humanitarian.info

Haiti is on my (thankfully) short list of “Countries for which I genuinely can’t see a solution”. It’s a possibility that we don’t like to think about – that perhaps there are certain situations which countries (loosely defined) cannot get out of. There’s no logical reason why this couldn’t happen – read Jared Diamond’s “Collapse” and Thomas Homer-Dixon’s “The Ingenuity Gap” back-to-back to get a loose idea of what I’m talking about – but our natural instincts are to deny the possibility.

The argument is simple, and it goes like this. Societies are complex systems that rely on a wide range of mutually-reinforcing factors in order to maintain themselves. We don’t actually understand all the factors that are in play, let alone how they interact with each other, but some of the more visible relationships make it possible to make reasonable estimates of the health of the system.  To anybody who’s investigated Haiti’s situation, it’s clear that it was a complex system that was failing, if it hadn’t failed already.

I refuse to use the term failed state, a political construction used to justify a particular ideological position; Tyler Cowen is closer to the mark when he talks about coming to terms “with the idea that the country of Haiti, as we knew it, probably does not exist any more.” It’s a little mysterious why he thinks that it’s President Obama that needs to comes to terms with it, rather than, say, the people who live in Haiti, particularly because it’s the latter who get to say if their country doesn’t exist any more.

Which brings me to the question: if I’m such a Gloomy Gus about Haiti’s prospects, do I have any positive thoughts about the situation? It’s going to take a long time to clear the rubble – both physical and emotional – but the opportunity before us collectively is huge. Let’s stop talking about reconstruction, when we’d be reconstructing a system that was a failure even before the quake; let’s stop talking about long-term development when long-term development had clearly failed to deliver significant poverty reduction.

Instead, let’s talk about reinventing Haiti. What sort of Haiti would its citizens like to see rise from the ashes of the old Haiti? The answer, unfortunately, will not be to the taste of those in power both inside Haiti and out. We don’t have the tools to respond to the wishes of people affected by the earthquake simply because it’s not within the parameters by which the system was designed. Alternative models of governance, of urban planning, of service delivery – they literally can’t be considered.

What might reinvention involve? I’ve got ideas (what else did you think?) but the whole point is that it’s not up to me. Our job is to look at the role that our decisions have played in building a structure that knew Haiti was an accident waiting to happen but prevented anybody from taking action to prevent it; even now we’re reaping the results of that in the logistics bottlenecks facing the relief effort, in a city built against resilience. Forget about reinventing the wheel; the real danger is reinventing Haiti as it was.