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A Sustainable Development Watchdog Initiative in the Dominican Republic

Puntacana Group Foundation: Tourism and Sustainability Go Hand in Hand

For more than 40 years the Puntacana Group has been a pioneer in sustainable tourism policies in the Dominican Republic. The Group’s vision has been to develop a tourism destination while at the same time guaranteeing the protection of the country’s natural resources. Today, Puntacana is the country’s most important tourism destination at the international level and exhibits the largest growth in the entire Caribbean region. This is proof that focusing on environmental sustainability, aside from being of the utmost importance, is very profitable. In 1994 the Group founded the Puntacana Ecological Foundation (today known as the Grupo Puntacana Foundation), an organization that works to protect and recover the region’s natural resources and contribute to the country’s sustainable development. In 1999 it created the Sustainability Center, in alliance with Cornell University, with the objective of finding solutions to the Caribbean’s environmental challenges. Beginning in 2004 it began to develop an Alliance Program for Ecological Sustainable Coastal Areas (PESCA), with the goal of balancing the region’s continuous growth and development of its coastal areas and coral reefs. In 2007, the organization began to implement the program Zero Discharge as a way of handling in a comprehensive manner the solid waste generated by the Group’s tourism facilities. The Foundation also operates the Indigenous Eyes Reserve and Ecological Park, consisting of 1,500 acres of tropical forest and home to 12 sweet-water lagoons. It also successfully manages the country’s largest recycling facilities as well as implements various initiatives to integrate the local community in the projects developed by the Group in favor of the tourism industry, among other initiatives. Sustainability efforts are always the main focus.

Source: Towards a Sustainable Development and the Green Economy in the Dominican Republic

More information: www.grupopuntacana.com.do and www.puntacana.org

Watch here a video on what the Puntacana Foundation is doing to preserve Coral Reefs in the Dominican Republic