Dominican Republic’s Minister of Labor Eddy Olivares Ortega and Javier Cremades, President of the World Jurist Association, hand the Medal of Honor award to Just Rights for Children founder Bhuwan Ribhu.

By Stella Paul
NEW DELHI, May 6 2025 (IPS)

Bhuwan Ribhu didn’t plan to become a child rights activist. But when he saw how many children in India were being trafficked, abused, and forced into marriage, he knew he couldn’t stay silent.

“It all started with failure,” Ribhu says. “We tried to help, but we weren’t stopping the problem. That’s when I realized—no one group can do this alone. Calling the problem for what it truly is—a criminal justice issue rather than a social justice issue—I knew the solution needed holistic scale.”

Today, Bhuwan Ribhu leads Just Rights for Children—one of the world’s largest networks dedicated to protecting children. In recognition of his relentless efforts to combat child marriage and trafficking, he has just been awarded the prestigious Medal of Honor by the World Jurist Association. The award was presented at the recently concluded World Law Congress in the Dominican Republic.

But for Ribhu, the honor isn’t about recognition. “This is a reminder that the world is watching—and that children are counting on us,” he tells IPS in his first interview after receiving the award.

Looking Back: One Meeting Changed Everything

For Ribhu, a lawyer by profession, it has been a long, arduous, and illustrious journey to getting justice for children. But this long journey began during a meeting of small nonprofits in eastern India’s Jharkhand state, where someone spoke up: “Girls from my village are being taken far away, to Kashmir, and sold into marriage.”

That moment hit Ribhu hard.

“That’s when it struck me—one person or one group can’t solve a problem that crosses state borders,” he says. He then started building a nationwide network.

And just like that, the Child Marriage-Free India (CMFI) campaign was born. Dozens of organizations joined, and the number grew steadily until it reached 262.

So far, more than 260 million people have joined in the campaign, with the Indian government launching Bal Vivah Mukt Bharat—a national mission towards ending child marriage in India.

Across villages, towns, and cities, people are speaking up for a child marriage-free India.

“What used to feel impossible is now within reach,” Ribhu says.

Taking the Fight to Courtrooms

Ribhu is a trained lawyer, and for him, the law is a powerful weapon.

Since 2005, he’s fought—and won—dozens of important cases in Indian courts. These have helped define child trafficking in Indian law; make it mandatory for police to act when children go missing; criminalize child labor; set up support systems for abuse survivors; and remove harmful child sexual abuse content from the internet.

One big success came when the courts accepted that if a child is missing, police should assume they might have been trafficked. This changed everything. Reported missing cases dropped from 117,480 to  67,638 a year.

“That’s what justice in action looks like,” said Ribhu.

Taking Along Religious Leaders

One of the most powerful moves of CMFI was reaching out to religious leaders.

The reason was simple: whatever the religion is, it is the religious leader who conducts a marriage.

“If religious leaders refuse to marry children, the practice will stop,” says Ribhu.

The movement began visiting thousands of villages. They met Hindu priests, Muslim clerics, Christian pastors, and others. They asked them to take a simple pledge: “I will not marry a child, and I will report child marriage if I see it.”

The results have been astonishing: on festivals like Akshaya Tritiya—considered auspicious for weddings—many child marriages used to happen until recently. But temples now refuse to perform them.

“Faith can be a big force for justice,” Ribhu says. “And religious texts support education and protection for children.”

Going Global with a Universal Goal

But the campaign is no longer just India’s story. In January of this year, Nepal, inspired by the campaign, launched its own Child Marriage-Free Nepal initiative with the support of Prime Minister K. P. Sharma Oli. All the seven provinces of the country have joined it, vowing to take steps to stop child marriage

The campaign has also spread to 39 other countries, including Kenya and the Democratic Republic of Congo, where calls for a global child protection legal network are gaining momentum.

“The legal systems of different countries and regions may differ, but justice should be the same everywhere,” says Ribhu, who has also authored two books—Just Rights and When Children Have Children—where he has laid out a legal, institutional, and moral framework to end child exploitation called PICKET. “It’s not just about shouting for change. It’s about building systems that protect children every day,” Ribhu says.

Sacrifices and Hope

Ribhu gave up a promising career in law practice. Many people didn’t understand why.

“People said I was wasting my time,” he remembers. “But one day my son said, ‘Even if you save just one child, it’s worth it.’ That meant everything to me.”

A believer in the idea of Gandhian trusteeship—the belief that we should use our talents and privileges to serve others, especially those who need help the most.

“I may not be the one to fight child marriage in Iraq or Congo. But someone will. And we’ll stand beside them.”

A Powerful Award and a Bigger Mission

The World Jurist Association Medal isn’t just a trophy. For Ribhu, it’s a platform. “It tells the world: This is possible. Change is happening. Let’s join in.”

He also hopes that the award will help his team connect with new partners and expand their work to new regions.

“In 2024 alone, over 2.6 lakhs Child Marriages were prevented and stopped and over 56,000 children were rescued from trafficking and exploitation in India. These numbers show that change is not just a dream—it’s real,” he says.

By 2030, Ribhu hopes to see the number of child marriages in India falling below 5 percent.

But there’s more to do. In some countries, like Iraq, girls can still be married as young as 10, and in the United States, 35 states still allow child marriage under certain conditions.

“Justice can’t be occasional,” Ribhu says. “It must be a part of the system everywhere. We must make sure justice isn’t just a word—it’s a way of life.”

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Credit: Amnesty International

By Robin Guittard
MEXICO CITY, May 23 2017 (IPS)

Three years ago today, authorities in the Dominican Republic passed a law seeking to address a statelessness crisis that has effectively stripped thousands of people off their Dominican nationality and with it,  denied them a range of human rights.

The crisis exploded in 2013, after a ruling by the Dominican Republic’s top Court that retroactively applied to anyone born after 1929 to undocumented foreign parents. In practice, it disproportionately affected Dominicans of Haitian descent in a context of an island shared by two nations: Haiti and the Dominican Republic.

The largest statelessness crisis ever seen in the Americas was unleashed, with four generations of people being legally erased from the map and turned into ghost citizens, with no rights and no future – unable to enroll in school, apply for regular jobs or facing difficulty in seeing a doctor. An international outcry followed.

Robin Guittard, Campaigner on the Caribbean at Amnesty International

In response, in 2014, Congress passed Law 169-14 that divided people in various categories.

Group A included around 55,000 people born in the Dominican Republic and whose births were registered in the civil registry, but were arbitrarily deprived of their nationality by the Court’s ruling.

According to the latest available data, 12,000 of them have been so far able to re-access their Dominican identity documents. However, there have been reports that the original birth certificates of some of them are being cancelled and their cases moved to a separate civil registry, which is creating chaos and fear of possible discriminatory practices in the future.

Group B includes those born in the Dominican Republic but whose births were never registered. A so-called Naturalization Plan was put in place between July 2014 and February 2015 to give this group a path to naturalization.

According to the government, only 8,755 individuals were able to register out of an official estimate of 53,000 potential people who belong to this group. According to the 2014 Law, they had to wait two years for the naturalization process to start. The deadline is coming to an end soon and we still don’t know how many of them have had their files approved, neither what process will be followed. The ordinary naturalization process as it currently stands requires that a passport and a birth certificate from the origin country to be produced, and it is not clear if and how their nationality will be restored. No need to say that stateless people don’t have such documents and the authorities have failed to provide any solution for this.

For the 84% of people from group B who couldn’t register, the situation is dramatic. Many of them remain stateless, which means they’re unable to move forward with their lives. They’re limited in their education, they face huge obstacles to access healthcare services, and they can’t work legally nor travel freely inside and outside their country.

For the 84% of people from group B who couldn’t register, the situation is dramatic. Many of them remain stateless, which means they’re unable to move forward with their lives. They’re limited in their education, they face huge obstacles to access healthcare services, and they can’t work legally nor travel freely inside and outside their country.
Today, they have no available avenues to get their Dominican nationality back.

In 2014, President Medina showed courage and great political will by putting forward the Naturalization Law. But the plan fell short of solving this urgent crisis and did not comply with the Dominican Republic’s obligations under international law. Last year Medina was re-elected for a new four-year mandate, which provides a renewed opportunity to put an end to the largest statelessness crisis of this continent.

The roadmap to resolve such a complex situation may not be easy, but every day that authorities continue to turn a blind eye to it, and more children of stateless people are born  into “ghost citizens” in the country, the more intricate the situation becomes.

As a matter of urgency, the authorities in the Dominican Republic must deliver identity documents to all individuals in group A, immediately facilitate the restoration of nationality of the 8,755 people of group B through an expedited process and provide a clear and simple path to restore the nationality of all those who were unable to enroll in the Naturalization Plan and were previously identified with the support of the United Nations High Commissioner for Refugees.

An independent mechanism should also be established, with the participation of Dominican human rights organizations, tasked with oversighting this processes. By the end of this year, the mechanism should be able to produce a first independent evaluation of the initiatives carried out since 2013 to address the statelessness crisis, including specific recommendations to the authorities to restore the nationality of those affected and prevent any future arbitrary restrictions to the right to nationality.

The statelessness crisis that has shaken the Dominican Republic since 2013 has shown the tremendous impacts of discriminatory policies on people’s lives and rights. The country that was once seen by many as a tropical paradise has become the home of the largest stateless population of the Americas.

Why are the Dominican Republic’s authorities insisting in denying its youth from going to university and integrate in society, and to deny the right to receive adequate medical care for those in need? Why do they insist in trapping in endless poverty those already excluded and marginalized and for all the stateless to be able to realize themselves as individuals and help their country to advance towards progress?

Three years after Law 169 was passed, much more needs to be done to solve the statelessness crisis that still affects thousands of people in the Dominican Republic.  Dominican political leaders and all sectors of Dominican society must be ready to act now. The above mentioned roadmap can be the first steps towards ending this crisis and ensuring the rights of everyone in the country.

