INTEC researcher and teacher exposes the impact of sargassum for Dominican tourism
SANTO DOMINGO -. The coordinator of the Sargassum Interdisciplinary Research Group of the Instituto Tecnológico de Santo Domingo (INTEC), Ulises Jauregui Haza, exposed the actions that this academy has done for the monitoring and massive influx of sargassum on the Dominican beaches, phenomenon which affects coastal systems and tourist industry.
When participating in the ExpoTur 2022 Summit, organized by the magazine Factor de Éxito, Jáuregui Haza stressed that the impact of sargassum on tourism is related to costs, since cleaning the beaches has significantly increased the budget for tourism management .
Jauregui Haza, who was one of the participants in the panel “Machinery behind the tourism industry”, He commented that currently the final destination of sargassum is landfills and, therefore, it becomes a solid waste that decomposes with the emission of greenhouse gases.
Since 2017, INTEC has created a multidisciplinary team of researchers, who are working on a dozen study projects aimed at identifying opportunities to take advantage of the sargassum that reaches the Dominican coasts and reduce the environmental impact of algae influxes.
Applications
He too coordinator of the doctorate in Environmental Sciences of INTEC He stated that, to face this phenomenon, the possibilities of use must be evaluated, since sargassum is a useful biomass, so the environmental problem must be converted into an opportunity for economic and social development in a sustainable manner.
Jáuregui Haza expressed that sargassum can be applied in agriculture, with the development of compost and liquid biofertilizers and, in the livestock part, with the processing of feed for livestock.
Jáuregui Haza said that INTEC is working on another application that is obtaining activated carbon, an initiative that the academy has promoted for more than six years in collaboration with the Franco-Dominican company TECMALAB, with the University of the Antilles in Guadeloupe and the National Institute for Applied Research in Rouen, France.
Another of the actions that Jáuregui Haza recommended to confront sargassum is to identify the actors that intervene as part of the triple helix of the national impulse, made up of the public, private and academic sectors, who have been working with this issue for around 11 years.
About the event
The panel, held within the framework of the ExpoTur Summit, was also attended by the CEO of Grupo Eulen, Karina Castellanos Rivera; as well as the CEO of Fortech, Maurice de Castro and was moderated by the president of the Dominican Caribbean Traveling Network, Miguel Calzada.
These panelists discussed the structure of tourism as a sector of the economy, an industry where various agents intervene, all with the same objective: to satisfy the needs of those who visit the Dominican Republic.