Eastern National Park

[rym87]

Below is a message I posted in the Green Team's website.

In response to comments made about development near the Eastern National Park, I would like to provide some eyewitness observations and current information about the state of development.

I lived in the Dominican Republic (La Romana) for 7 years, and so I know how the situation was, in terms of development, in 2001. I visited in 2002 and again in 2005, when I saw how incredibly fast development was taking over the region. Last January (2006), I visited again and was amazed at how the last tracts of land near Playa Caleta were turned into hotels, houses, and roads.

Near the Eastern National Park, there were more hotels now than before, and I saw the posters saying "Protega el Ambiente" disguising business. At the same time, I went to the Eastern National Park, where I saw workers (Haitians, unfortunately; a problem that must be fixed) cutting some shrubs right on the boundaries of the national park to build a house/hotel for tourism (the main cause of environmental degradation and the leave from sustainability). I went into the park through the trail (Guaragua entrance), entered the cave, and got to the point where grasses do not allow extra access by trail. I turned around and met a park worker who is really concerned about the problem with development.

He used to work for the Nature Conservancy in the Eastern National Park, and was now monitoring sections of the park because people were measuring land to sell (likely to hotel owners). I don't disagree with using the land sustainably for local practices for traditional people, but taking the land to give away to developers is not right. So I asked about enforcement, and he told me that it wasn't very good. Indeed, there was only one person at each entrance, and that was all there was for most of the year. Now, this doesn't mean other national parks are being better protected. The most well-protected of the ones I visited is Los Haitises National Park, where another problem persists that doesn't involve development, but hasty preservation.

In Los Haitises, as many of you already may know, greenlining was a problem. The government had legally set aside the wilderness and those inside were therefore "illegally" living there, though at first they provided loans for sustainable agriculture. Later on, local farmers were driven out and people from cities migrated in when enforcement failed, burning hundreds of acres of forest. That's just another reason why sustainability has to predominate over "superior" policies and developers.

Well, I just wanted to make the point about the Eastern National Park. Tourism in the area will keep growing unless it is stopped by educating tourists about their impacts on the local environment. Tourists aren't aware of the fact that the more they come and bring, the more hotels have to be built to satisfy their needs, and the happier developers get. Understanding the difference between tourism as an economic sector and sustainability (wind power, solar, recycling, sustainable agricultue, population reduction/stability, etc., most of which are not economically feasible unless some outside source provides the incentives) as the long-term solution is key for the entire country.

I'd be happy to discuss more about specific issues and strategies to reversing the "developing" of tropical countries.