With mobile money, Haitians are able to complete transactions like this one wirelessly. Photo: Karl Grobl for NetAid.

This article was republished by The Christian Science Monitor.

In Haiti, cash is escaping from wallets and savings accounts are breaking free from brick-and-mortar banks.

Two years after 2010’s devastating earthquake, mobile money has taken off in the island nation. While the country has seen setbacks in many areas and continues to struggle, one bright spot is the transformation of the country’s traditional banking sector. Physical banks were wiped away by the quake and subsequent hurricane, and a mobile banking network that uses cell phones has grown up in their place.

Toting your money around on a cell phone might sound scary, but for many Haitians it’s more secure than carrying around a wallet, which isn’t protected by a PIN. The handy infographic to the right shows how a mobile money transaction works.

How a mobile wallet transaction takes place in Haiti. Infographic courtesy Mercy Corps.

In the months following the quake, both Mercy Corps (our parent organization) and The Gates Foundation sponsored separate Haitian cell phone companies, Voilà and Digicel, to help mobile money take off, with the Gates Foundation offering monetary incentives for the first company to get a program off the ground and for continued improvements in order to get entrepreneurial engines revving.

For many Haitians, mobile money can open a door to personal choice. Mercy Corps has used mobile money to distribute food aid to families across Haiti and deliver payments from its cash-for-work programs. Instead of spending hours waiting in line for a cash payment or a food ration, Haitians receive a wireless money transfer on their phones once a month.

The technology holds promises for the future, too. Long-term, mobile money could be expanded so that it’s accessible to everyone for all of their personal purchases. Haitians could use mobile money to send remittances to family members in other parts of the country, according to AudienceScapes. And after visiting with Mercy Corps staff in Haiti in 2010, New York Times columnist Nicholas Kristof wrote about the way that mobile money is creating a way for the poor to save money like never before. Most banks won’t accept very small deposits, but now a mobile phone could double as a savings account. It could blow the microsavings sector wide open.

Mobile money could also help make Haitians healthier. Even before the earthquake hit, Haiti’s public health indicators were the worst in the Western hemisphere, according to the U.S. Department of State, and those problems were only compounded by the disaster. In Kenya, one of the first countries to adopt mobile money, customers can use it to pay - and save up for - health services. Expectant mothers use it to save for health care, and in rural communities Kenyans have used the service to pay for access to clean water, reports USAID. Looking forward, a mash-up of mobile health and mobile money technologies in Haiti could lead to new insurance plans and health voucher programs, according to Health Unbound.

With mobile money quickly gaining widespread use, the developing world is leaps ahead of the developed. Mobile money launched in Kenya in 2003, according to The National Archives, but Google Wallet’s similar service in the U.S. wasn’t released until September of last year and has yet to truly take off. Maybe it’s time for American company executives to start taking a few pointers from Haiti.

Medic Mobile works with the simplest of cell phones to help provide health care to those far away from their nearest hospital. Photo: Fabiola Coupet/Mercy Corps.

In rural communities around the world, the virtual doctor is in.

The distance between far-flung communities and their nearest hospitals can be fatal. Medic Mobile bridges the gap using a common household item: the cell phone. It’s not the same as a living, breathing doctor, but Medic Mobile comes pretty close, and it does so using a list of platforms that is strikingly similar to what you might find on a smart phone. These seemingly-sophisticated technologies can work on even the most basic of cell phones and computers, just like those found all over the developing world.

Medic Mobile’s Sim Apps, in addition to open-source platforms like FrontlineSMS, OpenMRS, Ushahidi, Google Apps, and HealthMap, allow hospital staff sitting at a computer to communicate with multiple health workers in rural areas. The health workers’ phones are basic, but Medic Mobile uses a tiny parallel SIM card that fits between any GSM phone and a carrier’s cell phone to allow these phones to run the necessary apps. The Medic Mobile website provides a more in-depth description of the many technologies it employs. In a 2009 interview with GOOD magazine, co-founder Lucky Gunasekara described Medic Mobile’s importance:

We can communicate need in real time. Say I am a community health worker in rural Malawi and one of my patients gets really sick. Before this system came along, for a lot of clinics, the patient would die, because even though I have some basic health training as a community health worker, there is nothing I can really do. They're still just as disconnected as the communities they live in. Now with our system clinicians see things in real time and they communicate back.

