30 Years of Reforestation Success

[Music] if you go back 30 years ago this place was basically a wasteland nothing this would have been brown like ranae says like the palm of your hand you know there was nothing here anywhere around if people say here at UIC on pot kid by guy so a tree is a lot of things [Music] we know they sing and we take them for granted I think other places [Music] Haidee gets this reputation it's always Haiti the poorest country in the Western Hemisphere but the history really goes back to particularly brutal French colonization and stripping of the hardwoods to create sugar plantations they've never been able to recover in terms of the land and viability of farming since the French occupation so as a result the land was stripped and folks have been eking out an existence in the rural areas since the founder of the organization was sailing around Haiti and found that his navigational maps didn't quite match the landscape and that was because so much erosion happened every time there was a major rainfall he came up with the idea of watershed intervention if you will and that obviously has to start with anchoring the soil and that leads you to trees the whole intent is to help them move towards self-sufficiency which means they have to be able to take initiative ultimately and to own what goes on and to expand it themselves [Music] it as he leadeth up with him food at palolem well famous yeah my she say look my share say working in another culture requires first a huge amount of trust building and then a huge amount of activity together and shared time and there's also a great deal of learning together about what works Koda actually stands for cooperative development project the principle vision is to take barren land Andrey forced it to restore the land to restore rural life that my understanding was the vision from day one and continues to be our vision today see that's a tiny little tree they started a smaller bag and then it will graduate into a larger bag like over here we help code up with basic supplies like the plastic bags into which they plant a seed with a little bit of soil and some pigs and some shovels and some very basic things they have created 41 nurseries and they are quite amazing in harvesting seeds we don't supply those seeds they supply their own seed so this here is a great example of deforestation an NGO came in leveled the top of the mountain they were going to put a school up there the rains came there was no trees to support this mountainside and the whole mountainside washed away when he's talked about restoring as far as you have to think in terms of how many decades how many hundreds of years it is going to take to recover from what has been done mango trees mango trees all these trees are code up trees that were planted it's a working forest it's not a preservation forest it's a working forest and there's a big difference you know we try to be able to cut down trees and lumber and have an income for the families but then we go back and plant and the rule of thumb is is that if you cut down a tree you plant four or five trees within a 5-foot radius of that tree so as much as we're harvesting trees were reforesting with trees at the same time Oh Deb has long had the attitude of being pretty low profile with slow sustainable growth and I understand that because of a history of failed projects in the country and in chaos on the edges so the fact that it's been going solidly for 30 years with steady growth I think is an incredibly impressive story anywhere in the world but particularly in Haiti today is a 30-year celebration of what caught up has been and hopefully what caught up will be put it on peal on peal bone moment for everybody here and they work and they see people come to celebrate with them like to see what they do it's everybody's happy everybody enjoy mum he's young you need to play live who put them there my vision is huge only to play trees it's also to have people understand what could that mean we've got reduced erosion we've got more water going infiltrating into the soil which means there's more water coming out in the springs and people get their water from Springs here so this is this is really important people aren't opening up a faucet and getting their water and in terms of water this code up program has been fabulous [Music] this is a demonstration Forester Koda planted 27 years ago on this side you're gonna see a densely populated forest it started out with vetiver grass eucalyptus and then they came back in over the course of time planted hardwoods more towards the center in the fruit trees are on the perimeter of the forest on this side this is the demonstration part of it where they came in they planted eucalyptus trees initially with vetiver grass and eucalyptus and didn't come back and plant hardwoods the advantage to this side is is that there's farming you'll see there's all kinds of beans planted and corn all throughout the land here both areas are equally as important this is a long-term investment this is a short-term investment for so from a farming and a reforestation standpoint that's more important for reforestation this is more important for sustainability on daily life [Music] we needed to find a way in which we could help them see the long-term goals of it and now that they do have the forests and the birds returning and the forests are regenerating themselves they don't have to sort of be convinced to something they can see it one thing that's really interesting and really important with code up is that it's people here who are doing the work definitely they get a hand from people in the north but it's people here who are doing the work and are providing the inspiration for other people to plant trees when McGann Venkata leave me my pleasure a good day she has been working for cadet for 24 years and the reason she get involved cadet because she fall in love with easeful station identities she says over a million there's a just a huge amount of educational opportunity and need so finding a way to help with that not just being told what's needed but coming down and helping find out and suggesting while reforestation remains our priority focus they have also built a school for kids and we now have a 1st through 12th grade school where local children can go and graduate with honors and go on to do bigger and better things what differentiates our school is we also teach them about reforestation liquid will give our kids look to is different if it wasn't for deaf school teach every low every one of them ought to go achieve what did she mean and I think those people those kids can do better for Haiti I remember meeting one woman who's been involved for a long time and she said I love the trees these are my trees and she said because of these trees I have some income and I can send my children to school and her life is being restored [Music] let me weigh about a process people I will see those of the trees we can move better because of the trees you can get water because of the trees Dewayne folder my channel but appeal his dream is to leave the ship for his children [Music] even Timothy put the place it I say thanks to God thank you to could have asked God to always put the code up to me the most profound way in which patients have been changed is that they have created something of value that they now want control of that they have taken this project and made it theirs this is this gem of a project and it is worth telling people about how it works it produces results and they can start to dream [Music] sell my say looky where though has a lien on top with temple at boom wall I'm welfare my dear mushy temple at Walla Fama's yeah I do it with temple at boom ah ah ah with a pool a pool more welfare my Sierras

Channel: Haiti Reforestation Partnership

Views: 48,307

Rating: 4.8930817 out of 5

Keywords: haiti, reforestation, haiti reforestation partnership, hrp, codep, forests, forest, forestation, nonprofit

Id: mtrkQNyfHco

Length: 13min 13sec (793 seconds)

Published: Tue Oct 01 2019