COMMERCE VS. STEWARDSHIP: BATTLE OF THE DOMINICAN

UNCLAS SANTO DOMINGO 001355 SIPDIS SIPDIS DEPT FOR WHA/CAR, OES; NAIROBI FOR UNEP OFFICER; GENEVA FOR IEA E.O. 12958: N/A TAGS: DR PGOV SENV SUBJECT: COMMERCE VS. STEWARDSHIP: BATTLE OF THE DOMINICAN NATIONAL PARKS ¶1. (U) During President Fernandez's recent European trip, French investors proposed to him a USD600 million tourism investment in Bahia de las Aguilas, a pristine undeveloped beach area located inside the protected Jaragua National Park in the Southwest. Dominican Secretary of Tourism Felix "Felucho" Jimenez says the project SIPDIS will create thousands of direct and indirect jobs in that deprived southwestern region of the country. Environmental groups distrust the idea and the biggest skeptic, Secretary of the Environment and Natural Resources Max Puig, is biding his time. A similar contest between commerce and stewardship occurred in the last days of the Mejia administration, when Environment Secretary Frank Moya Pons contained the damage. Following a presentation by the French in Santo Domingo on April 20, President Fernandez commented that theirs was "a concept, not yet a plan." -------------- The Proposed Project -------------- ¶2. (U) French company Mogador has declared its interest in coordinating the construction of five to six 70-room ecologically friendly hotels in the Bahia de las Aguilas area, a deserted stretch of pristine beach in the far Southwest of the country near Haiti. Bahia de las Aguilas is home to several indigenous rare turtles, mangrove trees, and other unique flora and fauna. The beach is located within the Jaragua National Park, which was designated as an UNESCO Biosphere Reserve in 2002. The 2004 Law on National Parks, as finally amended following specific objections from President Mejia at the strong suggestions of his Environment Minister Frank Moya Pons, classifies certain beach areas in national parks as available for sustainable tourism development. ¶3. (SBU) French Ambassador France Pozzo di Borgo has commented to other diplomats that Mogador is an architectural firm, not a hotel operator, implying that the project is as yet at the level of a proposal, not a completed, financed plan. When the promoters scheduled a semi-public discussion in Santo Domingo on April 20, she stayed away. President Fernandez was there, as were the notionally divergent Secretaries of Tourism (Felix Jimenez) and Natural Resources SIPDIS & the Environment (Max Puig). The press was allowed for the opening moments but then excluded from the actual presentation, much to their discontent. ¶4. (U) Promoters of the Mogador investment say it will bring 4,000 jobs to the impoverished region. Secretary Jimenez told local news sources that each hotel will need between five to six employees per room because these hotels will offer specialized services. This venture will also take advantage of the Baharona's underused "Maria Montez" international airport, virtually vacant since its opening. ¶5. (U) In interview on the television program El Dia, Jimenez denied that the hotel investment would negatively impact the environment. "Bahia de las Aguilas is the essential wealth of the place; damaging the environment with reckless development would be an offense against the state." -------------- Political Alliances -------------- ¶6. (U) Since the announcement of the French interest in Bahia de las Aguilas, local news sources have been dramatizing an alleged feud between the Secretary of Environment and Natural Resources and the Secretary of Tourism. On the tourism side, Felix Jimenez enthusiastically backs the deal and touts the great development prospects, while at Environment Max Puig has been openly suspicious of developments in the parks. When the potential tourist investment was first announced, several dailies said that Puig was outraged at finding out about the development from the press. Jimenez, according to local dailies, said then that the Secretary of the Environment chose not to be informed about the project. Reporters say he even called Puig an "anti-tourist" who was solely disapproving because of his political ideology. ¶7. (C) Journalists have indeed turned this into a "Felucho and Max" Punch-and-Judy show, but there is an enduring visceral difference between the two on this subject. In February Puig told the Ambassador that he was appalled to discover very belatedly that in the last days of 2005, Jimenez had gotten Fernandez's signature on decrees concerning the parks without ever consulting Puig. One of these constituted a special commission composed of Jimenez, Puig, and businessman Marino Ginebra to decide procedures concerning natural parks, including authorizing plans for exploitation. Puig said he intended to ask Fernandez to revoke the decree. Nothing has come of that. ¶8. (SBU) Embassy contacts in both ministries maintain the media blew the differences out of proportion. Subsecretary of Tourism Iris Perez told Econoff there are no problems between the two ministries. Environment officials have reiterated that they cannot approve the project until they have examined the proposal. Perez said that Mogador has a long-standing relationship with the Ministry of Tourism and would soon present its proposal and documentation. She affirmed that the development of Bahia de las Aguilas could be sustainable and beneficial, a means of working toward the Millennium Development Goal of reducing poverty. ¶9. (SBU) Environment Sub-Secretary Zoila Gonzalez told Econoff that the ministers have agreed to meet in April to discuss the tourism project. Gonzalez did say there are certain areas that cannot be developed due to the presence of mangroves and turtles, but other areas can be explored. Gonzalez was confident that the administration