In addition to saving lives, the program saves time: its website says that in six months, the pilot program in Malawi “saved hospital staff 1200 hours of follow-up time and over $3,000 in motorbike fuel” and cut 900 hours of travel time for antiretroviral therapy monitors by eliminating their need to hand-deliver reports to the hospital.

Since its inception in 2009, Medic Mobile has expanded to Honduras, Haiti, Uganda, Mali, Kenya, South Africa, Cameroon, India and Bangladesh. The platform is adaptable to different situations: it was used in Haiti following the 2010 earthquake to link first responders and locals in need of help. As a result of its successes, Medic Mobile was recently named one of the Top 11 in 2011 mobile health innovators of the year by mHealth Alliance.

The proliferation of cell phones is sparking a revolution in developing-world health care. Innovators from all reaches of the globe have used the near-ubiquitous technology to increase health care affordability and access. By adapting sophisticated platforms to basic devices, they’re turning $15 cell phones into invaluable lifelines.

Editor’s note: For more information on the connection, check out A Medical Lab in the Palm of Your Hand, A Dose of Cell Phone Surveillance Helps Aid Workers Save Lives, and Paging Dr. Smartphone, to name a few.

Download the full size image. Courtesy Mercy Corps.

During the lifecycle of a Haitian mango, a lot can go wrong.

By the time it reaches the U.S., it's a lucky little mango if it hasn't been packaged poorly, bruised and squished, harvested at the wrong time, ravaged by insects and decimated by poor weather. In all likelihood, it's probably been thrown out along the way, never to make it.

For the large international supermarkets and businesses that buy mangoes (think Whole Foods and Coca-Cola's Odwalla brand), this is just the cost of doing business. It happens to some degree with every perishable product—particularly fruit—and it's no cause to shed tears.

But for Haitian farmers, that cost of doing business may actually cost them their business.

Nonprofit development organizations are in tune to the plight of the small-scale farmer and have identified a few key moments in the mango lifecycle where value can be added (see Mercy Corps' "Farm to Market" infographic above). On the other side of the coin, companies like Coca-Cola want to ensure the mango supply chain is intact, because it's difficult to make Mango Lime-Aid juice without mangoes. Both have poured money and expertise into helping mango farmers succeed.

It's not too far of a stretch to say that improving the incomes of small-scale farmers can improve the long-term prospects of a country like Haiti, devastated and slow to recover.
The spotlight on Haiti may dim over time, but the mango is definitely finding a juicy role for itself in the story.

57 million women give birth each year without the help of a trained professional. Photo: hugrakka(Flicker)

Bringing one life into the world shouldn't mean sacrificing another. While the developing world scrambles to secure funding for midwifery services, there's a cheap, short-term solution: birth kits.

The risk of death due to pregnancy or childbirth is 1 in 8,000 in developed countries, as opposed to 1 in 17 in developing countries, according to the organization Unite For Sight. Yearly, approximately 57 million women give birth in their home without the help of a trained professional, increasing the risk of complications.

Midwives are an essential player in lowering maternal deaths. "Midwives can save women's and newborns' lives if they are properly trained and equipped, and if a support network is available," writes the World Health Organization. Worldwide, the WHO estimates, there is a shortage of 350,000 midwives. But training 350,000 new midwives won't happen overnight. In the meantime, birth kits could fill the gap.

Birth kits provide the tools for a safer and sanitary delivery, including soap to wash hands, razors and ties for the umbilical cord, plastic sheets for a clean surface, and an instruction sheet.

The impact of birth kits can be life-saving but their success depends on acceptability within the community where it is introduced. At times, modifications might be needed such as redesigning the instruction sheet to use images instead of words, considering low literacy rates. PATH, an international organization which focuses on global health and well-being, has produced kits used in Bangladesh, Egypt and Nepal. Cutting the umbilical cord on a coin is considered good luck in Nepal. To adhere to traditional customs, PATH created a kit that includes a plastic rupee.

Another common problem: Cutting the umbilical cord with unsanitary, used razor blades. Disposable razor blades or an illustrated instruction sheet encouraging woman and midwives to sterilize reusable blades after every use could reduce this problem. The Janma clean delivery birthing kit by AYZH is making modifications to its current scalpel handle design to discourage reuse.

