What is the CSI?

Vision

The Côte Sud Initiative (CSI) is a long-term recovery and sustainable development framework for 10 Communes in the western part of Haiti’s South Department.  The CSI is built upon a 20-year vision: that of a prosperous and resilient region, where extreme poverty and ongoing environmental degradation have been effectively eliminated.

This vision can be achieved only through a sustained, well-coordinated and technically well-informed multi-thematic programme that concurrently addresses the region’s underlying drivers of poverty, environmental degradation, disaster vulnerability and lack of access to social services. 

Framework

In order to achieve this vision, a new implementation model is proposed: the CSI Partnership. This Partnership will allow local, national and international actors to collaborate over the next 20 years and beyond to deliver well-planned, concerted actions. The focus will be on coordination, national ownership and building the institutional capacity of the government and local partners.

The CSI’s novel and ambitious approach is designed to overcome two of the main challenges that plague many development projects in Haiti and around the world: on the one hand, the preference for short term, immediate-impact projects due to the urgency of the needs and to the time constraints usually applied to funding; and on the other, the preference for thematic projects despite the fact that sustainable development needs are broad ranging and multi-thematic.

The CSI provides the stable, lasting framework necessary for a truly comprehensive and multi-sectoral approach to environmental restoration and livelihoods development. This framework will enable interventions to be delivered in prioritized, strategic, and sequenced manner, thus significantly enhancing the impact of individual projects.

The CSI is thus a prioritized collection of many short, medium and long-term development and recovery programmes, united under a common long-term framework.  While the Initiative is based on a 20 year vision, it also includes a range of emergency and short-term measures needed in the interim to catalyze the recovery from repeated natural disasters.

The Partnership

The CSI Partnership is the CSI’s central organization, responsible for planning, coordinating and providing technical support to the Initiative’s various Programmes and Projects. It provides a neutral, government endorsed platform for collaboration.

The Partnership is composed of a range of actors including the Haitian Government at the national and local level, United Nations Agencies, NGOs, and Academic Institutions. The core Partners are currently the Haitian Ministry of Planning, the United Nations Environment Programme (UNEP), the United Nations Office for Project Services (UNOPS), the Earth Institute at Columbia University, and Catholic Relief Services (CRS).

At the community level, programmes and projects will be carried out by local organizations and community groups. Implication of intermediate organizations will be minimized as much as possible, and emphasis will be put on local community organizations.

Cross-cutting Themes

All CSI Projects and Programmes will address core crosscutting issues including: Population and Migration, Environment, Climate Change Adaptation and Mitigation, Disaster Risk Reduction, Capacity Building, and Gender and Youth.

The integration of crosscutting issues is commonly problematic in development programmes. The issues are acknowledged at the start but in practice commonly suffer from a lack of both investment and expertise. To address this, the central CSI organization provides adequate investment and expertise to help individual Implementing Partners to integrate these issues in their respective programmes and projects.

Programmes

The CSI is composed of three main types of programmes: thematic, integrated, and relief and recovery. 

Thematic Programmes

One of the goals of the CSI is to transform the current development model, centered around ad hoc and short-term projects, into a broader strategic vision and planning process, with clear monitoring programs and demonstrated results. CSI thematic programmes are well-defined, centrally planned collections of thematic projects, which span the 10 Communes.

Thematic programmes are divided into four main sectors: Natural Resource Management, Economic development and Infrastructure, Social Services, and Governance and Disaster Preparedness. 

Integrated Programmes

Fully integrated sustainable development programmes cover all of the themes addressed in Thematic Programmes, and also integrate all of the crosscutting issues. This is a major organization and financial challenge, which explains why such programmes are hard to find. However, when successful, such programmes have a uniquely powerful and lasting impact, due to synergistic effects between the different themes and actors. Thus, WASH in Schools (Water, Sanitation and Hygiene education in schools) programmes worldwide have shown that access to safe drinking water, improved sanitation facilities and hygiene education in schools can lead to significant improvements in school performances.

It is precisely because of Integrated Programmes’ unique potential as a tool for sustainable development that they were chosen as a core element of the CSI strategy. The CSI approach to Integrated Programmes is to focus substantive long-term investments within one Commune or Catchment. The first fully Integrated Programme will be implemented in the catchment of Port-a-Piment, based on the Millennium Villages model 

Relief and Recovery Programmes

The CSI is a recovery and sustainable development initiative, not a humanitarian programme. However, several relief projects are ongoing in the CSI area and natural disasters are a constant threat. Most recently, Hurricane Tomas inflicted significant damage to the CSI Area.

The CSI is therefore dedicated to integrating relief and recovery efforts into its framework. Specifically, the CSI will support acute humanitarian response efforts by temporarily allocating technical support and other resources to these efforts, as needed. The CSI’s relief and recovery programmes will be designed to support the transition from humanitarian aid to comprehensive and strategic development aid.