Climate Change, Colonialism’s Residue and Community Schools as “Indispensable Institutions” in Haiti

• In Event: 325 - Section on Sociology of Development Paper Session. Environment and Development

Abstract

Four hundred years of natural resource extraction has left Haiti one of the most environmentally degraded nations on Earth, leaving it especially vulnerable to climate instability. Here it is argued that the racialized class conditions created by plantation colonialism paved the way for a current society beset by extreme social inequality, a corrupt government controlled by a tiny elite and continued natural resource exploitation without regard to provisioning for a sustainable environment or ameliorating climate change. Since Haitian national institutions are functionally ineffective and assistance from abroad is uneven at best and unable to implement effective national policy, it is suggested here that replicable local institutions, in particular, updated versions of community schools, might best be able to help develop meaningful solutions to the problems that climate instability is already visiting on this beleaguered nation. Haiti is usefully viewed as a case study of the situation many of the world’s impoverished nations will find themselves in as the climate changes while ameliorative institutions remain underdeveloped.

Author

• Cynthia J. Bogard, Hofstra University