Excerpt:

Two women selling fruit, grains and vegetables in the Little Haiti street market in Santo Domingo, the capital of the Dominican Republic. They allowed their picture to be taken but preferred not to talk about their situation. Fear is part of daily life for Haitian immigrants in this country. Credit: Dionny Matos/IPS

By Ivet González
SANTO DOMINGO, Feb 5 2016 (IPS)

A middle-aged woman arranges bouquets of yellow roses in a street market in Little Haiti, a slum neighbourhood in the capital of the Dominican Republic. “I don’t want to talk, don’t take photos,” she tells IPS, standing next to a little girl who appears to be her daughter.

Other vendors at the stalls in the street market, all of them black women, also refuse to talk. “They’re afraid because they think they’ll be deported,” one woman whispers, as she stirs a pot of soup on a wood fire on the sidewalk.

That fear was heightened by the last wave of deportations, which formed part of the complicated migration relations between this country and Haiti – the poorest country in the Americas, with a black population – which share the island of Hispaniola.

According to official figures, the Dominican Republic’s migration authorities deported 15,754 undocumented Haitian immigrants from August 2015 to January 2016, while 113,320, including 23,286 minors, voluntarily returned home.

“This process has a greater impact on women because when a son or a daughter is denied their Dominican identity, the mothers are directly responsible for failing to legalise their status,” said Lilian Dolis, head of the Dominican-Haitian Women’s Movement (MUDHA), a local NGO.

“If the mother is undocumented then the validity of her children’s documents is questioned,” she told IPS.

“And in the case of Haitian immigrant women, it’s not enough to marry a Dominican man even though the constitution grants them their husband’s nationality,” said Dolis, whose movement emerged in 1983. “That right is often violated.”

The latest migration crisis broke out in 2013 when a Constitutional Court ruling set new requirements for acquiring Dominican citizenship.

The aspect that caused an international outcry was the fact that the verdict retroactively denied Dominican nationality to anyone born after 1929 who did not have at least one parent of Dominican blood, even if their births were recorded in the civil registry.

This affected not only the children of immigrants, but their grandchildren and even great-grandchildren.

Tens of thousands of Dominicans of Haitian descent were left in legal limbo or without any nationality, international human rights groups like Human Rights Watch complained.

In response to the international outrage, the Dominican government passed a special law on naturalisation that set a limited period – May 2014 to February 2015 – for people born to undocumented foreign parents between 1929 and 2007 to apply for citizenship.

Antonia Abreu, one of the few street vendors who agreed to talk to IPS about the harsh reality faced by Haitian immigrants in the Dominican Republic, at her street stall where she sells flowers in the Little Haiti neighbourhood in Santo Domingo. Credit: Dionny Matos/IPS

But only 8,755 people managed to register under this law.

At the same time, the authorities implemented a national plan for foreigners to regularise their status, from June 2014 to June 2015.

Under this plan, 288,466 undocumented immigrants, mainly of Haitian descent, applied for residency and work permits. But only about 10,000 met all the requirements, and only a few hundred were granted permits.

Since August, the police have been carrying out continuous raids, and undocumented immigrants are taken to camps along the border, to be deported to Haiti.

“Most Haitian women work outside the home; very few can afford to be homemakers,” said Antonia Abreu, a Haitian-Dominican woman who has sold floral arrangements for parties, gifts and funerals in the Little Haiti market for 40 years.

Abreu, known by her nickname “the Spider”, said “women sell clothes or food, they apply hair extensions, they’re domestic employees and some are sex workers. Many are ‘paleteras’ (street vendors selling candy and cigarettes) who suffer from police abuse – the police take their carts and merchandise when they don’t have documents.”

“Those who work as decent people have integrated in society and contribute to the country,” she told IPS.

Among the unique mix of smells – of spices, open sewers, traditional foods and garbage – many women barely eke out a living in this Haitian neighbourhood market, selling flowers, prepared foods, fruit and vegetables, clothing, household goods and second-hand appliances.

The small neighbourhood, which is close to a busy commercial street and in the middle of the Colonial City, Santo Domingo’s main tourist attraction, has been neglected by the municipal authorities, unlike its thriving neighbours.

No one knows exactly how many people live in Little Haiti, which is a slum but is virtually free of crime, according to both local residents and outsiders.

Most of the people buying at the market stalls in the neighbourhood are Haitian immigrants, who work in what are described by international rights groups as semi-slavery conditions.

The street market is also frequented by non-Haitian Dominicans with low incomes, in this country of 10.6 million people, where 36 percent of the population lives below the poverty line, according to World Bank figures from 2014.

A Haitian immigrant in the rural settlement of Mata Mamón in the Dominican Republic, where she works as a ‘bracera’ or migrant worker in agriculture. Haitian women who work on plantations in this country are invisible in the statistics as well as in programmes that provide support to rural migrants, activists complain. Credit: Dionny Matos/IPS

“Undocumented immigrants can’t work, study or have a public life,” Dolis said. “They go directly into domestic service or work in the informal sector. And even if they have documents, Haitian-Dominican women are always excluded from social programmes.”

In this country with a deeply sexist culture, women of Haitian descent are victims of exclusion due to a cocktail of xenophobia, racism and gender discrimination, different experts and studies say.

“They are made invisible,” said Dolis. “We don’t even know how many Haitian-Dominican women there are. The census data is not reliable in terms of the Dominican population of Haitian descent, and the UNFPA (United Nations Population Fund) survey is out-of-date.”

The activist was referring to the last available population figures gathered by the National Survey on Immigrants carried out in 2012 by the National Statistics Office with UNFPA support.

At the time, the survey estimated the number of immigrants in the Dominican Republic at 560,000, including 458,000 born in Haiti.

The lack of up-to-date statistics hinders the work of Mudha, which defends the rights of Haitian-Dominican women in four provinces and five municipalities, with an emphasis on sexual and reproductive rights.

The movement is led by a group of 19 women and has 62 local organisers carrying out activities in urban and rural communities, which have reached more than 6,000 women.

Mudha says the Dominican authorities have never recognised the rights of women of Haitian descent. “They’ve always talked about immigration of ‘braceros’ (migrant workers), but never ‘braceras’ – that is, the women who come with their husbands, or come as migrant workers themselves,” Dolis said.

Since the mid-19th century Haitians have worked as braceros in the sugarcane industry, the main engine of the Dominican economy for centuries. But today, they are also employed in large numbers in the construction industry, commerce, manufacturing and hotels.

Edited by Estrella Gutiérrez/Translated by Stephanie Wildes

By Zadie Neufville
KINGSTON, Jamaica, Jan 13 2016 (IPS)

On a very dry November 2013, Jamaica’s Meteorological Service made its first official drought forecast when the newly developed Climate Predictability Tool (CPT) was used to predict a high probability of below average rainfall in the coming three months.

By February, the agency had officially declared a drought in the eastern and central parishes of the island based on the forecasts. July’s predictions indicated that drought conditions would continue until at least September.

Said to be the island’s worst in 30 years, the 2014 drought saw Jamaica’s eastern parishes averaging rainfall of between 2 and 12 per cent, well below normal levels. Agricultural data for the period shows that production fell by more than 30 per cent over 2013 and estimates are that losses due to crop failures and wild fires amounted to one billion dollars.

Jamaica’s agricultural sector accounts for roughly seven per cent of the island’s gross domestic product (GDP) and employs about 20 per cent of its workforce.

The Met Service’s, Glenroy Brown told IPS, “The CPT was the main tool used by our Minister (of Water, Land, Environment & Climate Change) Robert Pickersgill throughout 2015 to advise the nation on the status of drought across the island .”

It was also used but the National Water Commission (NWC) to guide its implementation of island-wide water restrictions.

A technician with Jamaica’s Met Service, Brown designed and implemented the tool in collaboration with Simon Mason, a climate scientist from Columbia University’s International Research Institute (IRI) for Climate and Society with funding from the United States Agency for International Development (USAID).

“The tool provides a Windows package for constructing a seasonal climate drought forecast model, producing forecasts with updated rainfall and sea surface temperature data,” he explained.

The innovation was one of the first steps in building resilience under Jamaica’s national climate policy. It provides drought-monitoring forecasts that allows farmers to plan their planting around dry periods and has been “tailored for producing seasonal climate forecasts from a general circulation model (GCM), or for producing forecasts using fields of sea-surface temperatures,” Brown said.

The tool combines a number of applications including Google Earth and localised GIS maps, to generate one to five day forecasts that are country and location specific. The information is broken down and further simplified by way of colour-coded information and text messages for the not so tech-savvy user.

The tool designed by Brown and Mason also incorporated IRI’s own CPT (designed by Mason) that was already being used by Caribbean countries with small meteorological services and limited resources, to produce their own up-to-date seasonal climate forecasts. The new tool combined data on recent rainfall and rainfall predictions to provide a forecast that focused specifically on drought.

“It was important for us to design a system that addressed Jamaica’s needs upfront, but that would also be suitable for the rest of the region,” Mason noted.

The scientists explained, “Because impact of a drought is based on the duration of the rainfall” and not only the amount of rainfall, looking forward is not enough to predict droughts because of factors related to accumulation and intensification.

“What we’re doing is essentially putting a standard three-month rainfall forecast in context with recent rainfall measurements,” Mason, told USAID’s publication Frontlines last May. He noted that if below-normal rainfall activity was recorded during an unusually dry period, indications were there was a “fairly serious drought” ahead.

Sheldon Scott from Jamaica’s Rural Agricultural Development Authority (RADA) told IPS that farmers who used the SMS information were able to avoid the worse effects of the drought.

“The impacts were visible in relation to farmers who used the information and others who didn’t, because those who did were able to manage the mitigating factors more effectively,” he said.

During the period, more than 500 farmers received text alerts and about 700,000 bulletins were sent to agricultural extension officers.

Among the farmers who signed up for text messaging service, Melonie Risden told Frontlines, “The information we received from the Met office gave us drought forecasts in terms of probabilities. We still decided to plant because we were fortunate to have access to the river and could fill up water drums ahead of time in anticipation of the drought.”

Risden lost the corn she planted on the 13-acre property in Crooked River, Clarendon, one of the parishes hardest hit by the drought with only two per cent of normal rainfall, but was able to save much of the peas, beans and hot peppers.

Six months after Jamaica’s Met Service made its ground-breaking forecast, the CIMH presented the first region-wide drought outlook at the Caribbean Regional Climate Outlook Forum in Kingston. Now 23 other Caribbean and Central American countries are using the tool to encourage climate change resilience and inform decision-making.

