A big year for the Dominican environmental sector

Could 2009 be the year in which Dominican Republic adopts measures to reduce the adverse effects on the environment and repair damages caused by the ecological deterioration, even as historically, the lack of response to some problems has been justified by legal weaknesses that limit the environmental authority?

A sector document with solutions to the problem seeks to modify eleven articles of the Constitution and create a new one on collective rights and on the environment, and if amendment is accomplished this year and it their proposal materializes, the nation would be taking a giant step, the organizations that work in the issue say.

“It’s not possible that Dominican Republic doesn’t have express dispositions it in its Constitution to prevent the contamination and promote the sustainable use of our natural resources,” said Jose Rafael Almonte, Environment vice minister for Planning and Development.

“In this reform it will be necessary to consider in a clear, expeditious and specific manner a mandate to the public powers on the need to protect the environment and for a sustained use of the natural resources”, and “if society doesn’t obtain that, then it’s saying that it’s not interested.”

Among the positive actions emanating from the Environment Ministry and the sector are the Plan Quisqueya Verde, which although the Government touts it as forestry policy success, ecologists say only time will reveal if there has been true progress. There are 3,500 people working in the Plan and 2,236 pounds of seeds have been collected.

In enforcement, Environment showed its zeal in October when it demolished the infrastructures of two small hotels being built illegally in Saona island, part of the national park of the East, and with the evictions of squatters in the national park Los Haitises. It also shut down major plants that dragged aggregates from the banks of several rivers.