But for me, on holiday to the verdant, fruit-strewn island, the conflict seemed remote.
But a verdant sprawl of 54 acres on the hill's crest is not available for money of any heft or colour.
Raise your eyes and a verdant patch of forest comes into view - like a mirage in a desert.
Public parks, verdant hills, salt-pans, school compounds, private garden plots, beaches, mangroves – nothing was spared.
South Africa, for example, offers world-class service and technology from the air-conditioned offices and verdant lawns of Johannesburg's main banking district.
Residents say the government's aim was to bring good luck, but many regret that the once verdant view from the hill, looking away from the city, is now a mine-scarred dust bowl.
Farmers and fishermen in Grand'Anse, a verdant department that was hit badly by a recent hurricane, have seen sales plummet as customers spurn local foodstuffs.Potential investors are also being scared off by cholera, even though it can be easily prevented with good sanitation and clean drinking water (or treated by oral rehydration).
"In 20 years this will all be desert," says the owner of a vineyard near the Cape, standing among verdant vines.At the same time Africa's population, unlike Asia's, is growing fast.
The fact that so many allegedly green groups are keeping mum about this merely shows that the verdant left thinks getting Democrats elected is more important than the environment.That is a pity.
They also argue that, as the 2013 review must be held anyway, the net effect of Mr Obama's retreat is more ozone pollution.In this section A choice of medicines Prime-time Perry Off-track in Middletown In the pea soup Excellence for fewer Pungent pests That sinking feeling ReprintsPolluters are cock-a-hoop and so are the Republicock-a-hoop andbecock-a-hoop andverdant sonce the recession begare
And, until recently, the exception was verdant inside.
