Dominican Republic Project

The Earth Institute is collaborating with the Fundacion Global para la Democracia y Desarrollo (FUNGLODE) in the Dominican Republic to promote sustainable economic development. A previous project between FUNGLODE and the Center for International Development (CID) at Harvard University recently examined the roots of Dominican competitiveness, focusing in more depth on the roles of its special economic zones and its tourism sector.

The current project builds on the significant ties built between the institutions and aims at a deeper understanding of the country's future development challenges. There are two components to this project:

Conference series on development challenges for the Dominican Republic. This will address topics key to the Dominican Republic's economic development challenges in the future. We expect this conference series to draw on the Earth Institute and Columbia University's scholarship and expertise in economic development, public health, HIV/AIDS, and climate. Past presentations have been well-received by opinion leaders, policymakers and civil society leaders in the Dominican Republic. These conferences also offer the opportunity to receive community feedback on the findings of this policy research, increasing stakeholder participation in the process of economic development.

A Millennium Development Goals assessment. We have recently completed an assessment of the Dominican Republic's progress toward the UN's Millennium Development Goals (MDG's).  The Millennium Development Goals set targets for reducing poverty, hunger, disease, illiteracy, environmental degradation, and discrimination against women by 2015.

Even though the Dominican Republic is usually classified as a medium income country, poverty is still widespread and the country is far from reaching some of the Millennium Goals. This assessment will support efforts to build a national strategy to meet the MDGs in the Dominican Republic in the next decade. The diagnostic succeeded in highlighting the most difficult challenges for the country and identified key areas of intervention to overcome these obstacles and deficiencies.  Recommendations were offered with clear identification of priorities for action.

Please click here to download a copy of the report, entitled "Meeting the Millennium Development Goals in the Dominican Republic: Identifying Critical Areas for Policy Action."

The Earth Institute offers many advantages in implementing this program with FUNGLODE. Chief among them is the organization's broad mandate and the union of scientific and policy-making expertise.  We also expect that the significant overseas Dominican community in New York City will also help mobilize resources for future work related to the Dominican Republic's development.

Recent Event:

On October 13th, Columbia University hosted a day-long conference entitled

"Dominican-American Relations: Building Bridges for Development."

An Executive Summary of the day's proceedings is available here.

Please click here to view the program and access papers.

 

For more information, contact Lenora Suki.