The Government launched, through the Ministries of Environment and Economy, Planning and Development, the Information and Management System for Reforestation Initiatives (Sigir), which will allow online monitoring of all the actions of the National Plan for Reforestation and Restoration of Forest Ecosystems.
Sigir, launched by Ministers Miguel Ceara Hatton, of Environment, and Pável Isa Contreras, of Economy, Planning and Development, will strengthen the coordination, articulation and effectiveness of the different entities of the State and the civil society integrated to the reforestation and restoration actions, which seek to strengthen, above all, the vegetation of the water areas of the Dominican Republic.
“What we are presenting here is the expression of the most basic, because what is not measured there is no way to get results,” said Minister Ceara Hatton.
He defined as a commitment of the Government to know what the entire Dominican society is planting, to strengthen the forest cover of the country and the forests of the watersheds that provide water.
“The commitment is remarkable. Every week they inform us, they ask us for seeds or trees, or they ask us for information about where they can do a planting activity. All this is important, and it is a way for all of us to acquire awareness, to strengthen awareness of the need to regulate water flows, through ensuring effective reforestation,” he said.
Meanwhile, Isa Contreras emphasized that Sigir “has been the result of ideas, effort and continuous work between both ministries and a series of entities, committed to environmental sustainability in the Dominican Republic”.
He recalled that the tool is based on the MiFronteraRD strategy, which has contributed to guide development, based on the analysis of structural gaps, the potential of the territory and especially the demands prioritized by the population located in the border area.
Isa Contreras emphasized that Sigir responds to the priority policies of the National Multi-Year Public Sector Plan 2021-2024, which focus on advancing “towards a Modern and Institutional State”, and to “environmental sustainability and climate change in an island country”.
The launching ceremony, held in the atrium of the Ministry of Environment and Natural Resources, was attended by the Vice Minister of Forestry Resources, José Elías González; the director of Border Zone Development Policies of the Ministry of Economy, Erick Dorrejo; the executive vice-president of Plan Sierra, Inmaculada Adames, and the president of the Sur Futuro Foundation, Melba Segura.
Also present were Yasir Awad Farhan Al-Abdulla, ambassador of Qatar in the Dominican Republic, and Carlos Peguero, vice minister of Tourism in International Cooperation, as well as members of several environmental organizations.
Melba Segura stressed the importance of protecting the country’s forested areas. “More than thirty-five million plants have come out of our nurseries, which we operate in agreement with the Ministry of the Environment,” she emphasized.
“This experience can be important at the time of implementing the digital system that is being launched today by the Ministries of Environment and Economy,” Segura said.
Inmaculada Adames praised the initiative and valued it as “an iconic point in the trajectory of the commitment to restore the forest cover of the Dominican territory and to do so by recording the progress of this urgent and crucial task”.
“The Sigir, as a digital platform, provides us with the means so that each of the public entities, the social service entities that receive public funds or not, the private sector and all those who are carrying out reforestation work, can make known the progress in their goals, and together we will be embroidering the carpet of forest restoration,” said Adames.
“Plan Sierra assumes the commitment to upload to the platform what was reforested in 2021; in 2022, which were 22 thousand tasks, and what we are reforesting in 2023, whose goal is 40 thousand tasks,” he said.
Sigir will strengthen the quality of the administrative records of reforestation actions in the country and the coordination between institutions, to guarantee the effectiveness of interventions and the optimization of the use of resources.
The platform will provide technicians with information with the geographic criteria required for planting species by life zones, through the prioritization of actions in critical areas.
It was designed to identify critical deforested areas, the intervention areas of each institution and plant production nurseries, in addition to registering reforestation actions carried out by public, private, non-profit and international cooperation institutions in the border area.
Sigir makes it possible to measure and monitor the progress and results of reforestation activities every six months in terms of physical (reforested area) and budgetary goals, and geolocation of interventions.
It also facilitates the articulation of the institutions that execute reforestation actions, with the objective of promoting medium-term forestry actions for the border area, as well as the channeling of new sources of financing.
Source: presidencia.gov.do
