The sudden shift from drought to heavy rainfall that caused severe flooding in central Cuba drove home to the authorities the need to redesign preparedness and prevention plans for climate-related emergencies.

“These unusually heavy rains in such a short period of time made it necessary for us to update our plans and modify procedures to adapt to climate change-related phenomena,” said Inés María Chapman, president of the National Institute of Water Resources (INRH).

The rainfall accumulated in just 48 hours made it necessary to open the floodgates of the Zaza reservoir in central Cuba. Credit:Vicente Brito-AIN/IPS

The INRH’s responsibilities include acting in a timely manner, with foresight, and the constant monitoring of every dam and reservoir in Cuba.

For example, Chapman described the measures taken to keep the Zaza reservoir and others in the central province of Sancti Spíritus stable as “a real-time exercise in how to act in the face of weather events.”
During a tour of the Zaza reservoir, the largest man-made reservoir on the island, the official pointed out that just a few days ago, INRH experts were discussing the possible need to accelerate the well-drilling programme in order to keep up rice production.

The problem was the low level of water in the reservoir, because the forecasts indicated that the drought would continue over the next few months. But the situation changed abruptly, and in less than 48 hours, the Zaza reservoir received more than 800 million cubic metres of water.

Official sources say the danger presented by the reservoir has been documented in the civil defence system’s contingency plans since a storm filled it in an unexpectedly short time in June 1972, while it was still being built, causing severe cracks.

But never before had the reservoir filled up as quickly as it did from Wednesday May 23 to Friday May 25. Last week’s rains made this the rainiest month in the history of the region, with 500 mm of accumulated rainfall – more than 300 percent of the monthly median.

Although May marks the start of the rainy season in Cuba, which runs through October, this month actually ended with a major rainfall deficit on a national level, far below the totals registered in the same month in 1995, 1997, 1998, 2000, 2004, 2005 and 2008, according to sources at the Meteorology Institute’s Forecast Centre.

The forecast for this month was for near normal precipitation in all of the country’s regions. And in the case of central Cuba, estimates ranged from 135 to 265 mm – far below the total accumulated after last week’s heavy rains.

Scientists say the effects of climate change will include a rise in the intensity and frequency of extreme weather events. The biggest threats to Caribbean island nations like Cuba are hurricanes, drought, heavy rainfall and a rise in the sea level.

Timely evacuation

Some 6,000 people were urgently evacuated from areas near the Zaza reservoir last week due to the need to open the floodgates when the reservoir’s capacity was exceeded.

The local press reported that the bodies of two men who had been reported missing were found on Saturday May 26: French citizen Alain Manaud and Silvestre Fortún of Cuba, whose car was swept away when the Santa Lucía river flooded in the municipality of Cabaiguán.

“A lot more could have happened,” Marta Pérez, a homemaker who lives in the city of Yaguajay in the province of Sancti Spíritus, told IPS by phone. “In my house, the water rose more than a metre, but that was the least of our problems. I have family near the Zaza reservoir and I didn’t stop worrying until I knew they were safe.”

When she woke up on Thursday May 24, Pérez found that the water was up to her knees because the Máximo river had flooded its banks.

The flooding occurred less than a week after the “Meteoro” emergency preparedness and evacuation drills that are organised every year in Cuba by the civil defence system and other authorities, based on the specific vulnerabilities faced in each region.

Last week, the civil defence system kicked into action again when rivers and reservoirs overflowed their banks, flooding sugar cane and other crops, damaging bridges and railways, and cutting off land communications between western and eastern Cuba.

Preliminary damage assessment

A preliminary damage assessment presented by the provincial defence council of Sancti Spíritus includes the collapse of 47 homes and damage to another 1,156 – at a time when the country is still recovering from the devastation caused by hurricanes Ike, Gustav and Paloma in 2008.

Added to this is the damage to more than 3,350 hectares of crops and 5,700 urban farming lots, as well as recently planted sugar cane and 1,400 hectares of rice that are in need of draining. Fish farming, beekeeping and dairy production were also affected.

Although more than 20,000 head of cattle were taken to safe areas, the preliminary reports indicate that at least 100 died of cold.

In the city of Trinidad, a popular tourist destination, damage was caused to the channel of the San Juan de Letrán river, causing serious problems in the water supply system. The authorities said reparations depend on access to difficult-to-reach areas.

José Ramón Monteagudo, president of the provincial defence council, called for recovery work to begin, and for vital services like electricity to be restored. He also issued an alert on hygiene and sanitation.

