Noticias

This Holy Week marks the ninth anniversary of the “Emerald Coast Rescue” initiative, designed and implemented by the Tropicalia Foundation since 2012, and replicated in Playa Arriba since 2016 by the Miches City Council. This year, the initiative is being led by the recently created El Seibo-Miches Hotel and Tourism Association (Promiches), supported by local tourism businesses that make up the Miches Pro-Tourism Group, and by the public sector: the El Cedro Municipal Directorate, the National Police, the Specialized Tourist Security Corps, the Dominican Navy, Civil Defense, and the Ministry of Environment and Natural Resources.

The model, while seemingly unsophisticated at first glance, has proven highly efficient over its nine years of operation, as it proactively anticipated the impacts of future tourism. It foresaw the increase in visitor flow resulting from the construction of the Uvero Alto – Miches highway, the development of the beach for tourism, and the overall development of the destination. In 2012, when it was designed, Costa Esmeralda did not require protection from any particular threat. However, the project’s name was chosen with future threats in mind, threats well-known to industry stakeholders and meticulously studied by the consulting firm Q4TRE, which was contracted by the Ministry of Tourism to analyze the country’s beaches and the environmental and social threats posed by tourism between 2010 and 2012.

Nearly a decade after its inception, the project has been successful in bringing together stakeholders who believe that tourism development must be orderly, or it cannot exist at all. Without order and regulation, tourism entails an additional cost that is difficult to bear in terms of negative environmental and social impacts on the areas targeted by that development. This is not only because it degrades the quality of life of host communities, but also because it diminishes the value of existing investments and ultimately discourages new ones, which are necessary to maintain the destination’s competitiveness.

The best way to manage tourism is through an analysis that allows for the management of future risks, anticipating needs and promoting necessary investments before the lack of solutions begins to impact the development process itself, increasing the cost of implementing those solutions over time. This vicious cycle, like cancer, can be fatal if left unchecked.

The early implementation of regulations and order for tourism requires a conscious and consistent effort to communicate with the various stakeholders involved in the tourism sector. In areas with a weak tourism culture and low levels of social capital, prior efforts are needed to formalize representative groups of these stakeholders, so they can later be involved in a comprehensive plan that everyone understands and supports from their respective perspectives. This is why, during the first years of implementation, and as society reaches a certain level of “tourism maturity,” it is normal to encounter resistance and reluctance to the imposition of regulations, as an expression of resistance to change. This reluctance must be managed, and the support of public sector authorities is essential for this, not to impose, but to guide and mediate.

In the case of Costa Esmeralda and Miches, we are talking about an environment with very low levels of tourism culture and social capital, as well as historical conflicts related to land ownership in areas with tourism potential—something very common in the country, and especially in the eastern region, due to weaknesses in the judicial and land tenure systems. This complicates the task of organizing and regulating tourism, and it is also a very Dominican characteristic to expect others to be governed by the same rules, but not oneself.

However, this situation has not diminished, in the slightest, the interest of the members of the El Seibo-Miches Hotel and Tourism Association (Promiches) and the national and local authorities in implementing an environmentally responsible and socially inclusive tourism development model in Miches, and, as Promiches so aptly proclaims, learning from the lessons of other destinations to do things right from the start. The results of this effort speak for themselves:

1. Significant increase in coastal vegetation in the most visited parts of the beach.
2. Proper management of solid waste, through beach signage, implementation of regular cleaning days, installation of sufficient trash cans and permanent waste collection.
3. Enabling a parking area outside the dunes (+100 meters from the coast), during the dates of greatest visitation.
4. I support law enforcement organizations to have a presence on the beach during peak visiting periods.
5. Implementation of a monitoring and protection program for sea turtles.

Looking ahead, we plan to implement a comprehensive coastal management plan; restore the coastal and coral ecosystem; improve solid waste management through a permanent cleaning program; enhance service infrastructure and visitor safety; and integrate local offerings into the demand generated by the tourism development of this area.

The doubts generated by the change will be answered with results, and space by space we will implement a different development model, orderly, without cost overruns; avoiding, compensating or mitigating the environmental impact; and generating well-being for all those who with sacrifice and dedication participate in this beautiful sector.