Haiti - Environment : Bill on the Committees of Watershed Management
Last week, the Ministries of Agriculture and of the Environment launched a brainstorming workshop on watershed management. During this workshop, a draft law on the structuring of watershed committees was presented. Jean Vilmond Hilaire, the Minister for the Environment, said that this bill will be filed shortly to the 2 Chambers in order to make legal the committees of watershed management.
For the Ministry "In Haiti the degradation of renewable natural resources in general and watershed management in particular, represent a major problem that has attracted the attention of many. However, the intervention of various national and international bodies for more than half a century has not brought the sensible solution "Pearl of the Antilles" of the fifteenth century has now become the 'Pelée des Antilles' with its hillside increasingly denuded, the irrigation infrastructure and the agricultural plains often buried under sediments, the water resources increasingly scarce and the wild waters less and less controllable.
The causes of this widespread failure are manifold. We could among others include : land issues, lack of completeness of communities in the management of their watersheds, the inadequacy of the techniques used to the contexts agro-ecological and socio-economic, the excessive focus on the aspects of protection in the watershed management etc...
However, unanimous we link the current situation to the lack of coordination and of harmonization of many land management actions and of watershed in particular. Which favored the multiplication of interventions dispersed in time and space of the different actors.
Also, a bill on the structuring of management committees of watershed, was discussed in a workshop with parliamentarians, representatives of the Ministries of Agriculture and Environment, associations and local authorities, financial partners, technical services of the State in order to :
To establish a regime of watersheds and define the institutions that will have the responsibility of their management at the end of their protection and conservation of their resources, to support the country's sustainable development in the economic, social and cultural domain are the points considered by this project, which is the culmination of a process of all stakeholders involved in the management of watersheds and of watershed Ennery-Quinte in particular with the Agricultural Intensification Program, Ennery Quinte (PIA-EQ).
Define the watershed, that is to say the areas of protection, of regeneration and more generally of management of natural resources, especially water, to be a territorial basis for local development.
Define the terms of citizen participation and of their collaboration with community leaders and technical having jurisdiction over the territory of a watershed.
Specify how to manage a watershed and give legitimacy to existing organizations or to create such are among other objectives pursued by the participants through this project.
