The remaining environmental spending, which includes biodiversity, waste management, and protection of air, water, and soil, increased by 12.4%, from RD$7,778.90 million to RD$8,740.52 million, according to calculations based on data from the ONE (National Statistics Office)
SANTO DOMINGO. – Of the RD$4,055.66 million allocated to climate change in 2025, 73.99% corresponded to reducing the risk of climate disasters, some RD$3,001 million, according to the infographic on environmental and climate change spending that the National Statistics Office (ONE) published on October 22, 2026.
In 2024, that same line totaled RD$246.66 million, according to the Environmental Statistics Bulletin No. 10 of the ONE itself, from June 2025, and the jump in that line explains a good part of the increase in total environmental spending, which went from RD$8,620.59 million in 2024 to RD$12,796.18 million in 2025, an increase of 48.44% according to the ONE.
With those figures, the absolute increase was RD$4,175.59 million, and disaster risk reduction contributes about RD$2,754 million, or 66%.
Spending on climate change increased from RD$841.69 million in 2024, representing 9.78% of environmental spending, to RD$4,055.66 million in 2025, or 32%, according to the bulletin and infographic. Disaster risk reduction accounted for 29.3% of climate spending in 2024, based on calculations using the bulletin's figures (RD$246.66 million out of RD$841.69 million), and rose to 73.99% in 2025.
While climate spending nearly quintupled, mitigation barely budged. The bulletin reports RD$5.19 million allocated for mitigation in 2024, the lowest amount among the seven categories in its breakdown.
The 2025 infographic groups mitigation in the "other" category, which accounts for 0.45% of climate spending, and in a footnote assigns it 0.14%, about RD$5.7 million according to the calculation with the total for the year, equivalent to 0.04% of the environmental spending for 2025.
The other two smaller lines in the 2024 breakdown also did not grow: climate disaster risk governance went from RD$11.19 million to about RD$7.7 million, and other adaptation measures, from RD$6.91 million to about RD$4.9 million, according to the calculation with the percentages in the infographic, 0.19% and 0.12%.
Bulletin No. 10 describes the pattern for 2024: it indicates that the distribution of climate spending shows a clear focus on risk prevention and reduction, with less spending on disaster mitigation and response, and links that focus to the Dominican Republic's status as a Small Island Developing State, exposed to climate events.
The documents do not detail which programs, institutions or works make up the disaster risk reduction line, nor do they specify whether the 2025 figures correspond to executed spending, as the bulletin for 2024 indicates.
The infographic also includes a disaster response and recovery category, at 10.51%, which does not appear in the 2024 breakdown of the bulletin, so the comparison between the two years depends on the ONE confirming that it is the same classification.
Recommended readings:
