Discuss the impact of the Haiti Earthquake on the environment and discuss the effectiveness of the reconstruction efforts to environment and sustainability

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Nikita Hunter

B00530512

Discuss the impact of the Haiti Earthquake on the environment and discuss the effectiveness of the reconstruction efforts to environment and sustainability

Abstract

The overall aim of this project was to assess and discuss the impacts to Haiti after a 7.0M earthquake struck the community on the 12 January 2010 at 4.53 p.m.  The earthquake created many detrimental effects on the people and the environment.  The environment in and around Port-Au-Prince was greatly affected, were the built environment, water supply and sanitation, woodland, agriculture and coastline and fisheries felt the effects of the earthquake.  Many organisation intervened by donating money to help Haiti on the pathway of reconstruction, with leading organisations like the World Bank, United Nations, Water.org and the Clinton Global Initiative who all have attempted to maintain Haiti in terms of their wellbeing and livelihoods.  Strategies have been used in the hope that Haiti’s effort will lead to resilience and development for the society in the future.

Haiti is located in the western hemisphere on the island of Hispaniola in the Caribbean region.  The island of Hispaniola is made up of two separate countries, the Dominican Republic and Haiti (or also known as the Republic of Haiti).  The population of Haiti is 9.8 million (CIA, 2009), and its capital city is Port-du-Prince.  The country of Haiti is a total area of 27,750 sq km. Haiti is among one of the poorest countries in the world, but within the Western Hemisphere it is if not near enough the poorest country in that region were around 78% of the Haitian population lives on under US$2 a day.  Haiti has had a long history of political violence and has been subjected to three decades of dictatorship.  In 1986 one of Haiti’s previous presidents known as ‘Baby Doc’ Duvalier was forced from power by the US and put in exile ever since.  Several years later in 1990 Haiti elected Jean-Bertrand Aristide to be president.  His democratic experience was cut short were in 2004 he was forced out of power.  Currently Haiti’s president is Rene Preval, he was elected in 2006 as president and compared to the last two presidents of Haiti, Rene Preval has made some sort of improvement for Haiti. Where jobs have been created, the slums have become less violent, and there have been some timid signs of a growth in tourism (BBC news, 2010).  Haiti has a GNI per capita of US$660, with main exports such as Apparel, light manufactures, plant oils, cocoa, mangoes and coffee.

Figure 1 (Above): An image from the world atlas showing the location of Haiti in a global, regional and local scale. Available from: http://www.worldatlas.com/webimage/countrys/namerica/caribb/ht.htm

On January 12, 2010 at 16.53 P.m. (21.53 GMT), at the location of 18.443°N, 72.571°W and at a dept of 13km, on the boundary region separating the Caribbean plate and the North America plate.  10 miles from the Port-Au-Prince region was the epicentre of an earthquake of the magnitude of 7.0. The plate boundary is mainly dominated by a left- lateral strike slip motion and compression, and accommodates about 20 mm/y slip, with the Caribbean plate moving eastward with respect to the North America plate. The Earthquake struck 5km (10 miles) south-west of Port-au-Prince, and was quickly followed by two strong aftershocks of 5.9 and 5.5 magnitude, (BBC, 2010).  Aftershocks are common after relatively large earthquakes and can happen over the duration of days, weeks or even longer than that.  Like the main earthquake the aftershocks can still bring about risk to the environment and people in that area.   The city of Port-du-Prince is the most densely populated area in the Haiti region were much of it population lives in slum like conditions.  Many were killed due to infrastructure failure, the earthquake overall killed an estimated 230,000 people, injuring an estimated 300,000 and displacing around 1.5 million Haitian people. Damages and losses were evaluated at around US$8 billion or 120 percent of GDP by the Post- Disaster Needs Assessment (PDNA) conducted by the World Bank and other donors (World Bank, 2011).  

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There has been significant impacts to Haiti’s environment, that both rely on the well-being and livelihood of the society and also to the countries overall economy and economic growth.  The Haitian government is already unstable and the lack of funding and cooperation is leading Haiti to a worse off situation than the day before the earthquake.  Damages and losses are estimated at $8 billion USD (United States dollar) money to which is phenomenal in relation to how poor Haiti is.  According to the Action Plan for National Recovery and development of Haiti recognize that the capital city accounts for ...

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