ENVIRONMENT-CUBA: The Challenge Posed by Growth in Times of Crisis

By Dalia Acosta Reprint | | Print |

Dalia Acosta

HAVANA, Jan 30 2001 (IPS) - Economic growth at a time of scarce funds poses a real challenge to sustainable development, especially in a fragile ecosystem like Cuba’s, warned experts with the Economic Commission for Latin America and the Caribbean (ECLAC).

In the current context of reforms and stabilisation of the economy, more resources must be assigned to protecting the environment, according to the book “The Cuban Economy in the Nineties: Structural Reform and Economic Perfomance” published by the United Nations regional agency.

The 795-page book, in which a host of authors analyse the impact of the economic crisis gripping this Caribbean island nation throughout the 1990s, as well as the scope of the reforms undertaken by the socialist government of Fidel Castro, concludes that Cuba has an adequate legal and institutional framework for environmental conservation.

Raúl Brañes and Alfredo Ham, the authors of the section on the environment in Cuba, also note that the archipelago does not yet present the marked environmental decline observed in other parts of the world, and that there is still a chance of preserving the nation’s natural wealth.

But, they warn, “vital activities” like nickel, oil and gas extraction and the development of the tourism sector at a time when foreign exchange is scarce pose a serious challenge for sustainable development.

According to the ECLAC experts, Cuba must earmark more resources for conservation in order to make broader afforestation schemes possible, prevent the degradation of the soil, reduce water pollution and protect biological diversity.

Funds are also needed to upgrade the country’s water, sewerage and solid waste treatment systems, say Brañes and Ham.

The economic crisis that hit Cuba in the wake of the collapse of the Soviet Union and east European socialist bloc peaked from 1990 to 1993, when Gross Domestic Product (GDP) plunged 34.8 percent.

As the economy began to improve, Cuba received 1.8 million tourists last year, extracted more than 3.5 million tonnes of oil and gas, and produced 70,000 tonnes of nickel plus cobalt. However, the liquidity of state coffers remained extremely limited.

Cuba’s minister of Science, Technology and the Environment, Rosa Elena Simeón, said last September that despite its economic limitations, the Cuban state assigned 15.1 percent of its 1999 budget and 7.9 percent of its 2000 budget to preserving the environment.

In recognition of Cuba’s environmental policy, the United Nations Environment Programme (UNEP) decided that its central World Environment Day event on Jun 5 would take place in Cuba, the minister pointed out.

In the 1990s, Havana incorporated the concept of sustainable development into the Cuban constitution, created the ministry of Science, Technology and the Environment, and approved law 81 on the environment and the legal framework for applying it.

Meanwhile, the need to raise public awareness on the environment was assumed as a priority by local authorities after a 1999 survey indicated that 75 percent of Cuba’s population of 11 million believed the term “environment” simply meant “nature.”

Local experts say the degradation of soil, a problem plaguing 60 percent of Cuba’s total land area, is the country’s biggest environmental problem, closely followed by pollution of fresh and salt water sources.

Cuba comprises an archipelago of 110,992 square kilometres of land, made up of the main island and a large number of islets and keys. The country presents 42 clearly distinguishable ecosystems, 6,500 species of plants and more than 16,000 identified species of fauna.

The fragility of the archipelago’s ecosystems, plus the manner in which natural resources have been exploited, have seriously damaged the habitat over the past 400 years – a situation that was aggravated by the economic crisis, the ECLAC publication observes.

According to the study, Cuba’s biological diversity is threatened by inadequate management of certain fragile ecosystems, which has led to the destruction of the natural habitats of various species.

Threats are also posed by the failure to rotate crops with the recommended frequency, and by the excessive use of chemical products, although in the past few years biological fertilisers and pesticides have been more and more widely adopted.

As a result of the actions undertaken by the government in the past few years, official sources say 24,000 tonnes less of pollutants were released into the environment in 1999.

The afforestation scheme implemented over the past few years, meanwhile, curbed the decline in forested areas, and launched an incipient recovery, despite the low survival rates of the new trees planted.

And thanks to clean-up efforts in the Havana bay, ranked among the 10 most heavily-polluted in the world, oily substances per litre of water were reduced from 2.7 mms in 1985 to 0.3 mms last year.

However, in 1997, there were 2,355 documented sources of pollution in Cuba, 46 percent of which had no treatment systems whatsoever, and the rest of which had faulty systems, according to the ECLAC experts.

The book, the circulation of which has been limited in Cuba, adds that although there are no reliable studies, there are areas, like the capital, where air quality may be poor.

The authors also stress the need to build an “ecological culture” among the population, which in the conditions of austerity of the “special period” – the official euphemism for the economic crisis – “is perhaps the most important environmental challenge.”