Though midwives are the ideal choice for safe births, families can't always afford their services. Government and non-profit programs that subsidize midwifery programs aren't economically sustainable in the long run. A model pursued by the Midwifery Association of Pakistan involves changing public perceptions of the midwife's role in health care, advocates for government-set standards for midwifery education, and lobbies for professional rights.

Until midwifery is economically viable and publicly understood, we need an affordable stop-gap solution to save lives. Maternal mortality will continue to rise if birth kits—and, eventually, midwifery services—aren’t accessible to the women who need them now.

Fortified borders, like this one seen from Calexico, Mexico, are part of measures taken to reduce the flow of migrants. Photo: Omar Bárcena (Flickr)

Today is not exactly a great time to be an immigrant. Though over 215 million people worldwide are first-generation migrants, more than ever before, migration is being restricted as many countries have added immigration to the list of economic burdens. Recent experience, however, suggests global migration helps grow economies and spread ideas.

Legislators in Alabama, U.S., recently passed an anti-immigration law (HB56) that prevents any undocumented immigrant from applying for work, penalizes any citizen who hires an undocumented worker, and prevents undocumented immigrants from receiving most state services. Police are able to arrest anyone they suspect to be an undocumented immigrant, a power which resulted in the recent arrest of a German Mercedes-Benz manager, who couldn't produce proper identification when stopped. European governments, grappling with an unprecedented increase in migrant populations, have passed laws restricting religious freedom, while the popularity of anti-immigration political parties is surging. In China, an acclaimed Chinese-American engineer has been jailed on dubious charges that some see as retribution for immigrating from the United States.

Behind all of these laws is a desire to make migration less attractive by making life more difficult for migrant populations. As Alabama State Representative Micky Hammon, a proponent of the anti-immigration initiative, explains, “the goal of the entire bill [is] to prevent illegal immigrants from coming to Alabama and to discourage those that are here from putting down roots." It's working. Though about 2.5 percent of Alabama’s population is undocumented, according to the Center for American Progress, tens of thousands of workers, documented and undocumented, stopped showing up for work after the law was passed.

Proponents of anti-immigration measures argue that immigrants drain government budgets by using its services without paying taxes, and causing unemployment and wage deflation by willing to work for low pay. Yet the evidence is quite flimsy. As Giovanni Peri, an economist at UC Davis who specializes in migration, writes, “on net, immigrants expand the U.S. economy’s productive capacity, stimulate investment, and promote specialization that in the long run boosts productivity. Consistent with previous research, there is no evidence that these effects take place at the expense of jobs for workers born in the United States.”

So much for being a drain on the economy. Economists at the University of Alabama have recently predicted that for every 10,000 laborers, legal and illegal, who are discouraged from working in Alabama as a result of the recent law, the state’s economy will contract by $40 million.

Aleksynska Mariya and Ahmed Tritah, economists at the University of Maine in France write that most evidence of a negative immigration effect come from studies that only examine wages and employment levels for natives in the short-run. But Mariya and Tritah remind us that immigration affects the global economy through a wide range of mechanisms. After examining these mechanisms, they conclude that immigration has a positive effect on income, labor productivity, and total factor productivity in the long run. "Studies
which focus uniquely [on] one type of effect, such as impact on employment, overlook other channels through which [the] economy adjusts to immigration."

And immigration helps developing countries as well. As The Economist writes, migrants spread ideas, information, and money while making it easier to do business across borders: “A Chinese trader in Indonesia who spots a gap in the market for cheap umbrellas will alert his cousin in Shenzhen who knows someone who runs an umbrella factory. Kinship ties foster trust, so they can seal the deal and get the umbrellas to Jakarta before the rainy season ends.” In some emerging markets institutions that foster free trade, like private property and the rule of law in general, tend to be relatively inefficient. So trust is essential to creating the confidence necessary for trade. If the government can’t ensure that you are accountable for the money I loan you, I will only do so if I know I can trust you.

