Decree-law of 29 September 1944 creating the Water and Forests Service

The decree-law of 29 September 1944, published in Le Moniteur No. 83 of 9 October 1944 under Élie Lescot.

The preamble states the organising idea: reforestation, soil conservation, irrigation and drainage of the plains and mountains are intimately linked, so the activities bearing on them must be coordinated. Article 1 amends the 1935 instrument organising the Service National de la Production Agricole et de l'Enseignement Rural so that it comprises five divisions: central administration, agricultural extension, rural education, water and forests, and the national agricultural school. The Eaux et Forêts division is charged with the irrigation systems and their administration, the control of all surface and groundwater covering irrigation, drainage and river control, and with reforestation, soil conservation and forest protection.

Putting water and forests in one division is the institutional expression of the watershed argument that Haitian policy has made ever since, and the division is the ancestor of the water and forest directorates in today's MARNDR and Ministry of Environment, whose organic decrees the corpus holds.