“Regionally the tool is now a standard fixture across several countries within the region, including the Dominican Republic, Cuba and Haiti. This regional effort is coordinated by the CIMH,” Brown said.

Back in Jamaica, the tool is being hailed “a game-changer” in the climate fight by Jeffery Spooner head of the Met Service, who described the CPT as “an extremely important tool in Climate Change forecasting and specifically for the agricultural – including fisheries- and water sectors for rainfall projection .”

The CPT is now also used to provide regular monthly bulletins that are published by the Meteorological Service on their web site www.jamaicaclimate.net. RADA has also continued to use the CPT in its extension service, to enhance the ability of farmers’ and other agricultural interests to improve water harvesting, planting and other activities.

Since most of the island’s small farms depend on rainfall, more farmers – including those with large holdings – are using the information to better manage water use and guide their activities, Scott said.

Local and intentional scientists have linked the extreme atmospheric conditions related to the droughts affecting Jamaica and the region to the persistent high-pressure systems that has prevented the formation of tropical cyclones to global warming and climate change.

Across the agricultural sector, Jamaica continues to feel the impacts of drought and the challenges are expected to increase with the climate change. In a 2013 agricultural sector support analysis, the Inter-American Development Bank estimated, low impact on extreme climate events on Jamaica’s agriculture sector by 2025 could reach 3.4 per cent of “baseline GDP” annually.

In fact, the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change Synthesis Report (AR5) pointed to tools like the CPT to mitigate the impacts of climate change. Its importance to Jamaica’s and the region’s food security and water sector cannot be overlooked.

In addition to adaptation for the water sector, the CPT is being modified to provide early warning indicators for wind speeds and coral bleaching among among other applications, said the report.

And as showers of blessings cooled the land and brought much relief in the closing months of the year, CPT shows the drought could well be over.

(End)

Leaks in city water pipes, like this one in the Pequeño Haití (Little Haiti) market in Santo Domingo, aggravated the water shortages during the lengthy drought in the Dominican Republic. Credit: Dionny Matos/IPS

By Ivet González
SANTO DOMINGO, Jan 11 2016 (IPS)

The recent lengthy drought in the Dominican Republic, which began to ease in late 2015, caused serious losses in agriculture and prompted national water rationing measures and educational campaigns.

But the most severe December-April dry season in the last 20 years helped convince the authorities to listen to the local scientific community in this Caribbean nation that shares the island of Hispaniola with Haiti.

“The National Meteorology Office (ONAMET) actually benefited because the authorities and key sectors like agriculture and water paid more attention to us,” said Juana Sille, an expert on drought, which was a major problem in the Caribbean and Central America in 2015.

The cause was the El Niño-Southern Oscillation (ENSO), a cyclical climate phenomenon that affects weather patterns around the world. Forecasts indicate that its effects will be felt until early spring 2016, and devastating impacts have already been seen in South American countries like Bolivia, Colombia and Peru.

As a result of this record El Niño and its extreme climatic events, the international humanitarian organisation Oxfam predicted in October that at least 10 million of the world’s poorest people would go hungry in 2015 and 2016 due to failing crops.

“The most severe droughts reported in the Dominican Republic are associated with the ENSO phenomenon,” Sille told IPS, based on ONAMET’s studies.

But the meteorologist said that unlike in past years, “there is now awareness among decision-makers about climate change and the tendency towards reduced rainfall.”

The gardens and fruit trees kept by many women in their yards to help feed their families, like this one in the rural settlement of Mata Mamón, were hit hard by drought in the Dominican Republic in 2015. Credit: Dionny Matos/IPS

“The authorities are learning to follow the early warning system and to implement prevention and adaptation plans,” she stated.

Sille pointed out that, in an unusual move, a government minister asked ONAMET in 2015 to carry out a study to assess the causes and likely duration of the drought that has been plaguing the country since 2014.

One quarter of the world’s population faces economic water shortage (when a population cannot afford to make use of an adequate water source).

This is true mainly in the developing South, where the local scientific communities have a hard time raising awareness regarding the management of drought, whose impacts are less obvious than the damage caused by hurricanes and earthquakes.

Experts in the Dominican Republic and other developing countries call for the creation of risk management plans to ward off the consequences of water scarcity crises.

“We have a National Plan Against Desertification and Drought, but some institutions apply it while others don’t,” lamented the meteorologist. “This drought demonstrated the urgent need for everyone to implement the programme, which we have been working on for a long time.”

She said 2015 highlighted the importance of educational campaigns on water rationing measures, drought-resistant crops, more frequent technical advice and orientation for farmers, more wells, and the maintenance of available water sources.

The Dominican Republic’s 10 reservoirs, located in six of the country’s 31 provinces, are insufficient, according to experts. Another one will be created when the Monte Grande dam is completed in the southern province of Barahona.

Along with rivers and other sources, the reservoirs must meet the demands of the country’s 9.3 million people and the local economy, where tourism plays a key role.

Water from the reservoirs is used first for household consumption, then irrigation of crops in the reservoir’s area of influence and the generation of electric power. But every sector was affected by water scarcity in 2015.

“The dry season was really bad. The worst of all, because it killed the crops,” Luisa Echeverry, a 48-year-old homemaker, told IPS. Her backyard garden in the rural settlement of Mata Mamón, in the municipality of Santo Domingo Norte, to the north of the capital, helps feed her family.

But her garden, where she grows beans and corn, as well as peppers and other vegetables, to complement the diet of her three children, was hit hard by the scant rainfall.

“When things were toughest, we would try to manage using our water tank, which we sometimes even used to provide our neighbours with water,” said Echeverry.

“Our concern was for the crops, in our houses we always had water,” said Ocrida de la Rosa, another woman from this rural town of small farmers in the province of Santo Domingo, where many women keep gardens and fruit trees to help feed their families.

All but two of the country’s reservoirs were operating at minimum capacity, which meant the authorities had to give priority to residential users over agriculture and power generation.

Yields went down, and many crops were lost, especially in rice paddies, which require huge quantities of water. Production in the rice-growing region in the northwest of the country fell 80 percent due to the scarce rainfall and the reduced flow in the Yaque del Norte River.

And the Dominican Agribusiness Council reported a 25 to 30 percent drop in dairy production due to the drought, while hundreds of heads of beef cattle died in the south of the country.

Production in the hydropower dams fell 60 percent, in a country where hydroelectricity accounts for 13 percent of the renewable energy supply.

The daily water supply in Greater Santo Domingo went down by 25 percent, and thousands of people in hundreds of neighbourhoods, and in the interior of the country, suffered water rationing measures. Some neighbourhoods depended on tanker trucks for water.

And in the face of rationing measures, residents of Greater Santo Domingo protested the wasteful use of water in less essential activities, as well as the many unrepaired leaks in the residential sector.

The authorities closed down local car wash businesses, which abound in the city, and people could be fined or even arrested for wasting water to wash cars, clean sidewalks and water gardens.

“Integrated water management has advanced in this country,” another ONAMET meteorologist, Bolívar Ledesma, told IPS.

To illustrate, he pointed to the National Water Observatory, which adopts water management decisions together with institutions like the Santo Domingo water and sewage company (CAASD), the National Institute of Potable Water and Sewage (INAP) and the National Water Resources Institute (INDRHI).

Edited by Estrella Gutiérrez/Translated by Stephanie Wildes

Cecilia Joseph is a small farmer in Mata Mamón who says she crossed the border from Haiti “when I was just a girl.” Credit: Dionny Matos

By Ivet González
MATA MAMÓN, Dominican Republic , Dec 28 2015 (IPS)

“Sometimes we have too much water, which washes everything away,” Cecilia Joseph, originally from Haiti, said in heavily accented Spanish while pulling up a ñame root (a kind of yam) on her farm in the municipality of Santo Domingo Norte in the Dominican Republic.

Joseph was referring to the frequent flooding caused when the Ozama, Cabón and Tosa rivers, which run through the rural area of Mata Mamón 30 km north of the Dominican capital, overflow their banks.

The heavy rains hurt her subsistence crops – corn, banana, papaya, avocado, ñame and mango – which sometimes produce a surplus that she sells, complained this small, thin, agile 70-year-old.Today, 1.5 million of the Dominican Republic’s 9.3 million inhabitants are still malnourished.

Cecé, as she is known here, depends completely on her one-hectare farm for a living, because her son and her husband are both dead.

This community of 1,714 inhabitants, where most people are small farmers like Joseph, is one of 1,100 that are registered by the civil defence agency in the province of Santo Domingo as vulnerable to flooding and landslides due to the overflowing of rivers and the lack of stormwater drainage systems.

The overwhelming consensus in the scientific community is that climate change and global warming are to blame for erratic weather patterns such as what is being seen in this country today.

Besides the threats posed to their health – and to their very lives – local farmers consulted by IPS say the environmental problem has reduced their production levels, and as a result they don’t have enough food anymore to feed their families.

“Five years ago I stopped planting rice and pumpkin on the land next to the river, because it overflowed its banks more and more frequently, to the point that it wasn’t worth investing there, just to lose everything,” said 56-year-old José Corcino, who also works as a skilled construction worker to support his family.

To feed his family, José Corcino plants crops and raises pigs in his backyard, which the floodwaters reach when the nearby river overflows its banks. Credit: Dionny Matos

“We have made several requests through the United Hearts Association of Farmers of Mata Mamón for the state to dredge the rivers so they won’t overflow their banks. But everything has been in vain. We still can’t plant our crops,” complained Corcino, one of the more than 100 members of the organisation.

“We are going hungry because we don’t grow enough to be able to swap products with other local farmers,” he said. “And we don’t have markets here. Sometimes people come in trucks, selling vegetables and things, or we have to go and shop at La Victoria, which is six km away.”

Corcino, a father of three, grows banana, guava, soursop, avocado and mango to feed his family, on the one-hectare plot of land where his house is located. And farther away, on a 1.5-hectare plot where he used to grow rice, he grazes his 15 head of cattle, mainly dairy cows.

“Every afternoon I bring the cattle to my yard because the thieves take everything,” he said, referring to another factor that is a hindrance to agriculture. In his view, what the farmers in Mata Manón need is less vandalism and rustling, and more environmental services and investment, to boost local food production.

