In March 2005, a multidisciplinary planning team began actions for the development of the "Management Plan for the Juan Bautista Pérez Rancier National Park" (Valle Nuevo), with the objective of obtaining a practical and operable Management Plan, which would allow medium and long term adequate management and conservation of the natural resources of the protected area.
diagnosis-of-the-area-critic-dac-national-park-juan-bautista-perez-rancier-valle-nuevoThe development of the Management Plan takes as its orientation tool the “Methodological Guide for the Preparation and Updating of Management Plans of the Dominican Republic”, prepared by the Directorate of Protected Areas with the advice of GTZ.
Based on the methodological guide, the "diagnostic phase" of the protected area was carried out, during its development it was concluded that it was necessary to delve into some thematic areas due to existing information gaps, as well as the proposal of the planning team to guide the " Management Plan" towards an approach of "Payment of Environmental Services" under the modality of "Environmental Compensation".
Under the previous consideration, it was decided to develop a Diagnosis of Critical Areas, whose main objective is to contribute to the development of a more realistic, practical and operable “zoning”. This is also a complementary measure to the biological studies carried out by the “Fundación Moscoso Puello” within the framework of the elaboration of the Comprehensive Ecological Evaluation of a protected area.
That is why a series of participatory workshops and micro-workshops were designed where the main objective was the validation of the ecological, social, economic, productive and environmental information of the PNJBPR and its buffer zone (influence), as well as the identification of critical areas thematic and physical, which were subsequently verified through secondary information and field trips.
The development of the "Diagnosis of Critical Areas" (DAC), in addition to contributing to the development of an internal zoning of the PNJBRP, is the basis for prioritizing actions at the level of strategies, goals and activities in the programs and subprograms of management of the protected area, being a complementary study to: 1. Land Use Capacity Study (ECUT); 2. Rapid Socioeconomic Characterization (CSR); 3. Water Valorization Probe (SVH); 4. Proposal for an Environmental Compensation Approach (CAM); and 5. Updating of the Land Use and Coverage Map.
In fact we can consider that the PNJBPR Management Plan is developed on two transversal axes that will allow its applicability:
- Payment of Environmental Services under the modality of Environmental Compensation; Strategic Planning based on "Territorial Planning".
The methodology that was applied for the development of the "Diagnosis of Critical Ares" (DAC) was developed in the area of strategic planning for " protected areas", being used on several occasions for the development of Territorial Planning Plans, this duality allows presupposing that the results satisfy the obtaining of data that feed the transversal axes of the Management Plan.
For the development of the "Diagnosis of Critical Areas" (DAC), the participation of local actors from various development sectors, but mainly members of the communities, of the 33 internal and external communities that make up the PNJBPR mosaic, During the various activities carried out, members of more than 26 of them were present.
Having also carried out the field checks necessary to verify the critical thematic and physical areas, with this it can be asserted that the necessary information is cross-referenced for a "Diagnostic of Critical Areas" with the quality necessary to be used in strengthening the " Management Plan for the Juan Bautista Pérez Rancier National Park ”.
1.2 Objectives
Overall objective
Identify critical thematic and physical areas inside and outside the PNJBPR that due to their biophysical, social, historical and cultural characteristics, present deficiencies or opportunities for planning and / or managing the protected area and its buffer zone, allowing the Diagnosis of Critical Areas, the development of a more pragmatic and operable zoning.
Specific objectives
- Obtain information through consultation with key actors (leaders and local institutions) on the location and situation of sites considered critical for planning and / or managing the PNJBPR and its buffer zone. Critical areas that affect or may positively or negatively affect the planning, management and administration of the PNJBPR and its buffer zone. Obtain input for decision-making regarding the treatment to be applied to the critical areas identified in the PNJBPR.
2. Scope of the study
Planning specialist Roger Morales establishes that a critical management area for a PA is a specific site that demands special attention or treatment on an eventual or permanent basis by the management and / or administration programs. Being able to identify itself through different outstanding heterogeneous elements of the landscape, which can positively or negatively influence the planning and management of the PA. Critical areas are classified into:
Critical thematic areas: they are the socio-environmental problems that are recognized by the members of the communities and key actors as those that affect the territory socially, economically and environmentally, most of them do not have a purely territorial focus, but their repetition and frequency in one place certain can transform it into a critical physical area.