would "speak in one voice." ¶10. (SBU) Differences between the two ministers are long standing. In 1992, Secretary Puig and ten congressional representatives resigned from the Partido de la Liberacion Dominicana (PLD) and created the Alianza por la Democracia (Democratic Alliance Party). The Alianza has supported Fernandez in his election campaigns. Secretary Puig has been close to Fernandez and served as the National Coordinator for the European Development Fund (Lome Convention) in the first Fernandez administration. Jimenez on the other hand has been one of the main leaders of the PLD since 1979, campaign manager for the most recent presidential bid, and organizer of the inauguration festivities. He now continues his job as the Minister for Tourism, the same responsibility he held in Fernandez's first administration. -------------- Development in the National Park -------------- ¶11. (SBU) Daneris Santana, Sub-Secretary of Protected Areas and Biodiversity at the Secretariat of the Environment, confirmed to a USAID officer that Bahia de las Aguilas is under protected status because i is located in the Jaragua National Park, ruled y Law for the Protected Areas passed in July 2004 In response to an inquiry about talk of "freed areas" (areas liberadas) in the park, Santana sai none of the areas are freed or liberated - - alhough the beach areas and contiguous land up to alf a kilometer inland in Jaragua National Park and in the Parque del Este in the Southeast near Byahibe were categorized as "national recreational areas." These areas are subject to the Secretary of Environment's approved management plan and dcisions on the protected area are taken according to environmental regulations. Santana commented that the Secretariat did not want to continue fueling the "press confrontation" between the two ministries. ¶12. (U) USAID has funded a Biosphere Reserve Management Plan that provides the Environmental Ministry with the tools to determine what to do and what not to do in the different areas of the park. This plan divides the potential area into three zones: the Nuclear Zone, the Buffer/Middle Zone, and the Transaction Zone. The nuclear zones are the parks themselves -- one notion is to make the Bahia de las Aguilas such a protected zone. Economic activity in the Nuclear Zone is to be limited to low impact eco-tourism. Transition Zones are to serve as magnets, attracting economic activity, including traditional beach tourism. Cabo Rojo (located next to Bahia de las Aguilas) would be the Transition Zone for Bahia de las Aguilas. Low impact eco-tourism (launch excursions) into Bahia de las Aguilas could serve as a prime attraction for the hotels in a Cabo Rojo Transition Zone. The buffer zone would be a predetermined space between the national park and the development area. 13 (U) AID gave this analysis to Secretary Puig in June ¶2005. The USAID Officer suggested to Santana that the Secretariat use this actively. SIPDIS ¶14. (U) The idea of using Bahia de las Aguilas as a tourism destination without the infrastructural development of hotels is shared by the Coalition for the Defense of the Protected Areas, a collection of environmental groups opposed to development there. President of the coalition Nelson Moreno Ceballos told local dailies the organization is not against tourism development in the southwestern region, but rather against building hotels in Bahia de las Aguilas. The Coalition advocates building them in Pedernales and using Bahia de las Aguilas as a visitation area only. COMMENT ¶14. (C) The enormous parks in the Southeast and the Southwest of the country were established in the early 1990s by the autocratic decision of President Balaguer, who essentially confiscated those largely empty lands. There were plans to carve out enticing stretches of them during the first Fernandez administration, leading to controversy, and the framework law passed to administer them went without implementing legislation until very late in President Mejia's term. Legislators and business interests were thick as flies on a honey jar in early 2004 as Congress was elaborating the park legislation, and Environment Secretary Frank Moya Pons, a historian and aficionado of the country's natural resources, had to choose his battles. Moya Pons told us then that he knew all too well that Mejia would need to yield on the beach areas in order to prevail with objections to some of the other, more abusive proposals to gerrymander the lands. For example, the version that went to Mejia for consideration simply stripped out all of the beach lands by excluding from the parks the shore periphery 3 kilometers wide. Mejia's reply to Congress was a bill of objections (somewhat similar to line-item vetos with proposed substitutions) prepared by Moya Pons that did away with the worst changes and altered the beach grab to a reclassification of them as "specially administered areas" within one-half kilometer of the shoreline. Congress passed the revised bill without further change. ¶15. (C) Intellectuals both, the historian Moya Pons and the leftist polemicist Puig have faced the task of managing the parks and other resources for the greater good of the country. Puig has appeared largely disengaged, except in the non-science-based political maneuvering over the deposits of rockash authorized by the Mejia administration, and he does not seem to have been in dialogue with Jimenez on the parks. In contrast, Moya Pons, who told the Ambassador that upon confirmation he had taken a resolution "never to resign or to be forced out," applied his keen intelligence to study of the economic and social interests, the maps and the self-contradictory proposals of legislators, and to weighing politics as the art of the possible. HERTELL