Michael Clemens, senior fellow at the Center for Global Development whose research examines migration and development, discusses the effect of remittances from Haitian immigrants at home and abroad in Foreign Policy magazine:

"We can do a back-of-the-envelope calculation of what additional migration could do. Suppose the United States lets in 100,000 Haitian immigrants. First, this would dramatically raise their incomes and raise essentially all of them out of extreme poverty. Second, this would increase the size of the worldwide Haitian diaspora by 10 percent. If the new migrants remit like earlier migrants did, this would mean roughly $150 million to 180 million every year in additional remittances for Haiti... The Guardian reports that the United States has committed a one-time total of $167 million in aid. Remittances recur year after year, and unlike aid, almost the whole amount of remittances goes directly into needy families' pockets."

Migration will not solve all of our problems, and it doubtless creates many. But so do free trade and globalization, which are generally hailed as essential to modern economic growth. Why not free migration as well?

Michael Clemens was a 2011 Global Envision guest lecturer at Mercy Corps' Action Center in Portland, Oregon.

Ben Osborn is a 2011 graduate of Lewis & Clark College in Portland, Oregon. Read his other contributions to Global Envision.

Last year's devastating quake in Haiti created a pressing need for new, durable housing structures. Photo: Cassandra Nelson/Mercy Corps.

Part of a Global Envision miniseries about Portland State University's effort to become the "Consumer Reports" of developing-world technology. Read the introduction.

With the specter of Haiti’s hurricane season looming, everyone involved in the 1000 Homes for Haiti project wanted to get the sustainable, earthquake-proof shelters to the island nation as soon as possible.

But there was a catch: when the houses got wet, they leaked.

The story begins with Charles Fox of Portland’s Pacific Green Innovations (PGI), who came up with the idea for the project after a trip to Haiti in 2010, when he recognized the country’s need for low-cost, sustainable and permanent housing, according to the Portland Tribune. “If you give someone a transitional house, it becomes permanent,” he told the paper. As of August, more than 600,000 Haitians were still living in makeshift housing and tent camps, according to The Christian Science Monitor.

PGI bought building panels of resin-soaked recycled paper from a German building-material manufacturer called SwissCell, which PGI's website bills as earthquake-resistant, fire resistant, weather and temperature resistant.

In June 2010, PSU students actually assembled one of PGI's model homes in a campus park. This was partially to demonstrate another of the homes’ aspects that made it seem perfect for Haiti and the developing world in general: the building panels are modular and can be assembled quickly and simply. PGI says all of the houses’ materials can be produced in Haiti by Haitians.

Things went swimmingly until a curious detail caught the eye of a PSU researcher: the home had water damage. If sitting outside in Portland made the house leak, how would it hold up amid Haitian squalls, humidity and hurricanes? To test it, they tossed some of the panels into PSU’s state-of-the-art Thermotron, a device that, according to Senior Fellow Sergio Palleroni of PSU’s Institute for Sustainable Solutions, "can create any environment on earth, any weather condition." They cranked up the heat and humidity to Haitian summertime levels, and let the panels stew for a couple of weeks.

The results confirmed their initial suspicions: Palleroni says that on average, the material lost 60 percent of its structural capacity to resist breakage. In high-wind, high-humidity conditions, the houses could actually fall apart. And for a Caribbean country far more prone to hurricanes than earthquakes—there were four in 2008 alone, according to The Guardian—that’s a big problem.

PGI stands by their product despite Palleroni's criticism. PGI’s manufacturer, Magnum Building Products, wrote in an email to Global Envision that PSU's testing may not have been reliable.

"When installed properly and finished per the guidelines also found on our website, Magnum Board structures will be in use far longer than most any other building product on the market today,” wrote Daniel Armstrong. His full response can be found below, in the comments section.

PSU researchers don’t say the houses have no use, but they don’t think they are a good permanent solution for Haiti. Palleroni pointed out that while the building materials may have passed the manufacturer’s test, they were tested as separate components; the problems showed up when they were fully assembled. PGI disagrees, with its manufacturer arguing that PSU made “no distinction as to what elements of the assembly were the primary contributor(s)" to the homes' failure.” PGI has already implemented their housing program in Haiti.

While there’s no consensus over the houses’ suitability for Haiti’s climate, the fact that there’s a debate at all is unusual. Intensive testing like the kind done at PSU is not often performed on products for the developing world. All too often, potential design problems aren’t identified until after a product is in use. Sending flawed products abroad wastes money and other resources, and in some cases the products might even hurt those that they are intended to help. Improved technologies and testing procedures allow for a longer revision period and result in better products that do more for people in need. And since that’s really the goal of humanitarian design, hopefully intensive product testing will become the norm.

