The Sea-Salt Economy on the Anse-Rouge Coast

Anse-Rouge, on the Artibonite coast, is one of Haiti's salt-producing areas, and salt harvesting there is an established local economy occupying the shoreline. This CIAT study describes it. The choice to present it at a workshop on coastal land and economic stakes is pointed: most discussion of Haiti's coast concerns what should be built there, whether tourism, port or urban waterfront, whereas salt production is what many stretches of shore are already doing for a living. Any regulation of coastal occupation, any delimitation of the maritime public domain, and any lease regime therefore lands on existing users whose activity depends on flooding and evaporating the very ground in question. Presented alongside the papers on beach leasing irregularities and on defining the coastline, it supplies the occupied-in-fact side of a debate otherwise conducted in terms of title and plan.