At sunset a few days before Christmas, a group of people huddled together as they observed water shooting down a narrow road, swallowing cars and trees. I, Sherwanda, was one of them. Days of heavy rain followed by a torrential downpour led to flash floods and overflowed rivers and canals, creating a new hydrological map of Port-de-Paix, Haiti. We—parents and kids on school break, merchants leaving the market, and others returning home after work—waited at the temporary river bank for hours. Once the water lowered, we linked arms to make a human chain. With kids on shoulders and disabled adults riding piggyback, our group slowly forded the river. On the other side, people realized they were stranded—the footpaths back into the populous hills had been washed out. That evening, thousands of people in Port-de-Paix slept under the stars, on the roofs of strangers’ flooded homes.
Port-de-Paix is the principal city in the northwest of Haiti, the only one of ten departments without a paved road to the capital. Its isolation is not all bad. As armed groups have taken over Port-au-Prince and surrounding areas, residents of Port-de-Paix do not experience the terror that many Haitians face while going about their daily lives. At the same time, its distance often means few or no resources from the central government, including during natural disasters.
The flooding in Port-de-Paix illustrates what Haitians call “climate disorder”—the unpredictable, unjust, destructive reality of our changing climate. It shows how extreme weather events and climate disasters uniquely burden the lives of Haitian women, who shoulder household duties, economic responsibilities, and first-response caretaking. The flooding underscores the urgency of local and global action: Haitian leaders must educate communities about what climate disorder is, and its root causes; Global North actors must grapple with—and atone for—the centuries of imposed debt and destructive foreign policy that contribute to Haiti’s climate vulnerability today.
Our organizations, SOKIJA (Sosyete Kiltirèl Jen Ayisyen, the Haitian Youth Cultural Society) and the Global Justice Clinic of NYU School of Law (GJC), study climate disorder in Haiti and its root causes. In February of 2025, GJC and The Promise Institute for Human Rights at UCLA Law, in collaboration with Haitian social justice organizations, including SOKIJA, published our report, Bay Kou Bliye, Pote Mak Sonje: Climate Injustice in Haiti and the Case for Reparations, in Haitian Creole. The report outlines the present and future of climate harms in Haiti, the roots of Haiti’s climate vulnerability—colonialism, debt, and ongoing racism—and how community organizations cope with climate disorder.
Climate disorder in Haiti is already causing mass destruction
Haiti, a small island developing state approximately the size of Massachusetts, is one of the countries most harmed by climate change, despite having only marginally contributed to, and economically benefited from, the activities that created climate disorder. The Port-de-Paix flooding, caused by cumulative winter rains that fell outside of hurricane season, killed at least 13 people, destroyed hundreds of homes, and flooded thousands of homes and businesses. Local authorities declared a three-month state of emergency.
Women on the frontline
In Haiti and much of the world, the lives of women and children are most upended by extreme weather and climate events. In the aftermath of the Port-de-Paix floods, many children are not in school because the buildings are flooded or the routes to school are no longer passable. Residents also report a spike in diarrhea, fevers, and respiratory illnesses, resulting from the dirty, debris-filled water. The female merchants who buy, sell, and distribute food—Madan Sara—are one of the groups most harmed by climate disorder. In addition to shouldering economic responsibility and the overall well-being of their households, Madan Sara depend on the agricultural output that climate disorder weakens and the roads and footpaths that connect farms to markets, which extreme weather events can wipe out.
Women are often first responders to climate disorder events, taking care of children unable to make it to school or sickened by the disease that so often accompanies flooding, opening their homes to strangers, and finding ways to feed their families even when the ground is too soggy to grow. While I, Ellie, lived in Haiti from 2011 to 2017, I experienced this generous commitment to collective well-being firsthand. I spent many weeks each year in the Northwest Department listening to the experiences of communities where US and Canadian mining companies explored for gold. One of those times, in 2014, as colleagues and I descended from a community where Newmont had dug trenches and sampled the earth for metals, the cold, high-altitude air and relentless rain made me convulse with shivers. We stopped to take shelter under a family’s patio. An older couple invited us in. The woman brought out a long, elegant, ruffled dress. It was her church dress. She asked that I wear it on my hike back to town for warmth. Communal care keeps communities afloat.
Grappling with climate disorder, in Haiti and beyond
As of mid-January 2025, Haiti’s central government had provided zero funding to Port-de-Paix relief efforts. In the absence of government aid and coordination, Haitians share what they have and find creative ways to get by. As our report details, Haitians adapt to erratic weather through agroecology, facilitate the survival of peyizan (Haitian peasants) through the konbit solidarity economy, and, with their own hands, protect forests and other key ecosystems. Haitian social movement organizations also demand structural change to advance environmental and economic justice, securing peyizan land rights and keeping Haiti mining-free.
GJC and The Promise Institute concluded that Haitian communities need technology and tools, central coordination, and an infusion of resources to support grassroots adaptation efforts, as Chapter III of Bay Kou Bliye, Pote Mak Sonje shows. They also need information. As climate disorder wreaks havoc on growing seasons, floods homes, and forces millions of people to sweat through extreme heat, many Haitians think that their sins or missteps are to blame. Sherwanda notes that fellow residents of Port-de-Paix believed Saint Immaculate decided to flood their city after they failed to celebrate her on December 8th, electing to move the prayers and parties in her honor to December 7th, a Saturday. The absence of scientific explanations—and the mythology that forms in its place—makes people more fearful of and purportedly helpless against the impacts of climate disorder.
Despite filling a critical information gap, a report is by no means the ideal medium for communication with rural Haitian communities, where people more often share and learn through storytelling. Popular education is required to teach about climate disorder and spur community mobilization. SOKIJA transforms GJC research on the climate disorder and its root causes into short films and “spots” to share on the radio, via WhatsApp, and in community meetings. In turn, SOKIJA shares with GJC what they learn and observe from the communities living through the climate disorder every day, informing GJC’s research questions. SOKIJA and GJC believe that a more informed public will demand that government and international actors provide support for communities to adapt to climate disorder and mitigate its worst consequences.
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(Photo: "Lakou Dimanche" or "Sunday Gathering," where SOKIJA members and community members come together to discuss common problems and identify solutions. Credit: Sherwanda Maxime)
Reparations
As Bay Kou Bliye, Pote Mak Sonje demonstrates, the actors most responsible and best able to redress climate injustice are outside of Haiti. Global North states and corporations caused the climate crisis, and Global North actors, primarily France and the United States, impoverished Haiti. Local efforts to adapt to the changing climate, mitigate the worst consequences, and care for the collective through disasters are remarkable; they will never be sufficient. Addressing the root causes of Haiti’s climate vulnerability requires reparations. This year, 2025, is the 200th anniversary of Haiti’s first yearly debt payment to France—its “independence ransom.” Haitian social movement organizations are mobilizing to demand restitution and reparations for generations of discrimination and exploitation. Global North allies must join them to make this project a cultural, legal, and political possibility.