Today, 1.5 million of the Dominican Republic’s 9.3 million inhabitants are still malnourished, even though the country managed to reduce the number of people suffering from hunger in the last 20 years, according to the United Nations Food and Agriculture Organisation (FA0).

As they chat, local men point to the town, which is mainly populated by people originally from neighbouring Haiti or descendants of Haitians. Credit: Dionny Matos

Food insecurity and poverty are largely rural phenomena in this Caribbean nation which shares the island of Hispaniola with Haiti, according to the Panorama of Food and Nutritional Security in Central America and Dominican Republic 2014, published for the first time this year by FAO.

In fields in the Dominican Republic, where food availability is determined, it is small farmers and blacks who suffer the most, according to the study.

“Peasant farmers have to feel security for themselves and their families in terms of labour, income, food, and access to school and healthcare. And environmental security is also important, because sometimes heavy rains fall and wipe away their crops,” said Manuel Rodríguez at the Labour Ministry’s Agriculture Office.

He said the office offers advice to help generate more secure jobs, as part of a larger government programme aimed at increasing employment in agriculture from the current 20 percent to 40 percent of the total workforce.

According to the Ministry of Agriculture, only 609,197 people work in this sector: 559,428 men and 49,769 women.

“Peasants are abandoning their land today because there isn’t any money or work. But in the next few years, the Dominican countryside is going to undergo a radical change,” the official predicted.

The project will also involve technological modernisation projects like the expansion of greenhouse areas, initiatives for incorporating more women in farming, reduced interest payments to the agricultural bank, and more credit for farmers.

The Dominican Republic is a major exporter of peppers, tomatoes and cucumbers, while production of Chinese vegetables is growing, said Rodríguez. This country is also one of the world’s leading exporters of organic tropical products like bananas.

However, Dominican society is marked by a high level of inequality, and hunger and malnutrition are still top-priority problems, as recognised by the authorities when parliament approved a law on food and nutritional sovereignty and security in 2014.

Mata Mamón, a “batey” – a term that refers to rural shantytowns that originally sprung up on sugarcane plantations, as well as to urban slums surrounding cities and populated mainly by Haitians and Dominican-Haitians – is an area of potted roads lined by earth-floored wooden shacks and a few modest cinder-block dwellings.

“We have made some progress in education and among the youth, who have calmed down,” said Cornelio Guzmán, chairman of the Human Rights Committee for the last 15 years, with regard to the declining rates of juvenile delinquency and the construction of a local school.

“With respect to economic questions, the community has almost no income because the rivers destroy the crops and it’s impossible to fight the theft of cattle, goats and pigs, because we only have one policeman,” lamented the 44-year-old activist.

Edited by Verónica Firme/Translated by Stephanie Wildes

A view of Gringo beach and, in the background, the city of Bajos de Haina, the Dominican Republic’s main industrial hub and port, and the third-most polluted city in the world. Credit: Dionny Matos/IPS

By Ivet González
BAJOS DE HAINA, Dominican Republic , Dec 15 2015 (IPS)

Rubbish covers the beaches and clutters the rivers, the garbage dump is not properly managed, and more than 100 factories spew toxic fumes into the air in the city of Bajos de Haina, a major industrial hub and port city in the Dominican Republic.

“We’ve only made it into the news as one of the world’s most polluted places,” lamented Adriana Vallejo, a schoolteacher who talked to IPS in the Centro Educativo Manuel Felix Peña, a school that teaches the arts in this city 80 km to the south of Santo Domingo.

Vallejo was referring to the list of the 10 most polluted places on earth drawn up periodically by the New York-based Blacksmith Institute (which has changed its name to Pure Earth).

The Institute’s latest report, from 2013, listed Bajos de Haina in third place, after Dzerzhinsk, Russia, and Chernobyl, Ukraine, which suffered one of the worst environmental disasters in history, caused by the catastrophic nuclear accident in 1986.

“Those up above are not paying attention to the environmental problem,” said Vallejo, referring to the ruling classes and the authorities. “We, from here down below, can do practically nothing.”

According to the “Map of Poverty in the Dominican Republic 2014”, 33 percent of households in this city of 159,000 people are poor.

“Private companies contribute a little to improving things, but only with small gestures, such as facilities at the school that were refurbished by the oil refinery (the only one in this Caribbean island nation). We haven’t seen a real desire for Haina to change,” said the teacher, who has lived here for 25 years.

“When the situation gets out of hand, we hold protest marches,” she said. “The people have had to take to the streets to fight serious problems like burning in the garbage dump, which enveloped Haina in a curtain of smoke.”

The manufacturing, chemical products, pharmaceutical, metallurgical and power plants and the oil refinery emit every a combined total of 9.8 tons of formaldehyde, 1.2 tons of lead, 416 tons of ammonium, and 18.5 tons of sulfuric acid annually.

The mouth of the Ñagá River, whose waters have darkened as a result of industrial waste and which has become more narrow due to the loss of the mangroves lining the banks, in the Dominican Republic coastal city of Bajos de Haina. Credit: Dionny Matos/IPS

The city’s thermoelectric complex produces more than 50 percent of the electricity available for the economy and the country’s 9.3 million inhabitants.

In this city, 84 hazardous substances have been identified, 65 of which are major toxics.

Factories dump waste into the rivers and the sea. And noise pollution is another problem affecting human health.

Scientific studies warn that a majority of local residents suffer from ailments such as asthma, bronchitis, the flu and acute diarrhea.

In this city of 50 square km, the main environmental woes are air, water and noise pollution, problems caused by the open-air dump, and municipal solid waste scattered everywhere.

Where tons of garbage now cover a wide open area, there was a forest 30 years ago, “where I used to wander as a kid,” said high school math teacher Juan Ventura, who took IPS to the dump. “People who used to live around here back then are nostalgic and sad; we miss what was once a natural area that used to be known as El Naranjal.”

“The city’s garbage is brought here, with absolutely no kind of health policies. For decades, they even brought in part of the garbage from Santo Domingo. The only thing they did was burn it, and the entire local population had to breathe the nauseating smoke.

“It’s pathetic that the local authorities have no serious policy for recycling, and some local residents scavenge waste materials on their own, without any protective measures,” he said, pointing to around a dozen men and women sorting through bags of garbage for scraps of material, plastic and metal, to classify and sell them to recycling companies.

One of the women, her hands filthy from scavenging, told IPS that she is involved in this informal activity because of the money she can earn.

The woman, who is originally from neighbouring Haiti, said she makes between 22 and 44 dollars a day collecting plastic that she resells – a considerable sum in a country where the minimum monthly wage is 231 dollars.

The authorities say Haina is suffering from the legacy of years of nearly non-existent environmental legislation.

The neighbourhood Paraíso de Dios or God’s Paradise turned into a living hell during the 20 years that the Metaloxa car battery recycling smelter operated there with no environmental controls or oversight. Local residents in the area where the plant used to operate have extremely high blood lead levels.

For a decade the community put up a battle until Metaloxa was forced to pull out in 1999, when the Public Health Ministry finally took action.

But many locals suffered irreversible damage to their health.

Residents of this city complain that enforcement of the 2000 law on the environment and natural resources is lax.

“There is no respect for the environment,” Mackenzie Andújar, a 41-year-old plumber who lives in the area of Gringo beach, told IPS. “There is no control over factories here; they dump their toxic waste out of chimneys and into the water. The situation in Haina has only gotten worse in recent years.”

The Ñagá River, which flows into the sea at Gringo beach, is filthy and narrow as a result of garbage dumps and deforestation. Plastic bottles, cardboard, old clothes and other trash is strewn over the sand dunes, while children splash in the water. The view from the beach is the furnaces and smokestacks of the nearby factories.

“The locals are uncultured; when a dog or other animal dies, they throw the corpse into the river or on the beach, instead of burying it,” said Andújar.

The environmental crisis, the high population density, the poor living conditions and the lack of services infrastructure make this a conflict-ridden area, according to the 2011 study titled “a socioeconomic and environmental diagnosis on the management of solid household waste in the municipality of Haina”

“The environmental problems in our community are hard to deal with, but we also have social contamination caused by crime and young people’s lack of interest in studying,” said music student Juan Elías Andújar.

“In school they talk to us about ecological issues,” he told IPS. “We have a group called ‘Guardians of Nature’, to raise social awareness and carry out actions like clean-ups of beaches. Haina could change if each person were willing to make an effort.”

Edited by Estrella Gutiérrez/Translated by Stephanie Wildes

At the bustling border of the Dominican Republic and Haiti. Credit: Dan Boarder/cc by 2.0

By Peter Richards
PORT OF SPAIN, Nov 27 2013 (IPS)

Outraged at a court ruling that would potentially render stateless thousands of Dominican people of Haitian descent, the Caribbean Community on Tuesday suspended the Dominican Republic’s bid to join the 15-member regional grouping.

Dominican President Danilo Medina had reportedly promised that his government would not actually deport any of the persons affected by the Sep. 23 ruling.“It renders an already marginalised section of the Dominican population even more vulnerable to acts of daily discrimination and abuse." -- Prof. Norman Girvan

However, Michel Martelly, Haiti’s president, said that soon after returning from Venezuela last weekend where he held talks with Dominican officials to resolve the issue, the authorities in Santo Domingo deported 300 people “who do not know the country, who do not have family in Haiti and who do not even speak the language.”

Martelly is threatening to stay away from future talks – the next round is scheduled for next week – if the Dominican Republic does not show some form of goodwill.

“We don’t have to keep meeting without them showing some action,” he told IPS, adding that the deportees included children, some “as old as one day”.

Trinidadian Prime Minister and CARICOM chair Kamla Persad-Bissessar vowed to raise the matter with the Association of Caribbean States (ACS) and the Community of Latin American and Caribbean States (CELAC). A delegation from the Inter-American Commission on Human Rights (IACHR) is also visiting the Dominican Republic early next month.

“It is especially repugnant that the ruling ignores the 2005 recommendations made by the IACHR that the Dominican Republic adapts its immigration laws and practices in accordance with the provisions of the American Convention on Human Rights,” she said. “The ruling also violates the Dominican Republic’s international human rights obligations.”

