Identifier
Created
Classification
Origin
06SANTODOMINGO1355
2006-04-21 21:07:00
UNCLASSIFIED
Embassy Santo Domingo
Cable title:  

COMMERCE VS. STEWARDSHIP: BATTLE OF THE DOMINICAN

Tags:  DR PGOV SENV 
pdf how-to read a cable
VZCZCXYZ0000
PP RUEHWEB

DE RUEHDG #1355/01 1112107
ZNR UUUUU ZZH
P 212107Z APR 06
FM AMEMBASSY SANTO DOMINGO
TO RUEHC/SECSTATE WASHDC PRIORITY 4487
INFO RUEHZA/WHA CENTRAL AMERICAN COLLECTIVE PRIORITY
RUEHNR/AMEMBASSY NAIROBI PRIORITY 0036
RUEHFR/AMEMBASSY PARIS PRIORITY 0147
RUEHGV/USMISSION GENEVA PRIORITY 0327
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

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

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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

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& 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.

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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