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		Nature Conservancy Magazine: Summer 2006 Nature Conservancy Magazine Waiting for the Sky Poverty, Conservation   Audio chat Full Circle Nature Stories Podcast Nature Landmarks Nature Books Nature Travel Nature Preserves Subscribe Previous Issues

The Poverty / Conservation Equation

Page 5

Nestled in the highland forests of the Dominican Republic, the community of Los Dajaos has used greenhouses, drip irrigation and other sustainable agricultural techniques to reduce by 70 percent the amount of land needed for cultivation. Photo © Carolyn Drake  Reforestation efforts, aided by the Conservancy, have helped restore waterways in this crucial watershed. Photo © Carolyn Drake   Framing the Debate Does Conservation Matter to the Poor? by Jeffrey Sachs Is Poverty Relevant to Conservation? by M.A. Sanjayan Can We Conserve Ecosystems by Fighting Poverty? by Gregory Mock

Madre de las Aguas is also an oasis of biodiversity: About 90 percent of its amphibians and reptiles, 43 percent of its butterflies, 40 percent of its plant species, and 10 percent of its birds are found nowhere else in the world. But a recent ecological assessment conducted by the Conservancy and local partners found that Madre de las Aguas is under siege. Deforestation, uncontrolled fires, expansion of sun-grown coffee fields and hillside agriculture are causing soil erosion and significant species loss.

“You have to respect the natural resources, especially in a small island like this,” says José Cruz, an industrial engineer who moved to Los Dajaos in the mid-1980s to escape the frenetic pace of the Dominican capital.

Cruz, an energetic man of 67, is part mad scientist, part conservation visionary. His 60-acre coffee farm and greenhouse serve as a testing ground for most of the agricultural projects under way in Los Dajaos. And it was his idea to build a laboratory in the highlands that works with plant-tissue cultures.

“It was a dream. Many people said, ‘How can poor farmers living in the mountains manage this type of technology?’” says Omar Martínez, an engineer with the Falconbridge Foundation, one of the project’s funders. “But they’ve produced great results, both for the local economy and for the environment.”

With the help of visiting technicians, Cruz and his neighbors designed a low-tech system for the laboratory powered by a micro-hydroelectric plant. From a single healthy strawberry stalk, they can produce thousands of seedlings that mature in a disease-free environment inside green-glass milk bottles. The plants are then transferred to plastic pots in a greenhouse with a drip irrigation system.

The method has reduced the pressure to clear forests because local farmers can earn more growing produce and flowers in a couple of hundred square feet of greenhouse than by harvesting five acres of beans. Even counting land now used for growing tayota squash, the farmers have reduced their cultivation space by 70 percent. They have reforested the remaining land, with help from the Conservancy. Now they sustainably harvest trees through a system of permits.

In the process, the forest has re-bounded, and with it the Yaque River, one of the country’s main tributaries. Where the forest cover is gone, water rushes down hillsides like rain off a metal roof, taking topsoil with it. But where there are trees, their roots make the hillside act as a sponge, retaining moisture and releasing it gradually into the river.

The transformation in the villagers’ daily life is dramatic. “Those are no longer poor people’s houses. They can make money here,” says Andrés Ferrer, who directs the Conservancy’s work in the Dominican Republic. He drives past a spacious concrete house surrounded by an organic Christmas-tree farm.

In working to save this critical habitat, Ferrer and his team of conservationists all emphasize one point: If you want to protect biodiversity, you need to give local residents a stake in preserving it.

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