St. Vincent and the Grenadines Prime Minister Dr. Ralph Gonsalves, who had written two letters to President Medina on the issue, said he was also prepared to push for the suspension of the Dominican Republic from the Bolivarian Alliance for the Americas and the Caribbean Forum (CARIFORUM).

He told IPS that “quiet diplomacy” has led nowhere and “clearly we have to up the ante for the government and the relevant authority to act”.

At the heart of the controversy is the stripping of citizenship from children of Haitian migrants. The decision applies to those born after 1929 — a category that overwhelmingly includes descendants of Haitians brought in to work on farms.

CARICOM had come under increasing pressure from civil society groups in the region to respond strongly. Caribbean organisations that met in Colombia last week condemned the ruling as “immoral, unjust and totally unacceptable”.

“It renders an already marginalised section of the Dominican population even more vulnerable to acts of daily discrimination and abuse based on the colour of their skin and/or the sound of their names,” former ACS secretary general Professor Norman Girvan told IPS.

Caricom has an opportunity to “prevent a humanitarian catastrophe,” he said.

But efforts to pressure the Dominican Republic to soften the ruling – only the latest salvo in decades of cultural and economic tensions between the two nations – will likely prove an uphill task.

Earlier this month, Anibal De Castro, the Dominican Republic’s ambassador to the United Sates, responding to an article published in a Trinidad and Tobago newspaper, made it clear that his country “does not grant citizenship to all those born within its jurisdiction.”

“In fact, the United States is one of the few nations that maintain this practice. In most countries, it is the norm that citizenship be obtained by origin or conferred under certain conditions. Since 1929, the Constitution of the Dominican Republic has established that the children of people in transit, a temporary legal status, are not eligible for Dominican citizenship,” he wrote.

On Nov. 6, hundreds of people rallied in Santo Domingo in support of the ruling, even suggesting the erection of a wall to ensure the division of Hispaniola that is shared by Haiti and the Dominican Republic.

Emilo Santana of the group Night Watch of San Juan claimed that many Dominicans were unable to receive health services because the resources were being used to assist Haitians and urged President Medina to prevent a “silent and massive Haitian take-over of the territory.”

“I feel humiliated and angry, but not by my president, I feel humiliated by those NGOs that negotiate with the poverty of Haitians and it is they who are destroying our country,” Santana said at the rally.

Another speaker, jurist Juan Manuel Castillo Pantaleon, said the Constitutional Court “has aroused all Dominicans to defend as one man our national sovereignty”.

He described the ruling as a landmark “because it clearly defines who we Dominicans are and reaffirms the laws and institutions, as provided in the Constitution.

“The hypocritical international community which offered aid to Haiti never kept their promises and in some cases committed robbery, and intends that we Dominicans should assume responsibility for a failed state,” said Castillo Pantaleon.

A United Nations-supported study released this year estimated that there were around 210,000 Dominican-born people of Haitian descent and another 34,000 born to parents of other nationalities.

The government of the Dominican Republic estimates that around 500,000 people born in Haiti live in the Dominican Republic.

In a statement, CARICOM said it was calling on the global community to pressure the Dominican Republic to “adopt urgent measures to ensure that the jaundiced decision of the Constitutional Court does not stand”.

“The government must show good faith by immediate credible steps as part of an overall plan to resolve the nationality and attendant issues in the shortest possible time.”

Cassia siamia trees (used for charcoal) planted on farm borders in Haiti. Credit: Desmond Brown/IPS

By Desmond Brown
WARSAW, Nov 18 2013 (IPS)

Small farmers could play an important part in making Haiti – where just two percent of trees are still standing – green again.

With a population of 10 million and Gross Domestic Product (GDP) of 7.8 billion dollars, Haiti, the Western Hemisphere’s poorest country, has been crippled by environmental degradation for several years. “There is already a firm foundation to build on in some areas where present and past forestry and agroforestry projects had been implemented." -- Tony Rinaudo

But there is a flicker of hope for the country and its neighbour, Dominican Republic (DR), with which it shares the island of Hispaniola.

Inspired by the success of its Humbo forestry project in Ethiopia, developed under the Kyoto Protocol’s Clean Development Mechanism (CDM), World Vision Australia has just completed a scoping mission to both countries, to examine the potential for natural regeneration of forests through “Farmer Managed Natural Regeneration” (FMNR).

“Healthy lives for children and their families are underpinned by a healthy environment and so more and more we’ve been looking at how we can help communities to build sustainable environments, and particularly in the face of climate change this is becoming increasingly important,” Timothy Morris, World Vision’s business unit manager, food security and climate change, told IPS on the sidelines of the United Nations climate change conference underway here at the national stadium of Poland.

The CDM allows for reforestation projects to earn carbon credits (Certified Emission Reductions – CER’s) for each tonne of carbon dioxide equivalent “sequestered” or absorbed by the forest. In the case of World Vision’s Humbo project, revenue continues to be generated for the communities who manage the forest assets under seven cooperatives, representing almost 50,000 people.

“We understood that Haiti is an area that is being heavily degraded through deforestation, a high population and the need for fuels,” Morris said.

Devastating floods and landslides have also left bare many areas previously covered with forests, he noted.

World Vision’s point person on reforestation, Tony Rinaudo, recently visited Haiti and the Dominican Republic to examine the degraded landscape in the area.

“There is already a firm foundation to build on in some areas where present and past forestry and agroforestry projects had been implemented,” Rinaudo told IPS.
“I met individuals who valued and cared for trees – fruit, timber, charcoal – successfully.”

Rinaudo stressed that FMNR is certainly not a new concept since he “saw cases of it on some farm borders, in some cases within cropland”. But he said this understanding can be built on – to improve technique, scale up activities – and create greater awareness and practice.

“There is enormous potential for FMNR – for example, with prosopis which is a very aggressive thorny species. With systematic management a sustainable charcoal, pole, timber, honey, fodder industry could be established,” he told IPS.

Indi McLymont-Lafayette, regional coordinator for Panos Caribbean, which works to give voice to poor and marginalised communities, told IPS that some grassroots groups in Haiti were already actively involved in this issue.

“We have been working over the past two and a half years implementing a project looking at the rehabilitation after the earthquake,” she said.

“We include climate change and biodiversity issues with policy making. Part of that has entailed working with areas that have reforestation initiatives and one of the organisations in Haiti, Fondation Seguin, is very crucial, I think, for collaboration because they are already doing tremendous work in reforestation so I think World Vision could bring value to what is already being done.”

World Vision has had tremendous success with a community-managed forestry project in the Humbo region of Ethiopia, 342 kilometres south of the capital Addis Ababa. Over a 30-year crediting period, it is estimated that more than 880,000 tonnes of carbon dioxide equivalent will be removed from the atmosphere, making a significant contribution to mitigating climate change.

Prior to the project, Humbo’s mountainous terrain was highly degraded and chronically drought prone. Poverty, hunger and increasing demand for agricultural land had driven local communities to overexploit forest resources.

Hurricane-ravaged Haiti and the Dominican Republic are among the countries most affected by climate change. A study by the World Bank released this week states that if the sea continues to rise at the current rate, Santo Domingo, the capital of DR, will be one of the five cities most affected at a global level by climate change in 2050.

Another report released here shows that Haiti led the list of the three countries most affected by weather-related catastrophes in 2012.

A continuously growing urban population and an increasing demand for charcoal and fuel wood have all contributed to depleting Haiti’s natural environment. But Morris said the two Caribbean nations stand to reap many benefits from a forestry regeneration project.

“When we do this kind of work there are multiple benefits that can come from it, particularly in a coastal environment and environments that are exposed to storm activity,” Morris told IPS.

“The sorts of things that we would like to do by regenerating and planting trees are to enhance soil integrity; prevent erosion; build coastal land integrity for resilience to storm surge and coastal inundation; and to re-establish the natural asset base of the area for more sustainable usage over the long term.”

He said there could also be benefits in the form of increased food production, since “often we find that once we get into this technique – particularly around the water catchment areas and steep slopes – it can improve the soil integrity” for agricultural purposes.

Styrofoam containers in one of the many drainage canals in the Port-au-Prince metropolitan area. Most dump into the Caribbean Sea after passing through poor neighbourhoods, like this one in Cité Soleil, where the human and animal fecal matter, styrofoam, and other trash regularly flood the zone after heavy rains. Credit: HGW/Marc Schindler Saint-Val

By Correspondents
PORT-AU-PRINCE, Aug 16 2013 (Haiti Grassroots Watch)

Despite two government decrees making their import and usage illegal, styrofoam cups and plates are used and littered all over the capital, as well as bought and sold, wholesale and retail, completely out in the open.

The first decree, dated Aug. 9, 2012, went into effect on Oct. 1, 2012, as part of a decree that also outlawed black plastic bags, used by street vendors as well as in greenhouses all over the country.“Plastic trash is a sanitation problem and a public health problem. It is also a problem because of the damage it causes to coral and marine ecosystems.” -- former environment minister Ronald Toussaint

The environment minister at that time, Ronald Toussaint, did not sign the 2012 decree, which was announced and lauded by various media and environmental websites as a big step forward for Haiti.

“Because of my experience in this domain, I did not sign the document,” Toussaint told Haiti Grassroots Watch (HGW). “The concerned parties – the polluters, the importers, and the business people – were not part of its elaboration. The government’s decree offered a very reductionist approach to dealing with plastic waste.”

Toussaint said he was also worried about the possible impact on agriculture, since many people and organisations sprout seeds in small black plastic bags.

In spite of the obvious failure of the 2012 decree, the government of President Michel Martelly and Prime Minister Laurent Lamothe recently adopted a new one, dated Jul. 10, 2013 and written in much the same language.

There is an “interdiction on producing, importing, commercializing, and using, in any form whatsoever, plastic bags and objects made of styrofoam for food purposes, such as trays, bottles, bags, cups, and plates,” according to the Jul. 10 issue of the government’s official journal of record, Le Moniteur.

“As soon as this decree becomes applicable, beginning on August 1, 2013, all arriving packages that contain these objects will be confiscated by customs authorities and the owners will be sanctioned according to customs regulations,” the decree reads.

In addition to being a bit demagogic in nature – given that the first decree was completely ignored – the new decree has also angered the Dominican Republic’s industries, Haiti’s principal suppliers of styrofoam plates and cups for take-out food.

