Attachments
FOOD SECURITY CONTEXT
At country-scale, household food consumption has begun to deteriorate again since midMarch, after several months of stabilization (source: WFP survey data). The updated IPC classification, covering March to June 2023, evaluates that 4.9 million people across the country are food insecure and in need of emergency humanitarian assistance (source : CNSA). WFP monitoring survey data show that more than two out of three households currently have insufficient food consumption (poor or borderline food consumption score). More than one out of two households have been adopting emergency or crisis coping strategies for many months. While this alarming situation affects the entire country, some departments are more severely affected than others, and within departments, some communes are more impacted than others. In particular, the commune of Cité Soleil, communes in the Port au Prince metropolitan area has a prevalence of food insufficiency of 82% of households, the highest rate across the country.
DRY SEASONAL CONDITIONS
Rainfall deficits over the past 5 to 6 months have affected Haiti, and more particularly the southern peninsula, implying drier to much drier than average conditions for the current period. The severity of the impact varies by commune. Such short multi term dry conditions coincide with a year cycle of unseasonably dry and hot conditions, revealed by satellite time series, which has been affecting Haiti since 2013, especially the departments NorthEast, North and Centre.
IMPACTS ON LIVELIHOODS
Such conditions will most certainly affect agricultural productions in course of the current and future seasons, and other livelihoods such as livestock. Prolonged dry conditions, combined with recent rainfall anomalies, imply that water levels in reservoirs and groundwater levels are lowered, and that soils are too dry for crops or vegetation to grow normally. This may prevent the planting of certain crops, force farmers to change crop types, and significantly reduce agricultural productivity. Indeed, if recent rainfall deficits have a strong impact on soil moisture, a multiyear dry cycle like the one Haiti has been experiencing for nearly ten years has a negative effect on groundwater availability - both essential for crops and for supplying water to livestock and the population.
SOME COMMUNES TO PRIORITIZE
In a context of deteriorating security and declining access to basic necessities for much of Haiti's population, such seasonal and multi-seasonal dry conditions converge dangerously, forming an additional vulnerability layer for many households whose livelihoods depend heavily on water availability. The analysis therefore proposes to map dry conditions throughout the country, explore their impacts and highlight the most vulnerable communes. In this sense, a list of communes to prioritize, classified by degree of severity derived from the considered dry indicators, and the associated map, are proposed to support the recommendations made at the end of the document.