“We need to improve the rational use of water to ensure local supplies and cover the needs of agriculture and industry,” said the president of the INRH, noting that despite the rainfall in the central region, drought conditions continued to prevail in the rest of the country

By Fabíola Ortiz
BONSUCESSO, Brazil, Apr 30 2012 (IPS)

In the green belt of market gardens that feeds the Brazilian city of Rio de Janeiro, women farmers are learning environmentally friendly techniques in response to extreme weather events and their effects on the land.

In the hilly Serrana region of the southeastern state of Rio de Janeiro, where many women are small-scale farmers, violent storms in January 2011 caused floods and mudslides that destroyed practically the entire production of vegetables in the area.

The producers are now back to their normal activities, but with greater concern for a less invasive type of agriculture that is better adapted to the new realities of climate change in their lives, 38-year-old Rosana Nogueira, who runs a small family farm, told IPS.

Her 24-hectare farm is in Lúcios, an area that is home to 400 families in the Formiga river basin in the rural district of Bonsucesso, near the city of Teresópolis, one of the zones worst hit by last year’s storms in which 916 people died state-wide.

Nogueira and her 68-year-old mother, Jandira Nogueira, practise farming techniques with a low impact on the environment, protecting the vegetation along river banks and controlling soil erosion, an approach that is starting to help mitigate climate change effects in the area.

Rebecca Tavares, regional director of U.N. Women for Brazil and the Southern Cone region, told IPS that in Brazil, as across the world, rural women “make vital contributions to the welfare of their families and communities, as well as the local and national economies.”

In the face of the challenges posed by climate change, they “have a pre-eminent role to play in environmental management, food production and social reproduction,” she said.

Farmers in the Formiga river basin have seen increasing signs of global warming year after year. Summers are longer, temperatures are higher, and storms are more frequent and more intense, while winters are increasingly dry. All these things affect the cycles of production and the traditional seasons for planting and harvesting.

“We weren’t used to environmental disasters like last year’s. I have lived on this property all my life, and my father has been here for 73 years, and we have never seen anything like it, nor did my grandfather tell him about anything of the sort,” said Rosana Nogueira, whose family was completely cut off for 15 days and was without electricity for a month.

Nogueira family farm with a crop system adapted to climate change. Credit: Fabíola Ortiz/IPS

Production recovered in the second quarter of 2011, and farmers developed a new awareness – still in its infancy – of the need to care for the environmental aspects of their work on the land.

“Many farmers still take over forested areas to expand agricultural production, although the forests are a defence against climate change, but others are beginning to understand,” said Nogueira as she toured her farm with IPS. New greenhouses, vegetation planted on hill slopes and recent reforestation of the river bank are some responses to the disaster.

Small farmers in the area are also changing their minds about pesticide use. “We used to think that using a lot of pesticides was the way to increase production, so much so that farmers themselves would experience toxic effects when they sprayed the poisons. Now farmers want to get rid of agrochemicals,” she said.

Nogueira has the definite impression that there are more and more women farmers in the area in charge of small and medium farms, although she has no figures to prove it. Sometimes they are on their own, and sometimes their husbands give them a hand, but the men usually have wage-earning jobs in nearby towns and cities.

And even when a man is running a farm, his wife almost always works alongside him, she added.

“Women pay more attention to the details of the productive process, and we are better organised. We are more concerned about the environment and we are more determined about preserving it and farming in eco-friendly ways,” said Nogueira, who is six months pregnant and lives on the farm with her parents, her husband and their 12-year-old son. All four adults work on the farm.

“Women are more farsighted about the future of their families than men, and we are more open to innovation. The way forward for farming is sustainability,” she said with conviction.

The destructive storms of 2011 caused 12,000 dollars’ worth of losses on the Nogueira farm. Nearly 30 percent of the crops were damaged and 90 percent of the harvest was ruined.

The Nogueiras produce a variety of vegetables and some citrus fruits, and had to use their savings to rebuild greenhouses and regenerate the soil.

Nogueira was able to secure a grant of 8,000 dollars from the Sustainable Rural Development Programme in Micro-Watersheds (Rio Rural), implemented by the state of Rio de Janeiro’s agriculture secretariat.

The Rio Rural programme manages a fund of 79 million dollars provided by the World Bank in 2009 to promote sustainable development practices in rural areas of the state, with a particular focus on women farmers.

“Women are strategic to the sustainability of families and productive units, and they are the ones who are most concerned about food security,” Helga Hissa, the technical coordinator of Rio Rural, told IPS.

Rural women also act as promoters of ecological awareness in their communities, she said. “They lead their families into adopting practices like organic vegetable gardens, and they introduce native species of trees that grow into small forests on their farmland,” Hissa said.

The programme covers river basins in 59 municipalities and 37,000 family farms, comprising some 150,000 people who represent 30 percent of the rural population in the state. Teresópolis, 100 km from Rio de Janeiro, is the nearest big city.

