24796: Severe (pub) Miami Herald Article on MPP's Jean Baptiste(4/18)

[sak-pase@bimini.ws]

Constantin Severe <csevere@hotmail.com>

Haitian's work against deforesting wins prize
Haitian peasant-rights activist Chavannes Jean-Baptiste has won the $125,000 
Goldman Environmental Prize.
BY JOE MOZINGO
jmozingo@herald.com


PAPAYE, Haiti - Farming in Haiti is spiraling slowly toward oblivion.

After three centuries of deforestation, rain does little more than carry 
precious topsoil away to the sea.

And as the land becomes ever more barren, peasant farmers have only one way 
to survive -- burn the last scraggly trees to sell as charcoal.

Foreign conservationists have spent untold millions of dollars trying to 
break this cycle, only to watch the nation sink further into a Dust Bowl of 
its own making.

But Chavannes Jean-Baptiste, a Haitian agronomist and founder of the Papaye 
Peasant Movement, has been fighting the problem from within, working to give 
small farmers a reason to preserve the land as a stake in their own 
survival.

Today, the San Francisco-based Goldman Environmental Foundation announced it 
is awarding Jean-Baptiste its annual $125,000 prize, considered the Nobel 
for environmentalists.

''In a country battling both extreme poverty and environmental degradation, 
Chavannes Jean-Baptiste has inspired thousands of Haitians to protect their 
watersheds, tree cover and farmland,'' Richard Goldman, co-founder of the 
prize, said in a statement. ``He is a true environmental hero and 
exemplifies the purpose for establishing the prize.''

The award will give Jean-Baptiste a boost of cash and considerable leverage 
for more funding from foreign groups. But whether his movement of 60,000 
peasants on Haiti's arid Central Plateau will bear fruit in the long run 
depends on whether Haiti can stabilize itself.

SHOT AT, EXILED

Jean-Baptiste has been shot at, sent into exile and seen his life's work 
ransacked by government thugs. He has seen the orchards he has planted cut 
down and watched the political movement he helped build, the Lavalas party 
of former President Jean-Bertrand Aristide, turn into something he despised.

The political turmoil of the past 20 years -- the coming and going of 
numerous, ineffective governments -- has made significant progress on any 
front impossible, including the environment.

''The Papaye Peasant Movement has always been an advocacy movement,'' said 
Daniel Moss of Grassroots International, a group that helps fund the 
movement. ``But who do you make your demands to in Haiti? It's like shadow 
boxing.''

Jean-Baptiste, 58, grew up here in the Central Plateau, got his degree in 
the capital and returned to train peasants in the 1970s.

The lot of the Haitian peasant is as hard as the cracked earth they 
cultivate. The population expands as the arable land shrinks. Irrigation is 
scant, few farmers have titles to the land, and U.S.-backed free trade draws 
in cheap imports like chicken, rice, beans and pork that squeeze peasant 
produce out of their own markets.

Among a number of things thwarting progress, according to Jean-Baptiste, is 
a mind-set that the success or failure of crops depends only on supernatural 
forces.

''If the peasant thinks his crop didn't grow because of God or because some 
neighbor has a curse against you, what point is technical knowledge?'' asked 
Jean-Baptiste.

He began the long process of educating and organizing peasants with a simple 
philosophy: Give them a sense of ownership, and economic need will drive 
preservation.

As the movement coalesced, they established a credit union to help them buy 
seeds at lower interest rates. They built grain silos to store their crops, 
eliminating speculators and middlemen. They started a peasant radio station 
and improved irrigation to increase the growing season.

Jean-Baptiste became a master at wooing foreign funders, and he became a 
major political force of his own.

When Aristide first won the presidency in 1991, Jean-Baptiste was one of his 
closest confidantes. Four years later, Lavalas considered him as one of two 
possible successors for the presidency along with Rene Preval, who 
ultimately won. Jean-Baptiste headed Preval's transition team.

Now he is behind a new political party called Konba.

''A lot of people say I'm going to run for president,'' he said. ``It is 
absolutely false. I am not a candidate.''

Jean-Baptiste's political involvement over the years has drawn detractors. 
Some have questioned why the Papaye movement isn't more strident -- staging 
protests, blocking roads, demanding land reform, basic irrigation and import 
tariffs.

''Chavannes has been a galvanizing figure,'' said Robert Maguire, a Haiti 
expert at Trinity University in Washington who once funded Jean-Baptiste. 
``Either people are really taken in by him or are really put off by him.''

A FALLING OUT

Jean-Baptiste had a very public falling out with Aristide in 1997, accusing 
him and Lavalas of corruption and thuggery. ''From then, until he left last 
year, we were under attack,'' he said.

Still, he moved forward with new projects. Over the last 30 years, the 
movement claims to have planted 20 million trees.

His home in the dry hills is what true success would look like -- an oasis 
of shade and fruit trees. Tall castor bean stalks supplant old-growth trees 
as fuel. Specially selected Benzoliv plants fortify the soil with protein. 
Drip irrigation conserves water, and tomatoes grow in the off-season.

But the landscape surrounding it is as bleak as ever: burned and crumbling 
hills, dotted with occasional trees, braided by muddy rivers.

''The question is,'' said Maguire, ``if Chavannes is being held up as an 
example, to what extent does the example he set spread to the farmers and 
sustain itself?''