Let's Plant Trees in Haiti, Together!

In a context where the deforestation situation in the country is a serious daily concern. The Lambi Fund of Haiti’s efforts are ongoing. We are continuously seeking solutions to address the devastating consequences of this issue on the environmental, social and economic levels. For this reason, it continues to brainstorm with these community-led organizations to raise awareness about this serious situation while simultaneously seeking ways to help them tackle this problem.

In our annual planning, we give many priorities and projects aimed at improving the environment in the area where the peasant organizations live. This year, unfortunately, due to the decrease in funding, Lambi Fund of Haiti was unable to support all the requests presented to it by the peasant organizations.

Currently, there is an environmental project (production of seedlings for reforestation) that is still in its execution phase that we are monitoring. The other 11 organizations that produced 320,000 seedlings have reached its goal at the end of 2024. All the seedlings produced have been planted in their fields to properly protect the soil. Members of the organizations planted them in association with other crops (agroforestry fields) or in vacant spaces that deserve protection in order to reduce erosion and other environmental damages that could occur in their areas. In this sense, they have also managed to create several small community forests that help them and at the same time protect their resources.

The members of the organization and agricultural technicians (nursery workers) who supervised the organizations in these projects gained vital practical knowledge and learned additional techniques as they encountered several unique situations to best protect the lands, especially in the areas with steep slopes. These techniques allow the lands to have better vegetation cover, thus improving the soil structure to making it more fertile and also to better manage the quality of several water sources on the protected lands.

Environmental degradation remains a great concern in Haiti. The Lambi Fund for Haiti continues to support and monitor the progress of severalorganizations. The Organization of Active Women in Pliche (OFAP) has been incredibly successful in producing 120,000 seedlings that were distributed and planted within the past several months. The combine seedlings produced among all of the peasant organizations totaled 320,000 thus far. The Lambi Fund helped the Organizations to find specialized trainers in the Environmental field to train them on the techniques of setting up a nursery and sustainable agriculture techniques. The purpose of these training assist each Organization in realizing their production goals and to implement a series of techniques in proper planting to protect the land. There are 25-30 members per organization that participated in these training sessions, in total there are approximately 300 members that benefited from these training.

These projects consist of 3 phases: seedling production phase, distribution phase, and follow-up phase of seedlings after transplanting in the fields of beneficiary members.

In the production phase, the Organizations obtains the necessary framework from the technicians who are engaged in the project, but unfortunately some of these Organizations did not manage to produce the amount they had predicted due to issues within the germination process. Nonetheless, the number of seedlings that did not succeed was relatively low comparison to their projections.

All the seedlings produced have already been distributed to the members of the Organizations who are in the program and other people in the communities. Currently, these seedlings are growing in the fields. The fields are monitored to report on the progress of the seedlings. The beneficiary members are given forms to provide reports every 3 months on how the seedlings have evolved in their gardens. There is a significant amount of data that has begun to be collected in this regard. It has not yet been calculated on the number of successful plants in their fields.

The trees produced are also distributed to small schools and churches in the communities in order to educated and engage the youth and the locals outside the Organizations about the problem of environmental degradation and encourage them to do their own production.

The trees are generally planted together with the culture (agroforestry garden) but there are also organizations, especially those in the Latibonite, that usually choose a space where they plant the trees alone (community forest).

Lambi recently launched a new environmental project with the "Cooperative Agricole Cafeiere Vachon (CACVA)" in the Southern Department of the commune of Kavayon. It is mainly a coffee and cocoa plantation regeneration project. The organization aims to produce 30,000 seedlings (20,000 coffee and 10,000 cocoa). As part of this project, the Cooperative wants to plant new coffee and cocoa plantations on more than 10 hectares of land and regenerate many others that are beginning to mature.

The goal is to involve more than 250 active members of the cooperative on the problem of environmental degradation and to conduct special training for 30 planters on how to protect their land and on sustainable agriculture techniques as well.

CACVA is part of a Southern Coffee and Agricultural Cooperative Network (RECOCAS) that hopes to obtain the financial support of Lambi in 2025 to help more cooperatives and other organizations address these problems that represent a great threat to the human life and for agricultural production.