From the passenger seat of a truck rumbling along a rough and dusty road in rural Haiti, Drew Kutschenreuter points out trees planted to feed the country’s charcoal habit, patches of millet, and irrigation canals cut along the sides of rolling brown hills.

An agronomist from Wisconsin, Kutschenreuter has been working in Haiti for more than two decades, most recently on soil conservation and hillside terracing projects run by the International Organization for Migration. Kutschenreuter’s goals: to create jobs and reverse the country’s downward spiral into ecological degradation and extreme poverty—problems exacerbated by last year’s earthquake and the island’s history of hurricane damage.

(Related: “Haiti Earthquake Anniversary: Pictures Show Slow Recovery.”)

With only a fraction of its forest cover remaining, Haiti has