A sea of styrofoam

If the last 10 months are any indication, there is little reason to think the new decree will bring about much change. The streets of the capital region are awash in styrofoam. Any passerby, police officer, or state official can see bright white products, as well as the illegal black plastic bags, being used and discarded everywhere.

Plastic trash has been catastrophic for the environment. The capital region is drained by open canals that lead directly to the Caribbean Sea. In addition to clogging the canals and causing flooding in the poor neighbourhoods through which it passes, sea currents carry the trash all over the world.

“Plastic trash is a real problem, in my opinion,” Toussaint said. “It is a sanitation problem and a public health problem. It is also a problem because of the damage it causes to coral and marine ecosystems.”

Easy to see and to buy

In spite of its dangers, and in spite of the two decrees, styrofoam products are everywhere.

An investigation by HGW in downtown Port-au-Prince and the adjoining city of Pétion-ville in May and June 2013 found that almost all of the street-food vendors were using the illegal products.

Downtown, on four streets studied, 28 of 28 vendors – 100 percent – used styrofoam dishes and cups. In six streets of Pétion-ville, journalists tallied 20 of 26 vendors – 77 percent – using the illegal products. A visit last week, after the new decree went into effect, revealed that nothing had changed.

Two very popular Pétion-ville restaurants, Contigo Bar Resto Club and Mac Epi, were also using styrofoam products, both before and after Aug. 1. And many – perhaps even all – of the nearly a dozen franchises and restaurants of the popular Epi d’Or chain use styrofoam take-out containers. Many also use styrofoam cups and styrofoam plates for those “eating in”.

On its website, Epi d’Or says it works “with strict respect for laws and for the public interest”.

Asked via email why the chain has been using the products, which have been illegal for over 10 months, owner Thierry Attié responded that his outlets had replaced the cups but not the “clamshells”. However, HGW observed styrofoam cups in use at Epi d’Or’s Pétion-ville outlet on Aug. 9, the day of Attié’s message.

Styrofoam products are also widely available wholesale. Of 11 food and general supply stores or stands visited in June and July, 10 openly sold the illegal products. On Aug. 5, five days after the new decree made them illegal for a second time, they were still on sale.

Speaking in June, one businessman told HGW that nobody really paid attention to the first degree.

“The ban was not applied,” said the merchant while working at his store on Rue Rigaud. “We heard about it on the radio.” (The HGW journalist did not reveal his identity and instead pretended to be a client. He did not ask most businesspeople for their names, but HGW has meticulous records of the stores visited.)

A businesswoman supervising a team unloading merchandise from a truck at her Rue Rigaud store told HGW, as did at least two other businesspeople, that she bought her styrofoam products at SHODECOSA, one of the city’s industrial parks housing assembly industries which receives regular deliveries from the Dominican Republic in large, closed containers.

SHODECOSA (Superior Housing Development Corporation S.A.) is the country’s biggest private industrial park. It belongs to the WIN Group, the conglomerate owned by the Mevs family, which also has interests in maritime transport, assembly industries, and ethanol. WIN also runs the country’s largest private port, TEVASA, in the Varreux area of Cité Soleil.

“Ever since Lamothe became prime minister, I stopped going to the Haitian-Dominican border because only the bourgeois have the containers that are authorised to cross the border with merchandise,” the businesswoman claimed.

“It is not easy to import plates,” another businessman said. “You have to work really hard to get them at SHODECOSA for an exorbitant price.”

A third said he buys at SHODECOSA and also buys them by the container at the border towns Elias Pinas and Malpasse.

HGW did not speak with WIN Group about the allegations. However, the fact that various Pétion-Ville stores told matching stories about where they got their products indicates that during the 10 months of the first decree, and perhaps still, styrofoam plates, cups, and other items were for sale somewhere inside the park.

A plastic decree vs. a rigid policy?

In the second anti-plastics decree, the Haitian government promised, “the Ministry of Economy and Finances will take the steps necessary to facilitate the import of inputs, recipients, and paper products or cardboard that are 100% biodegradable such as bags made of fiber or sisal.”

To date, apart from a raid on small wholesalers in the poor neighbourhood of Marché Solomon on Aug. 12, no “steps” have been announced, nor have there been any major confiscations or arrests at places like Epi d’Or or the SHODECOSA industrial park.  Restaurants, street sellers and others are still using styrofoam cups and plates that will eventually end up in ravines and canals.

Another law meant to protect the environment makes tree-cutting illegal, but piles of planks cut from Haitian trees are for sale on city streets all over Haiti.

Haiti Grassroots Watch is a partnership of AlterPresse, the Society of the Animation of Social Communication (SAKS), the Network of Women Community Radio Broadcasters (REFRAKA), community radio stations from the Association of Haitian Community Media and students from the Journalism Laboratory at the State University of Haiti.

The Dominican Republic first expressed interest in joining the 15-member Caribbean integration grouping CARICOM in 1989. Now, 14 years later, the Spanish-speaking country with a population of nearly 10 million may finally get its wish.

Venezuelan President Nicolás Maduro wants to see greater cooperation between his country and the 15-member Caribbean Community. Credit: Agência Brasil/cc by 3.0

In the words of President Danilo Medina, “We have come with open arms, promising to work hard to make the region a better place.”

Medina made his pitch to Caribbean Community leaders who met here over the past four days for their annual summit. He praised the “visionary leaders” from Barbados, Trinidad and Tobago, Guyana and Jamaica, who 40 years ago signed the Treaty of Chaguaramas that paved the way for the establishment of the regional integration movement.

“They built the foundation on sound principles which has allowed 15 full members and five associate members. We must have the political will and, therefore, we have decided to have open-arm dialogue to gain entry to CARICOM,” Medina said.

The new CARICOM chair and prime minister of Trinidad and Tobago, Kamla Persad Bissessar, said Caribbean leaders had some reservations related to immigration, as well market size in the context of the CARICOM Single Market and Economy (CSME) that allows for the free movement of goods, skills, labour and services across the region.

“I believe in principle that the heads [of state] were not adverse to the Dominican Republic joining. However, there remain issues some heads wanted clarification on and that matter has now been put forward to the inter-sessional [to be held in February] for a more targeted discussion,” she told IPS.

CARICOM leaders are concerned that with a population of 9.5 million, the Dominican Republic’s entry could adversely impact the economies of some of the smaller member countries, she added.

Medina was not the only visitor to the four-day summit here.

Newly elected Venezuelan President Nicolás Maduro may not have the charisma so strongly associated with his predecessor, the late Hugo Chavez, but he too came to the summit promising “goodies” for regional leaders in a bid to solidify the relationships that Chavez himself would have enhanced.

Guyanese President Donald Ramotar told IPS that during his closed-door half-hour meeting, Maduro made a presentation “offering some very concrete areas in which we could cooperate and Venezuela is ready to work with CARICOM…including on the vexing issue of transport.”

Ramotar said he would describe the talks as “a re-affirmation of the Chavez policy”, adding “that he [Maduro] is continuing that strong solidarity trust President Chavez had made in the past.”

Prime Minister Persad Bissessar said Maduro proposed the re-activation of the Joint CARICOM-Venezuela Commission “based on the long-standing trade and investment agreement which could lead to increased trade, investment and economic and other activities.

“In this regard, several proposals were put forward touching on security, air and sea transportation, energy, a social and cultural plan and developing ties between CARICOM and Mercosur,” the Common Market of the South which was founded in 1991 by Argentina, Brazil, Paraguay and Uruguay, she said.

Ramotar said there was a general consensus that Caracas needed to work with the region given its close proximity.

“I think working together would help us to pool our resources,” he said, telling IPS that regional leaders had welcomed the support for transportation given that Caracas has its own airline and cheaper fuel.

“Those are, of course, things that have not yet been thrashed out, but these are areas I can see where we have great possibility,” Ramotar said, adding that security was also another area for cooperation because “the fight against drugs affects all of us and drugs pass through the region.”

The CARICOM summit here was expected to focus on air and sea transportation, as a bedrock component of the integration movement.

“Transportation is key to the integration process and we have to make sure we get it right this time. If the whole question of integration is going to make any sense we need to address this issue frontally,” Antigua and Barbuda Prime Minister Baldwin Spencer told IPS.

His counterpart from Grenada, Dr. Keith Mitchell, making a return to regional politics after a five-year absence, told IPS, “The fact is that while we are trying to advance the CARICOM Single Market and Economy, we still do not have transportation to effect those changes.”

The CARICOM chair said the leaders had agreed to the re-introduction of the single domestic space (SDS), which expedites regional travel for citizens from member nations. They have also given their full support to a proposal by Haiti to convene a high-level meeting on persons with disabilities and special needs, and on the issue of genocide and slavery reparations.

“We have in my view a very strong case,” said St. Vincent and the Grenadines Prime Minister Dr. Ralph Gonsalves, who has been pushing for reparations from Europe for the slave trade.

Despite the enormous distance between the two countries, Argentina has become an increasingly frequent destination for migrants from the Dominican Republic, especially women, who are vulnerable to falling prey to sexual exploitation networks.

The immigration flow to Argentina from the Caribbean island nation is much smaller than the influx of Paraguayans, Bolivians, Peruvians and Uruguayans, who make up 80 percent of the foreign nationals who have come to this South American country since 2004.

But Dominicans stand out because of specific problems when it comes to insertion in the labour market.

Clarisa Rondó of the Association of Dominicans Living in Argentina tells IPS that the women come in search of better employment opportunities, but often fall into prostitution networks due to the difficulty in finding other work.

“Argentina is a country that takes us in, it makes us feel we are taking a step ahead,” she says. “It’s a big, generous country that offers possibilities.”

Rondó was 21 when she came here on her own in 1994. She has since married, had children, got divorced, and earned a teaching certificate in the arts.

“More women than men have always come, because men find it harder to break into the labour market,” she says. She clarifies that it is also difficult for women, but “they get involved in prostitution. Many of them are illiterate, they don’t find any other work, and they don’t have any alternative.”

The presence of Dominican women in Argentina becomes visible when the police raid places where prostitution is practiced, in Buenos Aires or in provinces like Córdoba, Misiones, La Pampa, Tierra del Fuego, Rio Negro or San Luis.

