Plant cover in Haiti at two percent: UN official

Yahoo News 20 Dec 07;

Deforestation in Haiti, where trees and bushes are routinely felled for cooking fuel, is at crisis level, with just two-percent plant cover now, the UN warned Thursday.

"There is a real urgency, and measures need to be taken ... plant cover is down to about two percent," UN Development Program official in Haiti, Joel Boutroue, said.

Most people in Haiti, the poorest country in the Americas, live on less than two dollars a day, and they use wood for fires to cook. The result has been widespread deforestation and erosion.

Boutroue pressed the Haitian government and international groups to act quickly to foster re-forestation and runoff control programs, without which he said he feared Haiti could sink even further into poverty.