Environmental Study and Strategic Development Plan for Safeguarding the Saut d'Eau Falls Heritage
- Finds land ownership in the study zone concentrated in one lineage: more than 75 percent of the land belongs to the Louissaint family line, which is the fact any management plan for the falls has to negotiate with.
- Records holdings at the bottom of the size distribution, with a mean parcel of 0.09 carreau, a maximum of 1 carreau and a minimum of 0.01, where less than 1 percent of parcels reach 0.25 carreau and 81 percent do not exceed 0.12.
- Splits tenure at about 55 percent owned, 36 percent inheritance shares and 8 percent tenanted, from a land survey covering more than 30 percent of dwellings.
- Records the irrigated system dominated by beans on more than 85 percent of the zone's useful agricultural area, so a single crop carries the irrigation economy.
- Notes that Saut d'Eau is the second mango-exporting commune after Gros-Morne, with average exports of 300,000 dozen mangoes, which places a heritage site inside a commercial fruit chain.
- Describes the topographic basin at 4,349 square kilometers in three compartments, an upper part from 480 to 900 meters, a middle zone from 480 to 380 meters and a lower part from 380 meters down to the Lathème river at 300 meters, with 16 soil borings to characterize horizons.
- Records only 30 percent of households having a latrine, in a catchment whose water is the site's attraction.
This final report was prepared for the Ministry of Agriculture, Natural Resources and Rural Development by consultant Vilaire M. Guerrier and dated November 2013. It combines an environmental study of the Saut d'Eau falls - one of Haiti's best-known natural and religious heritage sites, in the commune of Saut-d'Eau in the Centre department - with a strategic development plan for safeguarding it. The document is the site-specific counterpart to the broader watershed and environmental studies MARNDR commissioned in the same period, and it is the corpus's first document dedicated to this commune's natural heritage; the corpus already holds the MENFP commune school map for Saut-d'Eau, so the two sit together in the geographic view.
How to cite
Government of Haiti; Ministry of Agriculture, Natural Resources and Rural Development (MARNDR), 2013, Environmental Study and Strategic Development Plan for Safeguarding the Saut d'Eau Falls Heritage, https://agripubhaiti.org/wp-content/uploads/2026/07/Pascal_Lundy_RAPPORT_ETUDE-SAUT-DEAU_Finalise_VilGuerrier.pdf