Hissa acknowledged that the 2011 catastrophe has made many people in the area more aware of climate change, a process in which “women have a key role as communicators, because they are enterprising and are more open to trying new practices.”

“We didn’t know how to regenerate the soil, which was degraded by the floods. We took a Rio Rural programme course on green regeneration. They showed us how to plant oats to recover the soil, and to plant along the contours of the land,” Nogueira said.

“I also learned how to make organic vegetable gardens and grow food for us to eat without using agrochemicals,” she said.

She and her family managed to regenerate the vegetation along the banks of the river and to reforest 10 percent of the farm, twice what small farms are required to do by law.

“We used to have 40-year-old trees on the riverbank. Trees hold the soil, maintain the course of the river and help regulate temperature,” her mother, Jandira Nogueira, said.

“What many farmers lack is information about what is happening to the climate. If we don’t know how it is changing, we will continue to have tragedies like last year’s,” she said.

Trees uprooted by the storm in the neighborhood of Barracas, Buenos Aires. Credit: Juan Moseinco/IPS

By Marcela Valente
BUENOS AIRES, Apr 17 2012 (IPS)

The 18 deaths caused by a storm that hit Buenos Aires earlier this month tragically demonstrate the lack of preparedness for the ever more frequent and powerful weather events faced by the Argentine capital and its suburbs.

“Argentina should be accustomed to severe storms because it has always had them. What is accelerating now is the intensity and frequency of rains,” meteorologist Carolina Vera told Tierramérica.

In addition to the fatalities, the Apr. 4 storm placed 32,000 families living in vulnerable neighborhoods in a state of emergency. More than 200 schools were totally or partially destroyed, thousands of people were left without electricity or water, and around 40,000 trees were toppled.

“In our neighborhood two kids died. A tree fell on top of a 13-year-old, and a wall fell over onto a teenager who was sleeping on the street,” reported Lorenzo de Vedia, a Catholic priest in a precarious area on the south side of the capital.

The neighborhood in question, known as Villa 21-24 de Barracas, was one of the hardest hit. “Roofs were blown off, mattresses were soaked… These are the results of the structural poverty in which these people live,” de Vedia told Tierramérica.

The federal capital district, the Autonomous City of Buenos Aires, and its metropolitan area comprise a total area of 3,833 sq km with a population of 12.8 million people, according to the 2010 census.

The storm broke out suddenly, bringing torrential rain, hail and winds of almost 100 km an hour in some parts of the west and south sides of the city and its surrounding area.

The most precise and continuous meteorological records kept in Argentina correspond to rainfall, and date back more than a century. These records “demonstrate a tendency towards an increase in the abundance and frequency of precipitation,” said Vera.

The natural variability of the atmosphere could account for these types of storms on its own, but in this case “there is evidence of an association with climate change,” she added.

Vera, who is the director of the Centre for Marine and Atmospheric Research at the University of Buenos Aires, is also one of the authors of the Special Report on Managing the Risks of Extreme Events and Disasters to Advance Climate Change Adaptation (SREX), released Mar. 28 by the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC).

Numerous research reports compiled by the IPCC show a relationship between extreme events and climate change, but for other phenomena, such as heat waves, said Vera.

However, climate modeling based on future scenarios of increased greenhouse gas emissions result in predictions of increased precipitation in central and east Argentina, she noted.

Given these projections, Argentina is not very well prepared, said Vera. The country needs more weather radars, more human resources to operate them, and contingency plans to deal with disasters.

“The government has purchased radars that allow us to improve forecasting, but there is a lack of qualified personnel. People need to be trained. There are plans to do it, but today the National Meteorological System is not fully prepared,” said Vera.

Accurate forecasts alone are not enough, either. Once an alert is issued, the population needs to know what to do. “We still don’t see disaster management actions. People panic, and many of them live in houses with sheet metal roofs that blow away,” she commented.

For Claudia Natenzón from the Research Programme on Natural Resources and Environment at the University of Buenos Aires, the main problem is that “preventive actions are not being developed.”

Natenzón, who holds a PhD in geography, specialises in the study of social vulnerability to climate change. She explained to Tierramérica that prevention implies anticipating a weather event in order to prevent serious damage when it occurs.

This requires scientific knowledge about what can happen – although there is always some degree of uncertainty involved – and the use of that knowledge to develop prevention plans.

In a storm, the “entry points” that increase risks include old or diseased trees that have not been pruned, electric cables, sheet metal roofs that get blown off by the wind, and polycarbonate roofs that are destroyed by hail, she explained.

Other risk factors include ever more abundant billboards held up by structures that cannot withstand gale-force winds, and free-standing roofs not supported by walls, such as in gasoline stations and market stalls. One of these roofs collapsed during the last storm and crushed a young man.