Although there are no official statistics, Rondó estimates that there are some 40,000 Dominicans living in this South American country of 40 million people. Most of them – some 15,000 – live in the capital.

Sociologist Lucía Nuñez Lodwick at the National University of San Martín explains to IPS that Dominicans, who traditionally migrated to the United States or Spain, began to come to Argentina in the mid-1990s.

Argentina’s rigid peg of the peso to the dollar in the 1990s drove the influx of immigrants from the rest of the region, who earned here in pesos and exchanged them for the same amount in dollars, to send back home as remittances, she points out.

That was one of the main reasons that Dominicans began to arrive, along with the common language – Spanish – and the demand in Argentina for people willing to do low-paid, low-skilled work – as domestics, nannies, caregivers for the elderly, hairdressers or restaurant workers, she explains.

According to a study carried out by the Ecumenical Services for the Support and Orientation of Migrants and Refugees (CAREF) and commissioned by the International Organization for Migration (IOM), thousands of Dominicans came to Argentina in the 1990s.

The study, “Migración, Prostitución y Trata de Mujeres Dominicanas en Argentina” (Migration, Prostitution and Trafficking of Dominican Women in Argentina) states that 12,000 to 15,000 immigrants from the Dominican Republic reached Argentina between 1995 and 2002.

In recent years, although the exchange rate is no longer a lure, Dominicans have continued to come. “We have been arriving for years, and some have managed to gain a good position in society,” Rondó says.

The activist explains that in some cases, the women take out a mortgage on their homes to travel, in the hope of finding a job in domestic service. But when they arrive, they find it hard to get a job, start racking up a debt with those who financed part of their journey, and end up falling into the hands of trafficking or prostitution rings, she says.

Nuñez concurs: “They come to Argentina with promises of jobs that don’t turn out to be what they had expected – work that would give them a better standard of living than they had in their country.”

Once here, they find it difficult to get any other kind of work, says the sociologist, who wrote the paper “Construyendo mapas: Cuerpos femeninos, espacio y jerarquización racial en la práctica de la prostitución en la Ciudad de Buenos Aires” on prostitution and racism in Buenos Aires.

Nuñez says that when they leave their countries in search of work abroad, women are aware that prostitution is one of the possibilities, from things they have heard about, but “many think it won’t happen to them.”

The sociologist studied the link between street prostitution and female migration in the Argentine capital, focusing on women from the Dominican Republic, who are highly visible as they are black in a country where there are so few people of African descent they only began to be counted in the 2010 census.

In her study, Nuñez says black women in Argentina are often seen as highly sexual, much more so than white or indigenous women, and this makes them more vulnerable.

One Dominican woman working as a sex worker in Buenos Aires, who was interviewed by Nuñez for her study, said “maybe they like (Dominican women) because we have big breasts.”

Another Dominican immigrant working as a street prostitute told the sociologist that “My mom didn’t want me to come here. She told me what women did when they came here, and I didn’t believe her.”

To combat this phenomenon, the Argentine authorities announced in August 2012 that people from the Dominican Republic would need visas to enter the country. And for those who already live here, the authorities simplified the legalisation process and streamlined the paperwork for gaining temporary residency for three years.

But Rondó believes that requiring visas is not a solution. The same view is shared in CAREF, where IPS spoke with Gabriela Liguori, and in the Dominican Republic Embassy in Buenos Aires. They all agree that the new visa requirement won’t solve the problem.

“This just makes things worse,” says the activist. “Because it will be difficult, but they’ll find other ways to get here on land, illegally, and then the women will be less protected and more exposed to trafficking.”

But the sources who spoke to IPS do believe it is a good idea to cut the red tape needed to regularise the situation of those who came in as tourists and are now living here without the proper documents, because temporary residency status would make it easier for them to find a job.

The programme has assistance from the Dominican consulate, Argentina’s foreign ministry, and the justice ministry’s office to rescue and support victims of trafficking.

Undocumented immigrants from the Dominican Republic were given from January to July to apply for temporary residency permits. By March, 631 permits had been granted, according to the web site of the national migrations office.

“My idea is that people who come should be able to regularise their situation, study or work, because even if some do come for prostitution, they could at least have other alternatives. But without documents, they’re forced to become sex workers,” Rondó says.

A typical scene: mounds of Dominican products for sale in a marketplace in Pétion-ville, Haiti. Photo: Jude Stanley Roy/HGW

By Correspondents
PORT-AU-PRINCE, Feb 16 2013 (Haiti Grassroots Watch)

“I get everything at the Haiti-Dominican Republic: carrots, squash, eggplant, cabbage, peppers, eggs, salami,” explained a merchant at the Croix des Bossales marketplace, her stand teeming with goods. “The border is what feeds us.”

The vendor – who refused to give her name for fear of reprisal from Haitian tax collectors – sells vegetables and other food products at Croix des Bossales, the biggest open market in Port-au-Prince. Here, as in Haitian supermarkets, mountains of Dominican pasta, towers of Dominican eggs, mounds of Dominican plantains and piles upon piles of tomato paste, ketchup, mayonnaise and other prepared foods are everywhere.

Haiti has food. But less and less of it is produced inside the country, and great deal of it now comes from the Dominican Republic, the Haiti Grassroots Watch (HGW) investigative journalism partnership has discovered. Haitian products are difficult even for merchants to find. “We can’t find them. They hardly even exist,” one egg seller attested as she sat next to a tower of eggs in grey Dominican egg crates.

In hardware stores, sacks of Dominican cement reach the ceilings. In most of the eight stores visited by HGW teams, salespeople said cement from the neighbouring nation sold at a lower price than the “Haitian” product, which is actually imported and then bagged in country.

“Haitian cement is more expensive, but it’s better,” a worker at one store, GB Hardware said. “Dominican cement is cheaper, but it’s also lower in quality.” At another store, Alliance Distribution S.A., a salesman reported that it getting Dominican cement delivered was “easier and quicker”.

Haiti undoubtedly needs these products. But is the flow of Dominican products a simple matter of exports, or is Haiti’s neighbor exploiting an economy weakened by a devastating earthquake?

Widening commercial deficit

Even before Haiti became independent in 1804, its economy was mostly extroverted, and governments after the revolution rarely developed economic policies that encouraged national industries and modernised agricultural production to keep up with population growth.

Local elites tended to export raw goods such as coffee, cacao, indigo and sugar and import foodstuffs and finished products. Haiti did not follow the “import substitution” trend that swept most ex-colonies in Latin America, Africa and Asia in the 1950 and 1960s, and up until the 1970s, Haiti was largely self-sufficient in fruits, vegetables, meats and cement. Since then, the country has suffered an increasingly negative trade balance.

“We are following a growth model that weakens productive sectors to the benefit of imports and importers,” explained economist Camille Chalmers, professor at the State University of Haiti and director of a platform of organisations who promote “alternative development”.

The bordering Dominican Republic, however, followed a different path.

Their model goes back “50 or 60 years”, according to Maria Isabel Gasso, president of the Santo Domingo Chamber of Commerce. “For a while, there were laws that promoted industries and production, and also laws promoting exports and the Free Trade Zones. These industries have been there for years…and they have benefited from various policies promoting exports and production.”

Neoliberal knockdown

Neoliberal economic policies – reduction of protective tariffs, privatisation of state industries, and cuts to social services – at the end of the twentieth century took its toll on Haiti’s ailing economy. Tariffs on food and other agricultural products were first cut in 1982 and plummeted to zero or three percent in 1995. Today, Haiti has the lowest tariffs in the Caribbean.

The drastic reductions were part of the 1994 “Paris Plan”, an agreement between the exiled government of Jean Bertrand Aristide and international actors such as the United States and the International Monetary Fund (IMF) in which the Aristide government would enact a series of neoliberal policies in exchange for international support for its return to power in 1994 after being overthrown in a bloody coup d’état in 1991.

Since 1995, Haiti’s trade balance has widened, from about 500 million U.S. dollars that year to about 2.2 billion dollars for the 2011-2012 fiscal year, according to the IMF. Similarly, the food “deficit” has grown from 242 million U.S. dollars in 2000 to 342 million dollars in 2007. According to the Haitian Ministry of Agriculture, Haiti imported 57 percent of its food in 2005. That figure is undoubtedly higher today.

Ministry of Commerce director general Luc Espéca is conscious of the damages wrought by these policies, admitting that local “producers can’t sell what they’ve grown. When you work had to produce something, but then you don’t make a profit, you get discouraged.”

The neoliberal policies affected the economy in other ways too. The Aristide government had to sell off state enterprises, among them the state cement company, even though Haiti possesses all the raw materials necessary for cement.

Still, imports and lowered tariffs are not the only reasons Haiti’s agricultural production hasn’t kept pace with population growth. Factors such as the lack of public and private sector investment in agricultural production, or Haiti’s antiquated land tenure system, have all contributed.

“When I came back to Haiti in 1976, we made everything: pipes, cement, etc,” remembered Gérald Emile “Aby” Brun, a vice president of the 30-year-old Haitian construction and architecture firm TECINA S.A, who regretted that his country no longer produces cement. The state telephone company, “the flour mill, the same thing happened to all of them”, he told HGW, blaming in part Haitian “capitalists”.

“The Haitian capitalist is afraid of the country’s instability and of the corruption of a series of governments,” Burn continued. “He doesn’t want to take any chances and wait 10 or 15 years to make his profit. In fact, Haitian ‘industrialists’ are not industrialists at all. Three-quarters of them are vendors, merchants.”

Haiti Grassroots Watch could not find exact data on the amount of Dominican cement exported to Haiti, but the Dominican Association of Portland Cement Producers said that six major companies employ 15,000 people and that cement makes up 21 percent of the country’s exports.

The direction of Haitian production

Many are calling for the Haitian government to rescue Haitian production, which cannot satisfy the nation’s demands. Dominican producers are increasingly capitalising on this weakness, especially since the January 2010 earthquake.

“The Haitian state is not defending Haitian economic actors,” said Chalmers.

Gasso, of the Santo Domingo Chamber of Commerce, generally agreed. “I personally would like to see Haitian products here, but the Haitian government is the one who needs to promote what it needs to promote in Haiti in order for there to be exports,” Gasso said. “They need a plan. When a boat leaves port without a destination, it doesn’t get anywhere.”

