I am taking the liberty of following up this comment by Tom F. in the Haiti thread in the DR Debates forum:
I am carrying over my comment from the Haiti thread, which was tangential to the discussion there:
What are people's thoughts on this? Is it in anyone's interest to have a situation where people from rural areas flock to the cities?
Chiri
Plan Sierra, Plan Quisqueya, reforestation projects, lets start a new thread on the environmental forum.
After working in rural areas in various parts of the country, it is evident the younger generation is not staying. If the road is maintained and it isn't too difficult to get back and forth, it happens less. Maybe thats why the government does such a poor job on the roads in the campos.
I am carrying over my comment from the Haiti thread, which was tangential to the discussion there:
Plan Sierra sounds like an astoundingly ill-thought out concept. Cost-effective maybe, but what about the long term consequences of excessive urbanisation, such as we see now? Sprawling marginal neighbourhoods with little or no infrastructure, high unemployment and underemployment, rising crime rate... talk about environmental doom and gloom!
In the seventies the DR, like many other Latin American countries had a 30-70 urban rural demographic balance. This figure (again, as in most other comparable countries) is now reversed.
A more sensible and sustainable plan would have been to promote realistic economic alternatives for the rural population that do not have a negative impact on the environment. Coffee production is just one example, others would be managed forestry programmes, like the acacia cultivation in many areas in the eastern Cibao region, and locally marketable food crops. Preventing migration to the cities is far more productive in the long-term.
What are people's thoughts on this? Is it in anyone's interest to have a situation where people from rural areas flock to the cities?
Chiri