Margo Conner is a senior at Lewis & Clark College in Portland, Oregon, majoring in international affairs. Read her other contributions to Global Envision.

An image of an endocervical gland taken during a pap smear. Simple vinegar turns out to be a lower-cost alternative to tests like this one. Photo:Ed Uthman(flicker)

A common household item can serve a double purpose: it gives flavor in your kitchen, and it saves your life.

A low-cost innovation—vinegar— can help detect cervical cancer and save thousands of lives in developing nations.

Developed by the John Hopkins medical school in the 1990’s and endorsed by the World Health Organization, vinegar is brushed on a woman’s cervix. The vinegar causes precancerous spots to turn white, reports The New York Times.

The spots can be instantly frozen off with a metal probe cooled by a tank of carbon dioxide.

In the traditional Western test for cervical cancer, a pap smear, a scraping of the cervix is taken and sent to a lab for testing. High-quality labs are scarce in many poor countries, and waiting for results can take weeks. Woman who live in rural areas are hard to reach. The vinegar procedure, known as VIA/cryo, only requires a nurse and a single visit to detect and kill the cancer.

Each year, more than 250,000 women die from cervical cancer, 85 percent of them in poor or middle-income countries.

Solutions to problems don’t always have to be high-tech. A little creativity and ingenuity can go a long way.

Aid can restore dignity by providing choices. Photo: Miguel Samper for Mercy Corps

Food aid can fill bellies, but countries hit by famine need choices, not handouts. Two new alternatives can solve longer-term problems by letting victims choose how aid gets used.

First, cash voucher programs give people choice.

UNICEF and two of its non-governmental partners implemented cash voucher fairs in 2010 that provided crucial supplies to 65,000 people displaced by violence in eastern Democratic Republic of the Congo. Each family received 13 coupons totaling $40, which they used to purchase supplies from participating vendors.

Cash vouchers let people decide what they need, as opposed to receiving standard packages with items they might not. Having the power of choice also restores dignity and a sense of worth in a time of struggle. “Furaha!" a mother of two, Kavira Matita, exclaimed to UNICEF during a cash voucher fair, expressing joy in the Kiswahili language. "I am able to choose what is close to my heart. I am very happy to use the coupons for what I know my family needs and not be given things I won’t have much use for.” That's not all: Economically speaking, the vouchers tend to support local business rather than international ones, which can inject much-needed capital back into a struggling community and increase the impact of aid dollars.

Cash-for-work programs are another option. They hire people to participate in their own rebuilding process.

In landlocked Chad, which borders Sudan, World Concern’s cash-for-work program is already putting communities to work. One of the first projects was to dig large ponds for catching water for irrigation and animals. Other projects built low rock walls to reduce erosion on hillsides.

As in cash voucher programs, cash-for-work participants receive vouchers as payment so they can buy what their family needs. However, injecting new money into a weak economy can cause inflation. To prevent this, World Concern sets price ceilings beforehand to ensure economies aren't further destabilized.

In previous posts, Global Envision dug into cash-for-work and cash voucher programs, highlighting responses to the Haiti earthquake -- a Mercy Corps cash-for-work project, and a World Food Program cash voucher system.

Worldwide, 40 countries face food shortages, and aid delivery to these regions in crises is vital. Each country has unique needs, and they should be evaluated accordingly. As a result of the famine in the Horn of Africa, three million people in Somalia need emergency aid and more than 10 million are at risk of severe prolonged hunger or even starvation, according to The New York Times.

As the world looks for ways to deliver this aid, it should consider cash vouchers and cash-for-work programs. Both make recovery after crises and conflicts more sustainable by directly involving those affected in rebuilding their communities.

Cellphones are transforming the way in which aid workers are tackling the transmission of infectious diseases in Haiti. Photo:ambafranceht (flickr)

In Haiti, aid workers may have saved thousands of lives by tracking the cell phones of displaced citizens.

Following the 2010 earthquake (which claimed the lives of over 200,000), and a deadly cholera outbreak that originated in a U.N refugee camp, public health researchers in the area discovered that they could harness Haiti’s burgeoning cell phone network in a unique way.

