Impact of Climate Change

Flood damage.

Recently, Haiti was proclaimed to be the most vulnerable country in the world to climate change on an index developed by Maplecroft, a global risk management firm. Climate change has many detrimental affects on all four spheres of the earth's environment, varying from place to place but especially harmful in Haiti. Climate change is the cause to an abundance of Haiti's environmental issues such as rising sea levels, high population densities fragile ecosystems, over-stressed water resources, and limited institutional capacity meaning that small island states face serious difficulties to their development in a changing climate. Flooding, droughts, hurricanes, earthquakes, and landslides are all currently prevalent issues to Haiti that are only going to be drastically intensified by the affects of climate change, in addition to Haiti's rapidly declining GDP since 1982.


Due to climate change Haiti's water levels are rising at alarming rates affecting Haiti's hydrosphere as well as the biosphere if extensive flooding occurs it creates the earth non inhabitable for any living plants or organisms. The fact that Haiti is directly in the path of a Hurricane corridor causes storm and hurricane season to only be amplified by climate change as an excessive increase in rainfall and winds affects all four spheres of the environment as wind turmoils affect the atmosphere, erode the lithosphere and the heavy rainfalls break down infrastructure, lakes and rivers affecting the hydrosphere and biosphere by destroying crops and livestock. Flood damage has been steadily increasing due to deforestation, there are no trees to protect the rainfall absorbing topsoil resulting in less fertile soil so crops do not thrive or grow and erosion becomes prevalent.

Broken down infrastructure due to earthquake

Wreckage from climate change inflicted natural disasters.

Drought and excessive precipitation leads to decreased agricultural yields, general soil degradation, erosion, and desertification basically resulting in uninhabitable conditions for humans or any living plant or organism. Fish stocks, which play a vital role in meeting Haiti’s nutritional needs, are expected to decline as a result of climate change, changes to ocean temperature, salinity, and turbidity can alter fish stocks and migratory patterns, while the soil that flows into deltas and rivers as a result of erosion tend to push fish farther out to sea.

Haiti's fish markets.