What about the future of the Dominican Republic?

What about the future of the Dominican Republic?
Such a fascinating book, I cannot resist sharing a second post about it on the same day. I hope you will pardon me that :-)

"The exodus of Dominicans from rural areas to the cities and overseas has decreased pressure on the forests, but deforestation is continuing especially near the Haitian border, where desperate Haitians cross the border from their almost completely deforested country in order to fell trees for making charcoal and for clearing land to farm as squatters on the Dominican side."
[...]
"Overseas trips by Dominicans, visits to the country by tourists, and television make people well aware of the higher standard of living in Puerto Rico and the United States."
[...]
"The country is becoming increasingly dedicated to a consumerism that is not currently supported by the economy and resources of the Dominican Republic itself, and that depends partly on earnings sent home by Dominicans working overseas. All of those people acquiring large amounts of consumer products are putting out correspondingly large amounts of wastes that overwhelm municipal waste disposal systems."
[...]
"Will the reserve system survive under the pressures that it faces? Is there hope for the country? On these questions I again encountered divergence of opinion among even my Dominican friends.

Reasons for environmental pessimism begin with the fact that the reserve system is no longer backed by the iron fist of Joaquín Balaguer. It is underfunded, underpoliced, and has been only weakly supported by recent presidents, some of whom have tried to trim its area or even to sell it.

The universities are staffed by few well-trained scientists, so that they in turn cannot educate a cadre of well-trained students.  The government provides negligible support for scientific studies. Some of my friends were concerned that the Dominican reserves are turning into parks that exist more on paper than in reality" 
#ZldBookCollapse  
#ecology
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Collapse:_How_Societies_Choose_to_Fail_or_Succeed