The Story of Stuff - Annie Leonard [100]
My Revelation in Haiti
Can’t these institutions change? Why don’t they embrace higher environmental and labor standards, or pursue a development and trade model that promotes equity and environmental conservation?
Over the years, I have come to realize that it is not the institutions themselves that are the real problem (although they are certainly problematic: inefficient, undemocratic, and unaccountable). The real problem is the underlying set of values and assumptions and beliefs—the paradigm—on which these institutions are based. Most of the people running these hugely influential institutions actually believe that their prescriptions work and will ultimately improve life for everyone. At worst, they think it is the dose, rather than the prescription, that is the problem, explains Kevin Gallagher, professor of international relations at Tufts University: “They don’t think the reforms are wrong, but that they haven’t been implemented wholeheartedly enough. If developing country economies adhere to our programs even more, they say, then things will get better.”123
This really sank in for me during my first trip to Haiti years ago. I had gone to Haiti because heavy-metal-laden ash from the city of Philadelphia’s municipal waste incinerator had been exported to Haiti, mislabeled as fertilizer, and dumped in a big open pile on the beach in Gonaïves. This infuriated me. How could a load of waste from the world’s richest country just be dumped on the poorest country in the hemisphere and left there? This incident seemed like a metaphor for how the United States had treated Haiti on so many levels for far too long. So I went to Haiti at the invitation of some Haitians who had contacted me seeking to collaborate to make Philadelphia take back its toxic ash. At that point I knew very little about how larger global systems operated—mostly what I knew about was trash.
The first people I met with were the women from the Disney sweatshop, whom I described in the previous chapter. After they had told me about conditions in the factory, some women shared their stories about moving from rural areas in the Haitian countryside to the city in search of these jobs. I asked them why they stayed in the city, living in slums that had little electricity and no running water or sanitation, and working in such obviously unhealthy environments instead of staying in the countryside with more space and cleaner air. The women said the countryside simply couldn’t sustain them anymore. Their families had given up farming since they couldn’t compete against the omnipresent “Miami rice,” as they called the white rice imported from the United States. “Miami rice” was grown on megafarms in the United States (not actually in Miami!) and delivered to Haiti for much less than the price of the more labor-intensive, more nutritious (and according to the Haitians, tastier) local rice strains. Farming, the women said, is dying in Haiti. They had no choice.
Next I visited farmers and former farmers. The one farmer I remember most clearly lowered his voice at one point and explained that Miami rice and the cancellation of the Haitian government’s subsidies for farmers was all part of a plan by the World Bank and its ally, the U.S. Agency for International Development