Researchers found that not only was it possible to anonymously track (via cellphone SIM cards) the movements of displaced citizens, but that in doing so they could also anticipate the spread of epidemics, NPR reports. This let aid and health workers reach areas of infection more efficiently, curbing the further spread and transmission of disease.

An additional benefit to utilizing the Haitian cell network was that medical workers were able to distribute health advice by way of text and voicemail messages to thousands of Haitians, tips on everything from re-hydration to breastfeeding infected babies.

Though this effort was one of the first of its kind, infectious disease investigators believe that similar techniques for future outbreaks around the globe have the potential to be equally effective. Add "epidemic control" to the consistently growing list of uses for mobile phones. At the pace that cellular and smart phone technology are developing, who knows what’s next?

Giovanna Menard, one of Haiti's unsung "opportunity entrepreneurs." Photo: courtesy of MicroMentor

This has been reposted from the Mercy Corps blog.

Mention of Haiti often brings forth images of rampant unemployment, desperation and a society of people who are just barely making ends meet. While this is not an incorrect image, it is incomplete.

While many people in Haiti struggle with the bare necessities of life, and hustle simply to keep their families fed and clothed — so-called 'necessity entrepreneurs' — there is also a class of successful professionals known as 'opportunity entrepreneurs' who open businesses to exploit market opportunities, rather than out of desperation. These people speak English, have attained a university degree and maintain a social network of friends and acquaintances that makes job hunting much easier.   
 
Giovanna Menard fits into this category. As a lawyer at a top phone company in Port-au-Prince, Menard is financially secure. This relative comfort doesn’t stop her from finding time to run her own business, Artisans du Soleil.

Several years ago, Menard spent a vacation in New York taking jewelry making classes. She fell in love with the process and began designing jewelry in her spare time. The earthquake that struck Haiti in January 2010 put a damper on business development, forcing her to downsize and delay the opening of the small boutique she had been planning.
 
Today, Menard employs between six and ten people, participates in arts exhibitions and is finally in the process of opening her boutique. When asked if she would quit her permanent position to concentrate on her business full time, Giovanna’s face lit up:  “Definitely — I’m working for that, actually.”
 
Menard has business savvy: she developed a unique product with strong market appeal, and has successfully sustained a profitable business. Moreover, as a lawyer, she has technical expertize in legal matters that impact enterprises in Haiti.

These are skills and experiences that would help other entrepreneurs in Haiti. On the other hand, more formal business training, mentorship and help locating and coordinating raw product suppliers could help Menard to succeed in her dream of making Artisans du Soleil her primary source of income.
 
Mercy Corps, with the help of Western Union, is bringing the MicroMentor business mentoring program to Haiti to make these connections a reality. Entrepreneurs like Mernard can request training from their mentors in basic business skills — for example, writing business plans and balancing their budgets, as well as the most modern elements of business management, such as how to use cutting edge marketing techniques. They will also be connected to local entrepreneurs, so that their skills can be transferred throughout Haiti. 

By connecting entrepreneurs with one another and with mentors abroad, MicroMentor hopes to facilitate the growth of the small and medium enterprises in Haiti, and contribute to the country’s long-term economic growth.

Over one billion people live on less than one dollar a day, according to the U.N. But what can you actually buy with a dollar?

It seems like something that would vary across countries. Luckily, the World Food Programme recently released a series of videos in which it seeks to answer that question. Country specialists in Nepal, Cambodia, Ethiopia, Haiti, Guatemala, Somalia, Kenya, and the Philippines each went to their local markets with the equivalent of about one U.S. dollar and attempted to put together a meal. Watch as Reem Nada visits a market in Alexandria, Egypt.

The shorts are entertaining, but present a rather bleak reality. Almost all of the investigators come up short nutritionally. In Nepal, Deepesh Das Shresta leaves the market holding a few small bananas and a loaf of white bread. Meat is categorically too expensive, and staying within budget means many investigators can’t purchase all of the components necessary to create the meals that are considered cultural staples. It appears that those living on less than a dollar a day are also living far below their daily caloric and nutrient requirements.

