One island, two worlds: A comparative political ecology of deforestation disparity causes in Haiti and the Dominican Republic

Sammanfattning: On the Caribbean island of Hispaniola, two countries share the same environmental and climatic pre-conditions, but show monumental differences in current forest-cover. While tropical forests are covering almost half of the Dominican Republic, Haiti is down to just a few percent. In this thesis, political ecology and earlier research is combined to formulate four hypotheses: colonial history, human development and demography, local institutional context, and energy. The hypotheses are tested against a timeframe compiled from temporal data on Hispaniolan forest-cover and compared in a dynamic case-study approach design. The approach was inspired by Mill’s logic of inference, causal case-study criteria, process-tracing and the dynamic-comparative case study method. By asking what factors that explain the difference in forest-cover in the Dominican Republic and Haiti, and how they affect the countries’ forest-cover, the thesis aims to contribute to the general understanding of deforestation and the interaction between society and nature. The study finds that the current forest-cover disparities stems from a development in the 1980-90’s, and that the policy, project approaches and norm changes within the local institutional context matches and precedes the development of the forest-cover. Economic incentives and participatory approaches in reforestation projects are shown to have a positive effect.