NewsWhore
04-21-2008, 05:50 PM
Miguel Ceara-Hatton, of the United Nations Development Program and coordinator of the Human Development reports for the DR, highlighted the fact that the DR has many challenges ahead if tourism is to translate into progress for the poor of the Dominican Republic. He said that new data that is just becoming available because of in-depth research into development indicators at municipal level has made it possible to compare national indicators with indicators in the leading tourism areas, Puerto Plata and La Altagracia (Punta Cana). He says that the findings show that human development indicators lag behind in these two provinces, which are home to the largest concentration of hotel rooms.
Speaking at a presentation during the "All Under the Same Roof" Workshop sponsored by the Dominican Sustainable Tourism Alliance (USDSTA) in Santiago, Ceara-Hatton pointed out that while the average income for La Altagracia is 17% above the national average, the province lags considerably behind the average when it comes to the number of poor people, average years of education, number of high school graduates, adult illiteracy, and high school education of head of family indicators.
Furthermore, Ceara-Hatton commented that social tension could be generated because there is an increasing trend towards the privatization of beaches by hotels and luxury residential communities. He said that a better option would be the Blue Flag Certification, a program that calls for management of beaches and ensures quality of the beach but requires that beaches remain public.
He also pointed out that we are already feeling the impact of tourism on the environment, and mentioned how damage caused by hurricanes and tropical storms can be attributed in great part to the inadequate handling of water resources, hotels built on wetlands, destroyed mangroves and interruptions of the natural flow of water. He questioned the "inexhaustible" slogan of the Ministry of Tourism.
"It is not enough to grow, to increase foreign exchange income, to increase the number of visitors or increase the number of rooms", he stressed. "All that can happen while the population gets poorer, the environment is destroyed, our values are destroyed, there is more inequality of income, and people's living conditions deteriorate", he added, and pointed out that this is borne out by the statistics for Puerto Plata and La Altagracia provinces.
"Tourism is an opportunity for development only if it incorporates the people as direct beneficiaries, if it promotes culture, creates internal linkages, increases value added, respects culture and the environment and integrates communities", he concluded. "Otherwise, we will be building an excluded society, that is hostile, fragmented and with greater propensity for conflict" Ceara-Hatton explained that most Haitians living in these areas were not polled, and that if they had been taken into consideration the spread between those benefiting from tourism and those who are not would be much wider.
More... (http://www.dr1.com/index.html#7)
Speaking at a presentation during the "All Under the Same Roof" Workshop sponsored by the Dominican Sustainable Tourism Alliance (USDSTA) in Santiago, Ceara-Hatton pointed out that while the average income for La Altagracia is 17% above the national average, the province lags considerably behind the average when it comes to the number of poor people, average years of education, number of high school graduates, adult illiteracy, and high school education of head of family indicators.
Furthermore, Ceara-Hatton commented that social tension could be generated because there is an increasing trend towards the privatization of beaches by hotels and luxury residential communities. He said that a better option would be the Blue Flag Certification, a program that calls for management of beaches and ensures quality of the beach but requires that beaches remain public.
He also pointed out that we are already feeling the impact of tourism on the environment, and mentioned how damage caused by hurricanes and tropical storms can be attributed in great part to the inadequate handling of water resources, hotels built on wetlands, destroyed mangroves and interruptions of the natural flow of water. He questioned the "inexhaustible" slogan of the Ministry of Tourism.
"It is not enough to grow, to increase foreign exchange income, to increase the number of visitors or increase the number of rooms", he stressed. "All that can happen while the population gets poorer, the environment is destroyed, our values are destroyed, there is more inequality of income, and people's living conditions deteriorate", he added, and pointed out that this is borne out by the statistics for Puerto Plata and La Altagracia provinces.
"Tourism is an opportunity for development only if it incorporates the people as direct beneficiaries, if it promotes culture, creates internal linkages, increases value added, respects culture and the environment and integrates communities", he concluded. "Otherwise, we will be building an excluded society, that is hostile, fragmented and with greater propensity for conflict" Ceara-Hatton explained that most Haitians living in these areas were not polled, and that if they had been taken into consideration the spread between those benefiting from tourism and those who are not would be much wider.
More... (http://www.dr1.com/index.html#7)