CUBA: Beach Recovery to Benefit Tourism, Environment

By Dalia Acosta Reprint | | Print |

Dalia Acosta

HAVANA, Jun 7 2003 (IPS) - The restoration plan for Cuba’s tourism hot spot, Varadero beach, has proved resoundingly successful, achieving the retention of its famed fine white sands, expansion of beach width and preservation of the coastal platform.

Five years ago, the governmental ‘Oceanology’ Institute added a million cubic metres of sand to the beach at Varadero, an international tourist destination on the island’s northern coast, 140 km from Havana.

Today, the sand retention rates reach 80 percent, says Alfredo Cabrera, director of the Varadero Beach Recovery Office, an agency of the Ministry of Science, Technology and Environment.

Cabrera said that maintaining sand quality took a large portion of the 1.7 million dollars that the Cuban government invested last year in environmental projects for the resort area.

Known for its crystalline waters and fine, white sands, Varadero was ranked among the five best beaches in the world in a survey of 23,000 international travellers from countries around the globe.

Among the measures taken to preserve the beach, beyond the addition of sand, are strict regulations on where new buildings may be constructed and the removal of any previously built structures on the dunes.

"It’s not like it was 30 years ago. When I was a boy, the sand was so fine that it was a nuisance, and now there are parts of Varadero that could be any other beach in Cuba," commented local fisherman Rodrigo Estévez.

But the changes at Varadero are not obvious to most tourists. A survey conducted by the Tourism Ministry found that visitors were highly satisfied with a range of aspects, including their personal safety and the quality of the beach.

The resort area today has 14,000 hotel rooms, and there are plans to nearly double that total, but such expansion would take place under a strategy aimed at minimising the environmental impacts of tourism, say official sources.

The positive results of the Cuban experience in preserving its beaches were presented this week at the Fourth International Convention on Environment and Development, ending this weekend in Havana.

Sixteen percent of the coastline of the Cuban archipelago consists of extensions of what experts consider high quality sands, seen as one of the country’s leading natural resources.

The average width of the beach at Varadero is 22 metres, and the average height of the dunes is more than one metre. Water temperatures average 24 degrees Celsius.

Scientists consider beaches one of the ecosystems with least biological diversity, due to their physical homogeneity and low bio-productivity.

But they are vital for the early stages of life of certain fish species and are used by sea turtles for nesting. The beach areas can be used for commercial fish production, but their greatest economic benefit is tourism.

Geographer Ernesto Tristá, of the Oceanology Institute, notes that while direct human impacts accelerate the deterioration of the coastline, these areas are also "subject to natural erosive processes that are linked to the rising sea levels and stronger waves," associated with climate change.

Studies show that the earth’s tropical regions are suffering a sharp deficit in sand production, attributed to rising sea levels and the harm to sea life caused by pollution.

Grains of sand are the product of calcareous marine organisms, like molluscs and coral, living at a depth of eight to 10 metres.

The greatest harm to the coastline is caused by urban expansion and waste, deforestation, construction of roadways, and the introduction of species that are not compatible with the ecosystem.

Beach deterioration is a common problem throughout the islands of the Caribbean. A report by the United Nations Environment Programme (UNEP) in 1996 warned that intensive extraction of beach sand and inappropriate engineering of the coastline – the construction of jetties and dams – were significantly changing the profile and characteristics of the seashores.

The situation is of crucial importance in a region where tourism, centred on vacationers’ desire for relaxation at the beach, is the number one source of revenues for many countries.

Last year, most of the 1.7 million tourists who visited Cuba made at least a day trip to Varadero.

The greatest damage to the Varadero beach occurred in the 1970s and 1980s when, according to official sources, the extraction of sand to be used in construction was intensive and unregulated.

A study by the Oceanology Institute on coastal processes found in 1997 that the beach had been experiencing losses of 50,000 cubic metres of sand annually, and the shoreline was withdrawing an average of 1.2 metres a year.

Similar deterioration was found in the beaches of east Havana, where 24,000 cubic metres of sand were lost each year, with the shoreline receding 50 cm to a metre.

In that area, the removal of casuarina trees and the failure to replace them with another erosion-preventing species meant that the winds carried away enormous amounts of sand.

For those beaches, experts drew up a project that includes sanitation, reforestation, adaptation of urban and environmental criteria, and demolition of structures built close to the shoreline.

"The beaches in east Havana will not be like Varadero, but they have always been good places, especially Santa María. But today it is common to find areas of rocks where there used to always be only sand," commented microbiologist Raquel Díaz.