Feeding oneself on less than a dollar is tricky business under the best of circumstances. Even worse, the recent volatility of the price of staple foods such as rice has jumped three times since 2008, says the New York Times — meaning that dollar must now be stretched even further.

The rest of the videos can be found on the World Food Programme website. The videos for Ethiopia, Kenya, and the Philippines are listed separately.

Margo Conner is a senior at Lewis & Clark College in Portland, Oregon, majoring in international affairs. Read her other contributions to Global Envision.

In post-earthquake Haiti, members of the Bohoc community rehabilitate and widen a road. Photo: Lisa Hoashi/Mercy Corps.

In minutes, everything was gone.

The funnel clouds from one of the United States’ worst tornado seasons in years destroyed homes, bridges, schools, and anything else in their path. While the loss is catastrophic, the reconstruction period that follows a natural disaster can create interesting economic niches and opportunities for those seeking to put the pieces back together.

This kind of destruction is not unique to the U.S. Catastrophes around the globe cause economic shifts. Sometimes this means a transformation in a country’s economic structure, but on occasion, disaster can spark positive changes.

In an example of structural transformation, massive winter flooding in Colombia recently put millions of acres of land underwater — having disastrous effects on the country’s dairy, agricultural, and cut flower industries. Colombia had planned to transform its eastern plains into the country’s primary agricultural sector, doubling the amount of land under cultivation, but the flooding presented a major roadblock. “...[I]n just a few hours we are losing what has been 35 years in the making,” one dairy farmer told Reuters.

Last year’s floods in Pakistan, the earthquake in Haiti, and Hurricane Katrina (to name a few) disrupted millions of lives and wiped out or severely destroyed local and national economies. Recovery may take decades.

But disasters have also spurred interesting new economic developments. The floods in Pakistan washed away thousands of miles of roads and railway lines, many bridges, almost 10,000 schools, and 1.7 million houses. Rebuilding them represents an enormous business opportunity. It is also a chance to introduce more resource-efficient practices in industries like agriculture, livestock, and dairy farming that were wiped out by the floods, Pakistan’s High Commissioner to the UK, Wajid Shamsul Haman, told Reuters.

Indeed, the destruction of infrastructure and existing institutions sometimes represents an opportunity to rebuild in new and improved ways. In March 2010, the Haitian government unveiled a plan to rebuild the nation that seeks to redistribute a large portion of the population to smaller, less disaster-prone cities, according to the New York Times. Building up the infrastructure in these smaller communities should create an economic incentive for people to stay. Planners hope that a decrease in Port-au-Prince’s population will help to alleviate many of the social problems related to overcrowding that it faced before the earthquake.

New Orleans experienced massive job loss following Hurricane Katrina, but by 2008 it had regained 99 percent of its pre-storm total thanks to thousands of new jobs in construction and government, says the New York Times. Some companies and nonprofits incorporated green building practices as part of the rebuilding process, according to the Christian Science Monitor. In fact, the New Orleans school system, which was in many ways failing before the hurricane, is ranked as the most reform friendly city for education by the Thomas B. Fordham Institute, says the Christian Science Monitor. Test scores and graduation rates are both up. In some ways, the city is experiencing a rebirth.

A natural disaster is, of course, still a disaster. Even the best-laid reconstruction plans may never materialize. This is especially true in the developing world, where the wounds left by a disaster are more severe and take longer to heal. Scientists predict the world will experience more severe natural disasters in greater numbers in the coming century, says The Guardian. That means more floods, more hurricanes, and more tornadoes like the one that recently ripped through Joplin, Missouri. It also means that now, more than ever, we need to understand how to create positive economic change in a disaster's aftermath.

Heather Fleming has been named one of the World Economic Forum's Young Global Leaders for 2010. Young Global Leaders are recognized by the World Economic Forum as "exceptional young leaders who share a commitment to shaping the global future."

Born on an Indian reservation in New Mexico, Fleming knows first hand the difficulties people face growing up without resources many take for granted, such as running water or electricity. Her experiences eventually led to the pursuit of a degree as a civil engineer and the start up of Catapult Design, a company she co-founded with Tyler Valiquette. Catapult Design "is a non-profit firm providing engineering and implementation support to the thousands of organizations in need of technologies or products capable of igniting social change."

