HABITAT-CUBA: Economic Crisis Promotes Sustainable Development

By Mario Osava Reprint | | Print |

Mario Osava

ISTANBUL, Jun 4 1996 (IPS) - Economic crisis is good for sustainable behaviour – or at least this is what Cuban example would appear to show.

The disaster provoked by the collapse of socialism in Eastern Europe forced Cuba to “rethink the city” and many other aspects of development, said Selma Diaz, a Cuban non-governmental (NGO) representative at the NGO forum in Istanbul.

The shortage of oil imports, which dropped by half in 1991, forced Cubans back onto their bikes, using alternative sources of energy and planting vegetables in their back gardens.

Necessity seems to have opened the way for sustainable development, said Diaz.

Diaz is leader of the Habitat-Cuba group, whose project “Community Architects,” was amongst the 100 best world projects chosen for presentation in the second United Nations Conference on Human Settlements (Habitat II), this week.

Before the economic crisis, the construction industry was dominated by the State, but now it has become more opened to the people, encouraging participation and reducing costs by using local materials and appropriate technology.

The Cuban architects and urban planners who were previously “without functions,” are now “thinking of taking over power,” joked Diaz.

The “Community Architects” project designs housing projects with the participation of the future beneficiaries, while assessment is offered by the 208 architect members of the “Habitat-Cuba” group.

Construction work is generally completed by the house owners themselves, though low-cost contracted labour is sometimes used.

Since the 1959 revolution in Cuba the nation has been dominated by mass mobilisation, organised “from the top down,” but now there is a “mobilisation from below,” which is “changing the popular outlook,” said Diaz.

Relations between the government and the NGOs are different in Cuba to those of other nations, as the State here has always taken responsibility for social development, said Lazaro Mora, from the Centre of European Studies – a Havana NGO.

But the role of civil society is becoming stronger, and “the participation of the population in problem-solving is more important now than ever,” said Mora.

However, Diaz feared that once the economic crisis was overcome, there would be a “return to the big prefabricated panels and industrial construction.”

“There are people already thinking this way in several of the ministries,” he added.

Meanwhile, Mora spoke of the social conquests made on the island, criticising the toughening of the US economic blockade.

He said the Cuban experience mainly differed from the neoliberal model in that foreign investors here offer technology and markets for the goods produced.

President of the state-run National Housing Institute, Mario Cabello Marante, said the government only built 30 percent of the buildings finished in 1995, while the other 70 were being done by private companies or the people themselves.

He said 85 percent of Cuban homes belong to the people living in them, and that the economic crisis had propelled the government into decentralisation, allowing for participation, the use of local materials and facilities, and providing a space for initiative.

Most of these projects give priority to working families in “the emerging sectors,” or exporters, like the sugar, food, nickel, tourism and biotechnology industries in order to “stabilise the workforce in these sectors” and help overcome the economic crisis, said Mora.