Ecobreves – CUBA: Fighting Desertification

By IPS Correspondents and - - Reprint | | Print |

HAVANA, Jul 21 2002 (IPS) - Cuban technicians are receiving training in Germany to recover an arid zone in the southeastern province of Guantánamo, one of the Caribbean island's most fragile ecosystems. The initiative is part of a program financed by the Cuban government and the European Union to convert that part of Guantánamo into a regional model for sustainable development.

Beginning next year, the program is to ensure the self-sufficiency of families in supplies of vegetables and animal-based foods, and to create jobs for more than 30,000 of the area's residents.

More than a sixth of Cuban territory, of 110,000 square km, is partially or totally desertified, a phenomenon the National Program against Desertification and Drought, created in 1995, seeks to reverse.