Announcing a New & Different Blog - Meet the Green Team!

[kevadair]

Hello, Green Team.

El Fuego del Sol is today's Featured Entry in the National Geographic GeoTourism challenge. GeoTourism is another offering in the eco/sustainable tourism debate. Check out the entries now at The Geotourism Challenge: Celebrating Places - Changing Lives | Changemakers.

[Keith R]

Kevadir, you already started a separate thread touting your resort. A word of advice: No need to post it everywhere else too. To do so would put you at risk of being considered a spammer.

Keith R
Environment Forum moderator
Green Team leader

[kevadair]

Dear Keith,

No spam intended. Just wanted to introduce the project to the Green Team in the flow of your discussion, rather than introducing the project on its own without participating in your forum too. As you see, it was only the Green Team, not anywhere else that I made my introduction.

Continuing in the concept of discussion, the National Geographic Geotourism Challenge site is addressing similar issues as this forum. I think it (especially the discussions there) would be of interest to your readers. The concept there is that “geotourism” expands the concept of ecotourism because culturally based tourism in a city could also be included. Obviously “ecotourism” has gained acceptance with the larger community, so it will be interesting to see whether geotourism or “sustainable tourism,” as this forum has previously suggested, will be the next term adopted for general use.

I wouldn’t call our project a resort, just yet. We’re hoping for El Fuego del Sol to be a place to create an eco-community, not another resort that calls itself “eco” while actually causing more harm than good. We are interested in any suggestions as to how to be successful at that. We are totally open-source. Which is why I created the separate chat thread along with a Green Team intro.

Thanks,

Kevin A

[Keith R]

"German Aid for 'Sustainable Cultivation' in Protected Areas"

[Keith R]

For many years people have urged blending economic and environmental policies. One concept heavily pushed recently have been so-called "compensation for environmental services" (PSA is its Spanish acronym), whereby economic actors are essentially paid to undertake an environmentally-beneficial activity instead of a potentially damaging economic activity they might have otherwise chosen, with ultimate benefits accruing to us all. The type of project most pushed is sustainable management and replanting of forests in key watersheds instead of clearing the land for agriculture or rearing livestock, the idea being to not only help forests, but also the health of the rivers and other watersheds that provide water for drinking, irrigation and power generation. [PSA projects I know in other Latin American countries sometimes go further, actually paying for sustainable agricultural projects in harmony with forest conservation and/or planting certain beneficial grasses along riverbeds, but the DR does not seem to be at that stage yet.]

The DR is currently developing four such projects, the first one involving the Yaque del Norte River -- which sorely needs it. Read all about it at:

"The Environmental Services Payment Concept Comes to the DR"

[Keith R]

New hope for the DR's beleagured protected areas?

"US$10 million Trust Fund for the DR's Protected Areas"

[Keith R]

DR1 user reese_in_va (of the the popular "identify this plant" thread) has agreed to do some posts for the Green Team blog about practicing sustainable agriculture in the DR, beginning with documenting his experiment on composting in a finca context. farm/ranch). He wants to show how the two principal methods of composting (aerobic -- with oxygen -- and anaerobic --without oxygen) work in a farm context, and the advantages/disadvantages of each. Like Luke (lhtown) in his Green Team series about backyard worm composting, reese hopes that others can learn from following his experiences and perhaps showing in the process that environmentally-friendly agricultural practices can suceed in the DR context when someone puts their mind to it.

"A Composting Experiment on a Finca in the DR"

Great and prolific photographer that he is, Reese provides lots of photos, including one of his horse.

[Keith R]

I've been very remiss about posting notices of new Green Team blog entries in the past few weeks. Sorry! Here's the ones you might have missed:

"A Composting Experiment on a Dominican Finca, Part II" (more of Reese's farm adventures!)

"No Bilge Dumping in Our Ports, Thanks"

"DR Joins the Caribbean Challenge"

"DR Reefs at Risk"

"Growing Pressures on the DR's Coasts"

"Why Has the DR Been So Slow to Tap Climate Change-Related Funding?"

"Protecting Lago Enriquillo"

"Multilateral Funding for Small DR Environmental Projects"

"Climate Change May Slam the DR"

"DR to Get Groundbreaking Climate Change Lab"

Cheerio!

[Keith R]

"Sustainable Production & Environmental Services in the Sabana Yegua Basin"

[Keith R]

"Wanted: More Scientists, Engineers"

This entry might make Chip happy.