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.I was therefore sur-prised to find that that dictatorship set up a comprehensive and effectivenational park system in Indonesian New Guinea.I arrived in IndonesianNew Guinea after years of experience in the democracy of Papua NewGuinea, and I expected to find environmental policies much more advancedunder the virtuous democracy than under the evil dictatorship.Instead, Ihad to acknowledge that the reverse was true.None of the Dominicans to whom I talked claimed to understand Bala-guer.In referring to him, they used phrases such as "full of paradoxes," "con-troversial," and "enigmatic." One person applied to Balaguer the phrase thatWinston Churchill used to describe Russia: "a riddle wrapped in a mysteryinside an enigma." The struggle to understand Balaguer reminds me thathistory, as well as life itself, is complicated; neither life nor history is an en-terprise for those who seek simplicity and consistency.In light of that history of environmental impacts in the Dominican Repub-lic, what is the current status of the country's environmental problems, andof its natural reserve system? The major problems fall into eight of the list of12 categories of environmental problems that will be summarized in Chap-ter 16: problems involving forests, marine resources, soil, water, toxic sub-stances, alien species, population growth, and population impact.Deforestation of the pine forests became locally heavy under Trujillo,and then rampant in the five years immediately following his assassina-tion.Balaguer's ban on logging was relaxed under some other recent presi-dents.The exodus of Dominicans from rural areas to the cities and overseashas decreased pressure on the forests, but deforestation is continuing espe-cially near the Haitian border, where desperate Haitians cross the borderfrom their almost completely deforested country in order to fell trees for making charcoal and for clearing land to farm as squatters on the Domini-can side.In the year 2000, the enforcement of forest protection revertedfrom the armed forces to the Ministry of the Environment, which is weakerand lacks the necessary funds, so that forest protection is now less effectivethan it was from 1967 to 2000.Along most of the Republic's coastline, marine habitats and coral reefshave been heavily damaged and overfished.Soil loss by erosion on deforested land has been massive.There isconcern about that erosion leading to sediment buildup in the reservoirsbehind the dams used to generate the country's hydroelectric power.Salin-ization has developed in some irrigated areas, such as at the Barahona SugarPlantation.Water quality in the country's rivers is now very poor because of sedi-ment buildup from erosion, as well as toxic pollution and waste disposal.Rivers that until a few decades ago were clean and safe for swimmingare now brown with sediment and unswimmable.Industries dump theirwastes into streams, as do residents of urban barrios with inadequate ornon-existent public waste disposal.Riverbeds have been heavily damagedby industrial dredging to extract materials for the construction industry.Beginning in the 1970s, there have been massive applications of toxicpesticides, insecticides, and herbicides in rich agricultural areas, such as theCibao Valley.The Dominican Republic has continued to use toxins thatwere banned in their overseas countries of manufacture long ago.Thattoxin use has been tolerated by the government, because Dominican agri-culture is so profitable.Workers in rural areas, even children, routinely ap-ply toxic agricultural products without face or hand protection.As a result,effects of agricultural toxins on human health have now been well docu-mented.I was struck by the near-absence of birds in the Cibao Valley's richagricultural areas: if the toxins are so bad for birds, they presumably are alsobad for people
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Tematy
IndexMark A. Bucknam Responsibility of Command, How UN and NATO Commanders Influenced Airpower over Bosnia (2005)
Walter S. Dunn People of the American Frontier, The Coming of the American Revolution (2005)
Peter Richardson American Prophet, The Life and Work of Carey McWilliams (2005)
Zbrodnia i miłoœć 01 Brandewyne Rebecca Zabójcza impreza 2005 10
Kent Nerburn Chief Joseph & the Flight of the Nez Perce (2005)
Cannabinoids as Therapeutics Raphael Mechoulam (2005) [ISBN 3 7643 7055 6]
Janusz Tazbir Polacy na Kremlu i inne historyje (2005)
Fawkes Sara Na każde jego żądanie 02 O dwa słowa za dużo
Coulter Catherine PieÂśń 06 Klatwa Penwyth
Adwokat Harr Jonathan