Minister of Environment Bautista Rojas Gomez announced that a first National Forestry Inventory is being prepared with cooperation from the German Cooperation Agency (GIZ). He said the information will be useful to develop policies to help the country adapt to climate change and mitigate damages.
Rojas Gomez spoke during the opening of the 16th Biennial Caribbean Foresters Meeting in Boca Chica. Nearly 100 representatives from 27 countries in the Caribbean, Central America, South America and the United States are here for the weeklong event.
Forest experts from the Americas are here to discuss perspectives on the impact of climate change within the Caribbean region. The meeting is the largest one to date, almost doubling the amount of participants at previous meetings over the past 30 years.
This year’s theme, “Forest Management, Climate Change and Biodiversity: Advancing an Understanding of Caribbean Forest Dynamics and Creating Long-term Regional Networks” also focuses on the need to strengthen international networks and increase collaboration among forestry professionals.
Minister of Environment Bautista Rojas Gomez officially opened the discussions.
“Our Caribbean land and seascapes have met pressing demands since the last time that the Dominican Republic hosted a Caribbean Foresters Meeting, 15 years ago,” said Minister Rojas Gomez. “We have suffered the impact of significant natural disasters in the region, which is but one of the many faces of climate change, and we have become increasingly aware of how our actions directly affect our countries’ ecological integrity. The Dominican Republic feels honored to host this Meeting once again, and we are hopeful that our common collaboration goals will be met, as we look into the future.”
The 2013 Caribbean Foresters Meeting is sponsored by the US Forest Service, the IITF, the US Embassy through the US Agency for International Development (USAID), the United Nations Food & Agriculture Organization (FAO), the Deutsche Gesellschaft fur Internationale Zusammenarbeit (GIZ), and The Nature Conservancy. The Symposium is organized by the Puerto Rican Conservation Foundation.
http://caribbeanforesters.org