Haiti has environmental destruction on a massive scale, but the HPI study gives them a low 'green' ecological footprint. Just a few months ago, the International Crisis Group released a report titled Haiti: Saving the Environment, Preventing Instability and Conflict.
Reversing a decades-long trend of environmental destruction is essential to Haiti's development, social and economic stability and, ultimately, security. Instability and violent conflict are not attributable solely to environmental degradation. But they are made more likely by the latter's interaction with such factors as weak institutions and governance, political fragility, pervasive and extreme poverty, vulnerability to natural disasters, rapid population growth, urban overcrowding and social and economic inequality. Concerted national effort and international support is required to stop deforestation and land erosion; reduce energy shortages and charcoal dependence; address rural and urban pollution, including the absence of a solid waste collection and recycling system; and strengthen an inadequate capacity to cope with natural disasters.
Iraq at 79, according to the HPI, is a happier place than Norway or Denmark. In my opinion, the report is ill-prepared and skewed to a point of being meaningless. The HPI is a joke.
What the report measures is some kind of societal effiency in bringing human happiness from the resources used. It might very well be nonsense but not on the grounds you point out in this comment. A vote for PES is a vote for EPP! A vote for EPP is a vote for PES! Support the coalition, vote EPP-PES in 2009!