Surrounded by mountains of Dominican vegetables and seated beside colleagues hawking Dominican pastas and eggs, the Croix de Bossales merchant agreed with Gasso. She wanted to see change but remained pessimistic.

“We need a change but where will it come from? I don’t know. All we hear are beautiful words,” she said. “We need people to become aware so that we can rescue the country from this terrible situation.”

*Haiti Grassroots Watch is a partnership of AlterPresse, the Society of the Animation of Social Communication (SAKS), the Network of Women Community Radio Broadcasters (REFRAKA), community radio stations from the Association of Haitian Community Media and students from the Journalism Laboratory at the State University of Haiti.

This report is part of the “New Visions for Haitian-Dominican Reality – More and better journalism” program, financed by the European Union and coordinated by the UNESCO Chair in Communication, Democracy and Governance at the Pontificia Universidad Católica Madre y Maestra in Santo Domingo, Dominican Republic. 

The threat of landslides is always looming in the La Barquita de los Mina neighbourhood in Santo Domingo. Credit: Dionny Matos/IPS

By Patricia Grogg
SANTO DOMINGO, Aug 3 2012 (IPS)

One of the major difficulties to overcome in climate change adaptation policies in the Dominican Republic is society’s low awareness of the risks, even though this Caribbean island nation is seriously exposed to the impacts of the phenomenon.

The probable consequences of climate change for the Dominican Republic range from the loss of 14 percent of the country’s territory by 2100 and the salinisation of half of its aquifers, to more intense natural catastrophes like hurricanes and unusual rainfall patterns.

“This is why one of the main focuses of our work is to try to sensitise people about the issue, to get them to understand how much they could lose due to this problem,” the projects coordinator at the Dominican Institute for Integral Development (IDDI),
Evaydee Pérez, told IPS.

She said risk perception among Dominicans is low. That is also true for those involved in the tourism business, she added, pointing out that the rule for building hotels at least 60 metres from the coast is not always respected.

And awareness remains low, she said, despite the risk of salinisation, which is already affecting the water supplies of hotels that depend on the millions of tourists who visit the country every year.

The expert said there is still a tendency to see climate change as a problem of the future. Nor do people realise that it is not only an environmental issue, but also an economic and social concern, she added. “Many people don’t understand this, and see it as a myth, an excuse,” she said.

A Gallup poll commissioned by the government found that climate change was the fifth most pressing concern among the Dominicans surveyed, and that the population had very little knowledge about the causes of the phenomenon.

The IDDI, a non-profit institution created in 1984 to help fight poverty in both rural and urban areas, sponsors several projects designed to foment understanding and promote climate change adaptation measures in the most vulnerable communities.

The institute is part of Climacción, a Dominican initiative that brings together individuals, organisations, companies and academic institutions in a movement that generates ideas and actions mainly aimed at raising awareness on and researching climate change.

After clarifying that the idea is to complement government efforts, Pérez said public policies would be more efficient if the local population participated. “For example, it is important for women to talk about how they are affected by climate change, and what can be done. They are hit harder by the effects of this problem,” she said.

In the La Barquita de Los Mina neighbourhoods, one of many that stretch along the Ozama River in Santo Domingo, Eridania Rosario is one of the women who do not seem to be daunted by the rigours of the climate – even though on more than one occasion, her house has been almost completely covered with water when the river flooded.

“If you ask 50 people from La Barquita, they will all say the same thing. Our main problem here is the river, which overflows its banks when it rains a lot,” she told IPS. As the president of the neighbourhood association, Rosario is more informed than most local people, and believes the rains have become more intense as a result of climate change.

Other people told IPS they did not know why the Ozama River kept flooding, and said they built their humble shacks there, defying the danger, because they had nowhere else to live. “Without a doubt, these sectors are the most vulnerable to climate change,” Pérez said.

Some 30 organisations in the capital joined together in May in the “community network for adaptation to climate change”, to come up with joint actions, especially in the city’s most vulnerable communities, which are home to some 400,000 people, according to Pérez’s estimates.

The network was created through an IDDI project to promote education and communication. “We talk about the issue in plain language, because one of the hurdles to eliminating barriers is that information on climate change is still couched in scientific terms, and the message doesn’t reach the public,” she said.

A study that the IDDI published in July states that 13 of the country’s 31 provinces face high or very high vulnerability to climate change, including Santo Domingo, the country’s industrial and economic hub, as well as provinces along the border with Haiti. (The Dominican Republic covers two-thirds of the island of Hispaniola, and Haiti makes up the remaining portion.)

The study says that one of the top priorities is capacity-building to raise the level of awareness of the local population on the risks they face. “There are many families who live in those areas as if they had adapted to the danger,” said Luis Alejo, coordinator of the IDDI risk management group.

The strategy followed by his unit in communities at risk of natural disasters is to sensitise people about the dangers to which they are exposed, while strengthening local capacities of prevention, mitigation and response to extreme weather events.

“There is a national system that includes municipal prevention committees, but they have to be rooted in, and accompanied by, the grassroots level. Neighbourhood organisations and associations, clubs and churches must be included in the process of training, capacity-building and coordination,” Alejo told IPS.

The support includes supplying the tools for local residents to act in an organised manner in case of floods, landslides or other emergencies, such as loudspeakers, generators, radio equipment, shovels, wheelbarrows, flashlights and other elements.

Josefa Moya: "Moving is not an option." Credit: Dionny Matos/IPS

By Patricia Grogg
SANTO DOMINGO, Jul 26 2012 (IPS)

“Nobody mourns the poor, you know.” That is the grim conclusion of a resident of La Ciénaga, one of the many poverty-stricken settlements clustered along the banks of the Ozama River in the Dominican capital, and which are at the mercy of the weather.

The man has nothing more to say, refusing to have his picture taken or give his name.

“I wish they’d take us out of here, find us a safer place,” his wife adds, looking out onto the Ozama River, which is almost at the threshold of the makeshift shelter they call home.

A few metres away, Josefa Moya is more forthcoming. “This whole area floods whenever it rains a lot and it takes at least three days for the water to drain from our houses. I live alone and clean houses for a living, so moving is not an option for me,” she tells IPS.

Her comments receive nods of approval from a group of women from the township who are standing around her with babies in their arms. They too have no other alternative.

José Sánchez leads IPS in an improvised tour through the maze of narrow streets where, he says, some 8,000 families live.

“When a cyclone hits or heavy rains come, the river swells, dragging all sorts of garbage with it. I think that’s why this neighbourhood floods so much,” Sánchez says.

According to him, in the last five years the situation has become increasingly worse. “Every time there’s a flood they say they’re going to relocate us, but, as you can see, we’re still here,” he says.

Independent sources estimate that some 400,000 people live on the banks of the two main rivers of Santo Domingo – the Ozama and the Isabela – where they are exposed to weather hazards that are expected to become more intense and devastating.

Interviewed by IPS, environment and natural resource minister Ernesto Reyna confirms that one of the “huge challenges” his country faces in its efforts to adapt to climate change has to do precisely with this impoverished sector of the population, which is highly vulnerable to cyclones, heavy rains and other extreme climate events.

Reyna says these families settle in the middle basins, where water levels are low during long periods of drought.

“They see it as a viable place to set up a house and even plant a small vegetable garden. They don’t think there will be any problems if they settle there,” he says.

“But then a storm comes, and it doesn’t even have to be a hurricane, just a spell of heavy rains, which combined with deforestation and our poor (basin) management, causes flash floods so devastating in force that they destroy everything in no time,” Reyna explains.

In 1998, Hurricane George left 235 people dead in the Dominican Republic and cost the country some 146 million dollars, according to official estimates. In October 2007, Tropical Storm Noel had caused 439 million in material losses (equivalent to 1.2 percent of that year’s gross domestic product) and claimed 87 lives, with another 42 people reported missing.

Recovering from these natural disasters is very costly, Reyna notes.

“Our great misfortune,” he says referring to the region, “is that just as we’re coming out of a difficult economic situation, a hurricane comes and wipes out all our savings. So we can never overcome the poverty the majority of our people live in.”

Data from the World Bank (WB) and the Inter-American Development Bank (IADB) indicate that 43 out of every 100 Dominicans were poor in 2004 and 16 out of 100 qualified as abject poor. According to reports from the United Nations, in the following six years these indicators dropped to 34 and 10.4 percent, respectively.

Projected climate change impacts for the Dominican Republic are not at all promising.

According to Reyna, this country of 9.5 million people, which shares the island of Hispaniola with Haiti, the poorest country of Latin America and the Caribbean, could lose about a fifth of its territory to rising sea levels.

“I’ve lived here for 17 years and I can tell you that in the last five years the rains have been getting more and more intense, and that has brought more floods. Everyone knows this is caused by climate change,” Eridania Rosario Marcelo, president of the La Barquita neighbourhood association, told IPS.

This Ozama River bank community, located in the district of Las Mina, has made repeated requests to have the river dredged to remove garbage and other obstructions that cause the river to overflow.

“We’ve asked and asked, but nobody listens. If they dredged this part of the river to get rid of all the garbage that the water drags down, the risk wouldn’t be as high,” she claims.

At the start of the hurricane season, which spans from June to November, local residents begin to take greater precautions, monitoring the Ozama to see if the water rises and gathering tarpaulin sheets to set up “a small house” in the high section of the bridge as an emergency shelter just in case.

“We live in constant risk,” Marcelo says.

Omar Ramírez, vice president of the National Council for Climate Change and Clean Development Mechanism, told IPS that “70 percent of the cities in the Dominican Republic are built on the banks of rivers or other waterways… These areas are covered by a proliferation of extremely poor urban settlements,” he admits.

In this sense, Ramírez stresses the importance of the “mandate” established under article 194 of the 2010 Constitution, which calls for land planning solutions that meet climate change adaptation needs.

The issue is also included in the strategic plan developed to face climate change.

“Land planning is a difficult and complex issue to address, but it is not impossible. Solutions can be achieved through social alliances,” Ramírez says.

The climate change body was created in September 2008 with the purpose of coordinating and synchronising state efforts aimed at mitigating and adapting to global environmental risks.