project supported by the Agriculture Commission, financed by the Treasury Department at 300 million gourdes. The project will re-contour levees and replant trees destroyed by tropical storms. The project is in its second phase. Workers have finished eight kilometers so far.

The Haiti government wants updates about the project. It is determined to better lives of the populace, so they should benefit from the rebuilt levees.

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To promote eco-tourism, a plan for a festival for Natural Park Quisqueya has been approved. The Lake Festival will run August 23rd to September 1st 2013.

Event calendar activities range from art/culture, to ecology/biodiversity, to multi-communal exchanges.

European Union is financing 80% of the festival and the government of Haiti 20%.

One reason for the festival is to increase eco-tourism and help raise local-product exports. The festival will allow visitors to discover unique flora and fauna, part of the biodiversity of the park.

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The Ministry of Tourism (MOT) has contracted with volunteer group, Good Demen Haiti (GDH), to provide Carnival costumes for 2013. The members, at-risk youth, design and assemble dresses, hats, and accessories from recycled plastic bottles.

Group leader, Gumo Lormeus, teaches how to deconstruct plastic bottles and create plastic flowers in a five-step process.

MOT has put in an order for 400 whistles and 200-each hats and dresses, to be made from plastic materials.

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The Haitian government has decreed no longer will it be acceptable to use plastic bags for purchased items. As well, they are prohibiting polystyrene, and Styrofoam plates, cups, and bottles.

The decree is an update of a previous version and also outlaws manufacturing, importing, and advertising of such products. This is being done to protect Haitians from carcinogens.

On August 1st customs will seize such contraband at the port, and transgressors will fined under the Customs Code.

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President Michel Martelly has made a ridiculous claim 1.2 million saplings would be planted at seven locales throughout Haiti, in a single day.

Some news agencies believe Martelly has timed this ecological event to coincide with his two-year anniversary as ruler of Haiti.

The goal behind the tree planting is to move toward a five-percent canopy cover by 2016. Millions of trees are felled annually to use as cooking fuel among the very poor.

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Over two-dozen plant specialists from around the world converged on Port-au-Prince for a bio-diversity conference.

Plans to erect a National Botanical Garden were discussed, led by President Armand of Haitian Foundation for the Environment. Because Haiti's government has made no efforts to fulfill the 1987 Constitution to create a network of botanical gardens, agronomist Cinéas said an oversight committee would monitor government's progress to allocate funding from the general fund for the project by 2015.

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Non-government group Haitian Foundation for the Environment (FHE) held a conference in Port-au-Prince about producing a National Botanical Garden. Participants included botanists, agronomists, and other bio-diversity specialists.

President Armand of the FHE discussed the layout of the botanical garden, to be planted on roughly 300 hectares of soil. Armand chastised the Haitian government for its negligence in fulfilling the 1987 Constitution's instructions to create botanical gardens throughout Haiti. He asks for their cooperation now.

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Haiti is behind the rest of the world in establishing a National Botanical Garden. Its only botanical garden, Les Cayes, is a private venture, developed by William Cinéas in 2004.

Over the past 21 years Haiti has signed concords to develop a national biodiversity program for botanical gardens. But the government has taken no action.

Botanist Cinéas is pushing the government to introduce guidelines it will abide by to found a National Botanical Garden network by 2020.

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In a push to develop a National Botanic Garden (NBG) in Haiti, several U.S. environmental groups, including Denver's Botanic Gardens, have partnered to plan Haiti's first NBG.

Port-au-Prince hosted a workshop for these collaborators to meet to develop an NBG in Haiti's restoration of its infrastructure. Workshop participants besides the U.S. included France, Canada, Britain, and the Dominican Republic.

Minister of Tourism, Stephanie Villedrouin, committed her department to realizing the NBG initiative.

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Cayes Botanical Garden of Haiti (CBG) is the only biodiverse garden flourishing on the island. The garden has been in existence 10 years, and has been honored with two awards as a paragon of plant species richness.

The CBG was created to offset the extinction of native plants, protect their natural habitat, and develop education literature for maintaining and advancing bio-diversity.

Although Haiti's 1987 Constitution mandates creation of botanical gardens throughout the country, it has yet to happen.

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