| Haiti-DR: is the free zone an environmental disaster in the making?
The immediate context for the HSG's renewed concern is a 20 June press report that Haiti's Minister of Commerce has approved the controversial free zone project near the border town of Ouanaminthe. This joint Haitian-Dominican project will see the construction of a vast industrial park just outside the Haitian town of Ouanaminthe, and just across the border from the Dominican town of Dajabón. The Dajabón River (known in Haiti as the Massacre River) runs between the towns, and demarcates the northern part of the border between the two countries. The economic advantages of concreting over prime agricultural land in order to build textile assembly factories have already been challenged, both by local farmers and by non-governmental organisations based in Port-au-Prince. The HSG shares these concerns, but also wants to draw attention to important environmental consequences of the project. More specifically, the HSG wants to point out that the development of the Ouanaminthe free zone appears to be completely contradictory to ongoing efforts to protect the Dajabón River, and to reforest the Dajabón River Basin. The protection of water sources and reforestation in the Ouanaminthe/Dajabón zone have been identified as vitally important tasks both by the governments of Haiti and the Dominican Republic, and by a string of international donors (see below). For this reason, the HSG is astounded that a free zone development covering 65 hectares will be built on the edge of an area - the province of Dajabón - that is considered environmentally vulnerable. Haiti is a country with an unemployment rate of well-over 60%. The inevitable consequence of the development of the Ouanaminthe free zone and the estimated 20,000 direct jobs and 40,000 indirect jobs that will result from it, will be the rapid and unregulated growth of sprawling shantytowns in the proximity of Ouanaminthe and Dajabón. But it won't be just the free zone workers and their families with housing needs. Tens of thousands of other Haitians will flock to the area too in hope of making a living. Unregulated shantytown developments lacking basic sanitation inevitably produce vast amounts human and commercial waste that quickly pollutes water sources, in particular, and the wider environment, in general. Shantytown inhabitants also constitute a massive market for charcoal (used for cooking), and this new demand for wood for charcoal will directly threaten the remaining tree cover that is deemed so crucial to preserve the region's watershed. The Haiti Support Group calls on the governments of Haiti and the Dominican Republic to explain how the Ouanaminthe free zone can be anything but a disaster for the environment, and for the future inhabitants of the Ouanaminthe/Dajabón region.
Background informationFunds going down the drain, trees going up in smoke?The United Nations International Fund for Agricultural Development (IFAD) is lending the Dominican Republic US$14 million for a social and economic development programme for vulnerable populations in the border provinces, which includes the province of Dajabón. According to IFAD, this programme will include environmental conservation works in sensitive areas costing US$ 500,000, and expected environmental benefits of the programme will include reduction of soil erosion, better watershed management and restoration of bio-diversity.As recently as July 2002, Haitian and Dominican authorities participated in a conference in the Dominican capital, Santo Domingo, organised under the auspices of the United Nations Programme against Desertification. There they agreed on the importance of protecting a number of rivers in border areas, including the Dajabón River. At the conference, Dominican Environment Minister, Frank Moya Pons, said that rice farmers in the Dajabón region had complained that deforestation, and a consequent reduction in water for irrigation, had cut rice harvest yields in half in just three years. to preserve water sources. In order to preserve water sources, and to try and contain the desertification process that is advancing from Haiti into the Dominican Republic, the Dominican government announced ambitious reforestation programmes in the Dajabón River Basin. The United Nations Development Programme (UNDP) has also recognised the importance of protecting forests and bio-diversity in the province of Dajabón. Between June 2000 and November 2001, UNDP Dominican Republic made a grant of US$ 21,875 to a strengthen the capacity of a non-governmental organisation working to protect the forests growing in the region of the source of the Dajabón River. Earlier, between September 1997 and February 1999, the UNDP in the Dominican Republic made a US$ 18,000 grant for a training and educational centre to protect indigenous and endemic species in the north-west border zone of Dajabón.
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