Physical critical area: these are the geographical areas that are selected by the key actors and verified by the research team where the number of Social and Environmental problems put pressure on a specific geographic area, making it a "critical area", where it is necessary to concentrate actions within the planning framework to achieve the short and medium term solution of socio-environmental problems.
The main objective of the " Diagnosis of Critical Areas" (DAC) is to collect and analyze the information, to build a zoning based on the system of "landscape ecology" and "territorial ordering". The DAC should be considered as one more tool for collecting and analyzing information on the logical cycle proposed by the “Methodological Guide for the Preparation and Updating of Management Plans for the Dominican Republic”.
Figure 1: The DAC within the flow of preparing the PNJBPR Management Plan
The DAC bases the information analysis system on "landscape ecology", but mainly on the "Situational Strategic Analysis", by identifying thematically and physically the critical areas of conservation, management and protection of the Juan Bautista Pérez Rancier National Park.
The " Situational Strategic Analysis" (AES) seeks to determine in a conceptual and participatory way the: 1. Conditioning factors; 2. Deficiencies; and 3. Potentialities. The crossing of information allows to establish not only the critical areas, but also those latent potentials that must be in a state of latency and that are feasible to be maximized to strengthen the management of the territory and in the current case of the PNJBR.
In the present study the use of all the DAC "methodology" is not planned, it will only be limited to the identification of thematic and physical "critical areas", based on the territorial "conditioning" and "deficiencies", the potentialities will be analyzed in the study of “Diagnosis of Capacity for Public Use” (DCUP), which is part of the “PNJBPR Management Plan Kit”.
By crossing the information produced by the AES in its two main variables "conditioning" and "deficiencies", it is possible to establish the zones of conflict. By deepening the study in the Juan Bautista Pérez Rancier National Park, it can be determined that the 910 square kilometers are with a high level of conflict over the use of natural resources.
The resources assigned to the "Protected Areas" year after year, are reduced from national budgets, the "Management Plans" in most cases try or seek a "paradoxical" way to solve "all" problems that are identified in the "diagnosis phase", at the end a Management Plan based on "good wills" is obtained. The traditional planners of "protected areas" unfortunately when training as environmentalists, lose the notion of the socio-environmental reality, productive and mainly the economic situation of protected area, facing in most cases the constant reality that there are sufficient funds to the implementation of the "good" proposals they have developed.
Despite the fact that the PNJBPR Management Plan has the goodness that there are initial funds for the development of infrastructure and programs to strengthen technical and operational personnel. The resources are not sufficient for the implementation of the management and conservation programs and subprograms. The secret of the success of the Management Plan is not only in promoting a strategy of "environmental compensation", it is also necessary to direct the actions to the concentration of activities during the first five years in specific geographic areas.
The concentration of actions through the identification of geographical areas by the "Diagnosis of Critical Areas" is one of the territorial strategies that will allow the financial resources allocated to the management and conservation of the protected area to be directed. Without forgetting transversal actions that are necessary for the long-term protection of the PNJBPR.
The methodological steps indicate the need to locate the “landscape units” to establish the existing degree of sensitivity, it should be clarified that despite having been identified, using the “Hydrographic Basins” that territorially agglutinate the limits of the PNJBPR. Biophysical characteristics automatically establish the PNJBR territory as having "high ecological sensitivity" which conditions highly restrictive management, which has shown little effectiveness at the Latin American level.
The previous point leads us to immediately consider the development of a zoning proposal that allows generating the necessary synergies for the fulfillment of the conservation objectives of the management category of a "National Park", for this the administrators of the protected area must also break paradigms of management and administration! that in most cases they have proven to be counterproductive in achieving the conservation of the protected area.
The PNJBPR DAC, by itself does not provide all the necessary information for the development of an adequate “zoning”, it is necessary to complete the sequence of studies that will allow a practical and operable zoning.
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