More than two years ago, Haiti's parliament approved a landmark amendment to the country's 1987 constitution to ensure that women fill at least 30 percent of elected and appointed positions at the national level.
Jaragua National Park, famous for housing the world's tiniest reptile, will itself be in danger if the green light is given to mega-hotel projects instead of ecotourism and sustainable development initiatives, say Dominican ecologists.
A unique natural and geological site in the Dominican Republic hangs in the balance in the debate between ecotourism and major hotel expansion.
Fair trade, organic production, gender equality and education form part of the strategies of thousands of coffee-growers for escaping poverty in the south of the Dominican Republic.