State of the Environment

[NALs]

Here is a link to a report regarding the environment in Latin America and the Caribbean. In actuality, the report covers the entire planet, but the link takes you to the Latin American section.

The Dominican Republic is not directly addressed in the report, but many of the problems the report mentions can and do apply to this country in one shape or another.

Very interesting information.

http://www.unep.org/geo2000/english/0083.htm

[Keith R]

Yes, the GEO reports are good snapshots of complex issues. There's a 2003 update, Nals: http://mirror.unep.org/geo/pdfs/GEO__lac2003English.pdf

There's a 2005 GEO for the Caribbean, but in truth it focuses mainly on the English-speaking Caribbean.

There's also a series of GEO's for Latin American and Caribbean cities, including one just concluded for Santo Domingo which has not been published yet. I've been trying to get my hands on a copy of that one, as I suspect it will have alot of good material we can use in the Green Team blog.

I'll have the web addresses for all the GEO series addressing Latin America & the Caribbean (there are dozens) in the new "tools" section I am adding to my webpage, www.temasactuales.com, for those of you interested in that sort of thing.

[Keith R]

Well, this may be stealing the thunder from a planned Green Team blog, but here goes: If you want a book more focused on the state of the environment in the DR, then I recommend one by the World Bank. The following is extracted from the "recommended reading list" section of the upcoming "tools" section to be added to the www.temasactuales.com website:

World Bank. "Dominican Republic: Environmental Priorities and Strategic Options - Country Environmental Analysis." English. 2004. 55 pp. siteresources.worldbank.org/INTRANETENVIRONMENT/954627-1112970276912/20542241/DR.pdf

The World Bank launched its Country Environmental Analysis (CEA) series to "evaluate systematically the environmental priorities of development in client countries, the environmental implications of key policies, and countries' capacity to address their priorities." The DR was among the first five countries (along with Belarus, Egypt, Serbia & Montenegro, and Tunisia) to undergo a CEA. Among other LAC nations only Colombia is currently scheduled for CEA.

[samiam]

I came across a book that touches the environmental subject around societies that are successful or failures and it comes accross the case of Hispaniola and briefly sumarized a bit of the history and compares the environmental situations in Haiti and the Dominican Republic.
The book is Collapse: how societies choose to fail or succeed...or something of the sort, by Jared Diamond.
An interesting fact I did not know was that the DR was the only country that had dedicated more than 30% of its land protected under a national park system. Recently politicians have found this excessive and have diminished this to +/-22%.
Anyhow, its a good read since it studies many different cases of how environmental decisions have shaped the destinies of civilizations.

[Keith R]

Originally Posted by samiam

. An interesting fact I did not know was that the DR was the only country that had dedicated more than 30% of its land protected under a national park system. Recently politicians have found this excessive and have diminished this to +/-22%.

Yes. Most of the protections were created by Balaguer -- a president whose acts and works I dislike in many other issues, but for whatever reason, he apparently understood well the importance of the protected areas in combatting deforestation, soil erosion and preserving the nation's beauty (and thus its tourism potential). Hipolito & Co. sought to roll this back, probably to line their pockets (probably with pesetas). Now, unfortunately, Leonel seems to be completing the job for them -- see the thread on the new presidential decree.