Post-Cyclone Needs Assessment: Environment Sector (PDNA Matthew)
- Sets damage to the environment sector at 485,106,220.55 US dollars and recovery needs at 491,606,220.55, the largest single sector figure in the Matthew assessment, against a region where close to 60 percent of the population lives below the poverty line.
- Puts the damage overwhelmingly in soil, vegetation and forest, 434,543,626.77 dollars of the total, with agroforestry alone at 329,527,042 dollars over an affected area of 101,392.936 hectares valued at 3,250 dollars a hectare and a minimum five-year monitoring period.
- Reports the Grand Sud as the region with the most protected areas and a recognized world biosphere reserve, and records Parc National Naturel Macaya, holding the country's greatest biodiversity, as 95 percent affected, with Grand Bois and Deux Mamelles also at 95 percent.
- Costs the protected-area response at 10,284,217.99 dollars across eight areas covering 196,260.87 hectares, of which 4,025,000 dollars is support for relocation at Macaya alone, the only site where relocation is budgeted.
- Treats losses as the disruption of ecosystem services rather than as destroyed assets, and attributes the severity to watershed degradation, precarious housing and the absence of a land-use policy as much as to wind speed.
- Its summary page carries two figures that its own tables contradict: an affected soil-vegetation-forest area of 4,493,336,776 hectares, larger than the Earth's land surface, where the tables give tens of thousands of hectares, and a protected-area total of 27,200 hectares, which is the spring protection perimeter in meters elsewhere in the same volume, against a table total of 196,260.87 hectares.
One of the thirteen sector volumes behind Haiti's post-disaster needs assessment for Hurricane Matthew, which crossed the Tiburon peninsula on 4 October 2016. Damage to the environment sector is estimated at US$485.1 million and needs at US$491.6 million. Natural vegetation, animal biodiversity, agroforestry, fresh water, beaches, mangroves, coral reefs and seagrass beds were all affected, with knock-on effects on tourism, fisheries and agriculture. The volume follows the standard PDNA structure: context, effects of the hurricane, recovery objectives and sector needs, human and social impact, sector priorities, and the sector policies and constraints that bear on recovery. It was published as approved by the ministry, with a notice that any divergence from the consolidated PDNA report of 31 January 2017 is unintentional, so it is the place to look for how the sector arrived at its figures rather than the summary in the consolidated report.
How to cite
Ministry of the Environment (MDE), 2016, Post-Cyclone Needs Assessment: Environment Sector (PDNA Matthew), https://www.undp.org/fr/haiti/publications/rapport-sectoriel-environnement