CUBA-ENVIRONMENT: Stone Bridge Threatens Coastal Ecosystems

By Dalia Acosta Reprint | | Print |

Dalia Acosta

HAVANA, Oct 3 1995 (IPS) - Construction of a stone bridge as part of a tourism development project linking the mainland with the island’s northern cays, threatens to harm the coastal ecosystem of the Cuban archipelago, environmentalists say.

The problem was first observed by ecologists in the 1980s, when they began studying the effects of a bridge project joining Cayo Sabinal with the mainland of Nuevitas, a township 646 kms east of Havana.

A study by the Cuban Institute of Maps and Earth Science at that time found that a lack of infrastructure allowing the circulation of water had caused the disappearance of mangroves, the death of numerous fish and the decrease or migration of other species.

Although their findings were taken into account for future planning, years later the construction of the Cayo Coco bridge showed that noise from construction activity had also frightened away birds and fish.

The project, strongly defended by the government at the end of the last decade, foresaw the linking of some of the most important barrier cays to facilitate tourist access and to allow traffic for the necessary inputs in tourist areas.

“It’s not only the immediate impact” on the environment that concerns us, said a meteorologist during a meeting of environmental groups which took place in Havana, Sep. 18-21. “We are throwing stones into the sea and we don’t know what might happen to them during a hurricane of large magnitude.”

According to specialists in the field, in the area of Cayo Coco, sea water could be trapped in a type of lagoon, without the possibility of circulation. That could set off a chain of other environmental problems.

Cayo Coco, one of the principal tourist centers of the Ciego de Avila province, 448 kilometers from the capital, is part of a U.N. Development Programme (UNDP) project aimed at protecting biodiversity in the Sabana-Camaguey archipeligo, in northern Cuba.

Formed by the islands of Cuba, Youth and another 1,600 small islands and cays, the Cuban archipelago features some 1,200 kilometers of white sand beaches and is rich in corral reefs and other natural resources that have become important tourist attractions.

“Cuba is betting on, and in fact is developing, sustainable tourism,” said Osmani Cienfuegos, minister of tourism, last June, and he gave assurances that this industry subscribed to the principals of protection of the environment.

As in the rest of the Caribbean Sea islands, the beaches constitute one of Cuba’s natural treasures and, experts say, its appropriate development could be converted into one of the main sources of foreign exchange for the national economy.

Tourism was the first branch of the Cuban economy opened to foreign investment at the end of the 1980s, as a fast way to generate revenues needed to meet the economic crisis of 1990.

According to the projections by the international accounting firm Price Waterhouse, if Cuba maintains or increases its capital flows and the state effort concentrated in this sector, by the year 2000, Cuba will receive more than 2.5 million tourists.

Although a new investment law, approved on Sep. 5, requires the preservation of natural surroundings as a prerequisite for any investment on the island, local ecologists fear the kind of overdevelopment of nearby Acapulco and Copacabana.

A report presented to the Forum of the Organization of American States and the Caribbean on the Environment warns that the construction of excessive touristic infrastructure next to the beaches will break down the dunes and the recycling of sand, and will bring contamination by waste products which are not disposable in the sea.

Tourist development has, in more than a few countries, caused the destruction of corral reef segments during the construction of piers and the building of new beach areas in the mangrove zones.

According to experts, massive fumigation of mosquitoes and black flies have eliminated other insects that until now have had an important role in the pollination of plants and as food for insect-eating birds.

Unlike other Latin American countries, Cuba does not suffer the effects of the widening ozone hole, acid rain or air pollution.

The most critical issues here are erosion of soils, salinization of water and contamination of rivers and bays by urban and industrial wastes.

“The commercial success of the cays as tourist attraction essentially depends on the state of preservation of the natural surroundings,” said Rosa Jiminez, a researcher studying the state of marine contamination by land polluters.

In the case of the cays, one must substitute a broad-based tourism for a more selective kind, whose facilities will be different than those of the big luxury hotels of the cities, she said.

“The tourist who visits the barrier cays is not looking for the same experience as one who goes to the city,” Jiminez said.

The question was how to make these stone bridges ease access to the coast and at the same time preserve one of the greatest pleasures of living on a cay – “feeling yourself far away from the mainland, though you have your boat right there behind your cabana.”