Fleming has worked with other like-minded designers and engineers as a co-founder of Engineers Without Borders, D2M and as a co-leader for Appropriate Technology Design Team. These design and engineering companies provide low-impact solutions that benefit the world with inventions such as the "turbulent air" turbine, improvements to the Hippo Roller--a water barrel with handles that can be rolled and a fuel efficient cooking stove for Darfur refugees that uses less wood.

See Fleming talk about her passion for the work she does in this video.

Vive la Révolution! Haitians rebel in the Battle at Sainte-Domingue. Photo: Wikimedia Commons

This week, the ghosts of colonial misdeeds returned to haunt France.

EU politicians and others wrote an open letter to President Nicolas Sarkozy, demanding that the French government compensate Haiti for a past wrongdoing, explains the Christian Science Monitor.

A petition signed by 100 artists, scholars, and EU politicians that was released Monday called on France to give Haiti $17 billion for earthquake reconstruction. The money would essentially reimburse a fee French King Charles X charged Haiti after a revolt that ended slavery there. King Charles justified the fee as compensation for the loss of slaves and other property.

In 1804, Haiti won a bloody independence from France. But the small Caribbean country was still economically shackled to France until 1947, when the Haitian government finally paid off interest from their lofty independence debt of roughly 90 million gold francs.

Today, that sum is worth about $17 billion — a chunk of change that could surely go to good use helping Haiti rebuild. Haiti remains knee-deep in rubble six months after the devastating earthquake killed thousands and left millions without homes or good health. Yet despite the petition's plea, French foreign ministry spokesperson Christine Fages stressed France's commitment to Haiti, when she spoke with the Christian Science Monitor:

France gives Haiti $25 million a year, has given $30 million in humanitarian aid since the earthquake in January that left some 250,000 dead, has erased a $72 million in debt, and plans a total of $420 million more in aid through next year.

Although President Sarkozy dismissed the petition, he recently stated, "Even if I did not start my mandate at the time of Charles X, I am still responsible in the name of France."

Let's hope so, Monsieur le Président.

Haitians load bags of food donated by the United States onto a truck for distribution to earthquake victims in Port-au-Prince after the January earthquake. Photo: Jenny Vaughan/Mercy Corps

In Haiti, rice is king. It’s consumed at every meal and forms an important source of income for many people — wholesalers, street vendors, and farmers. But the January earthquake has left the rice market in shambles.

Cheap rice from the United States made up about 80 percent of all rice in Haiti before the earthquake. But Haiti’s ports were damaged by the earthquake and could only receive a fraction of the shipments they used to. Shipments of military and humanitarian supplies were prioritized above commercial shipments of rice, which led to rice shortages and huge price increases that many people couldn’t afford.

Foreign aid flowed in to make up the difference, but this has long-term consequences for Haiti's food supply chain, says NPR. Most people get their rice from street vendors, who get theirs from mini-wholesalers. These wholesalers buy from larger wholesalers, who buy imported rice. But the influx of donated rice means that many people have flat-out stopped buying rice.

The situation has become especially dire for the street vendors and mini-wholesalers. The large wholesalers have access to credit to help them survive the crisis, but small businesses aren’t so lucky, as NPR and Frontline explain in this video.

As commercial rice imports start to flow back into Haiti and supply increases, rice has become cheaper than it was before the earthquake. The plunge in prices is forcing rural farmers to choose between eating the rice that they grow and selling it to pay school fees for their children. To make matters worse, the rice-growing regions are largely outside the earthquake zone, where foreign food aid isn't being distributed. As a result, many farmers are going hungry to send their kids to school.

So what are aid groups doing to solve the free rice problem? Now that the rice supply is beginning to stabilize, the World Food Programme has begun distributing cash or vouchers that can be redeemed for rice. In the Frontline video, WFP analyst Ceren Gurken said that the voucher program was in the works; it has been implemented since the video was filmed. Because the WFP pays street vendors for the rice, who pay that money back up the supply chain, the economy gets a chance to recover. At present, it doesn't look like farmers are being included in the program, though that may change.

Sure, the vouchers have their downsides — hand out too many and demand spikes, bringing sky-high prices — but for now, they’re the best way for aid groups to make sure that Haiti’s food supply chain stays connected. If it breaks, there could be a whole new disaster.