Santo Domingo.- The Dominican Republic, where the vast majority of the population is exposed to dangerous levels of air pollution, is one of the countries in the world most vulnerable to climate change, despite being below the Latin American average in emission of greenhouse gases.
The Dominican authorities try to reduce this vulnerability as much as possible and, as stated in the international report “Economic Outlook for Latin America 2022.
Towards a green and fair transition”, have adopted a range of measures, among which the Strategic Plan for Climate Change 2011-2030 stands out, with the aim of decarbonising the economy and improving the capacity to adapt to the environmental crisis.
According to the study prepared by the Organization for Economic Cooperation and Development, the Economic Commission for Latin America and the Caribbean (ECLAC), the European Commission (EC) and the CAF Latin American Development Bank, in the Dominican Republic, according to 2019 data, per capita greenhouse gas (GHG) emissions were 3.9 tons of carbon dioxide equivalent, lower than the average for Latin America/Caribbean (6.3) and OECD countries ( 9.1).
Regarding the marine protected area, in 2021 it accounted for 18% of its territorial waters, very close to the 18.6% of the OECD and well above the average for the region of 7.3%.
In the Dominican Republic, the big problem is air pollution- in 2019, 100% of its population was exposed to levels that pose risks to human health, compared to the average of 95.4% in Latin America and 61% of the OECD.
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In light of this, work is being done on capacity-building programs for air quality management, environmental impact assessment, and solid waste and marine waste management within the Free Trade Agreement with Central America and the United States.
For the Dominican Republic, among the ten to fifteen countries most vulnerable in the world in the face of the climate crisis, the challenge is to adapt to climate change rather than mitigate it because it is not responsible for the generation of GHGs, as insisted in a recent interview with EFE on Dominican Minister of the Environment, Miguel Ceara Hatton.
With an eye on this adaptation, there is a Dominican National Council for Climate Change, in charge of formulating, implementing and enforcing policies and projects in this regard.
Environmental initiatives follow one another and, thus, last June the first Sustainable Mobility Observatory was created, this 2022 the Ministry of the Environment, the Superintendence of Securities of the Dominican Republic and the International Finance Corporation (IFC) signed an agreement to develop the Green Taxonomy of the Dominican Republic and each year the Department of Agriculture launches plans to minimize the impact of climate change on the sector.
In addition, the Dominican Republic was the third country to sign, in 2021, an agreement with the World Bank’s Forest Carbon Partnership Facility to receive payments for actions aimed at reducing greenhouse gas emissions from deforestation.
