The Beach at Port-Salut: Feasibility Study and Planning for its Restoration

Port-Salut's beach is the commune's principal economic asset and, in a country losing shoreline to erosion and storm surge, a wasting one. This UNEP study assesses whether and how it could be restored, and plans the work. Its length relative to the other workshop papers marks the difference between a position paper and an engineering assessment: it is the document that would have to exist before money was committed to a shoreline intervention. Read with the Port-Salut planning-options document from March 2017 held in this same collection, the pair covers the same commune from two directions, one asking what to do with the shoreline and the other what to do with the settlement behind it, and the second was written after Hurricane Matthew had passed over both. Presented at the Marriott in Port-au-Prince on 8 September 2015 to the workshop on Haiti's coastline and its land, economic and environmental stakes.