The failure to implement preventive actions was clearly demonstrated by the storm, said Natenzón.

One of her Research Programme colleagues, anthropologist Ana Murgida, acknowledged that “some measures can be costly,” but stressed that “the cost of a disaster is always greater, and must be borne by the public coffers. And disasters always impact more seriously on the most vulnerable sectors.”

Buenos Aires is a coastal city, and as a result, it needs to be prepared for more frequent and more damaging flooding related to storm events in the future, due to sea level rise, warns the study Climate Change and Cities: First Assessment Report of the Urban Climate Change Research Network, in which Natenzón participated.

Damage to real estate from flooding in Buenos Aires is projected to total 80 million dollars per year by 2030 and 300 million dollars per year by 2050. “This figure does not account for lost productivity by those displaced or injured by the flooding, meaning total economic losses could be significantly higher,” adds the report, published in June 2011 by Cambridge University Press.

Prevention also implies developing “strategies for rapid response and recovery,” Murgida told Tierramérica. Otherwise, successive disasters “will increasingly exacerbate the vulnerability of the poorest sectors.”

The magnitude of the last storm would have been inconceivable in other times, given the number of people affected and killed, the number of houses destroyed, the services interrupted and the state’s effort to assist the victims, said Murgida.

A week after the storm, thousands of families remained homeless, without electricity or water, and thousands of children and teenagers in the same neighborhoods still had no schools where they could go and have a roof over their heads, at least for a while.

* This article is one of a series supported by the Climate and Development Knowledge Network, which does not necessarily agree with its content.

**The writer is an IPS correspondent. This story was originally published by Latin American newspapers that are part of the Tierramérica network. Tierramérica is a specialised news service produced by IPS with the backing of the United Nations Development Programme, United Nations Environment Programme and the World Bank.

A home built in Santa Fe, adapted to withstand the impacts of climate change. Credit: Jorge Luis Baños/IPS

By Patricia Grogg
HAVANA, Apr 11 2012 (IPS)

One of the major challenges facing Cuba as it designs climate change adaptation policies is the preservation of its coastal ecosystems against the predicted rise in sea level and increasingly catastrophic extreme weather events.

With the country’s 5,500 km of coastline and 4,000 cays and islets, almost everyone on the Cuban archipelago feels their life is tied to the sea in one way or another. “It’s lovely, but it is also dangerous,” said 78-year-old Teresa Marcial, who lives on the coast in Santa Fé, in the northern outskirts of Havana.

For decades, Marcial has lived with the ocean practically lapping her patio. In 2005, floods caused by hurricane Wilma left her family and neighbours virtually on the street. “Huge waves swept everything away. We were taken by surprise. The water took away an extremely heavy wardrobe, which simply disappeared,” she told IPS.

Her son, Martín Pérez Marcial, added that they have decided to sell their house and move to a safer place.

“But as you can imagine, with the expectation that future hurricanes will be more intense because of climate change, no one wants to come and live here,” said a neighbour who did not mention his name.

A few blocks away, builders are constructing a house that is raised more than two metres above ground level, using part of an older house and strong pillars for support. “If there is flooding, the water can circulate freely underneath the house,” said the construction foreman, José Luis Martínez.

Behind the house, which is being built by “self help”, as private construction initiatives are called in Cuba, there is an outer wall of solid concrete and hard stone. “It saves on cement, and does not require steel, which rusts over time,” Martínez said.

The talkative builder showed how the base of the containment wall has spillways for drainage, to let water flow back and forth. At the corners, the walls are shaped like a ship’s prow, “to break up the waves.” Several houses in the vicinity have similar walls, which “cost a pretty penny,” Pérez said.

Santa Fé is at permanent risk of flooding due to hurricanes. Studies by state bodies put it among the coastal areas of the capital that face the greatest direct impact of tropical storms, and to a lesser extent of rising sea levels.

Adaptation, an inevitable necessity

Carlos Rodríguez, a researcher on land use planning and the environment for the government’s Physical Planning Institute (IPF), says 577 human settlements could suffer the combined onslaught of rising sea levels and oversized waves from swells and storm surges associated with hurricanes.

In an interview with IPS, Rodríguez emphasised that according to a joint study by several Cuban scientific institutions, led by the Ministry of Science, Technology and the Environment and including IPF, an area of 2,550 square km of coast could be submerged by 2050.

By 2100, the flooded area could expand to some 5,600 square km, according to sea level rise projections, he said.

Out of the 577 vulnerable settlements, 262 have ground surfaces less than one metre above sea level within the first 1,000 metres from the coastline. “These are the ones we are flagging as sensitive coastal settlements,” said Rodríguez.

Out of these 262 low-lying towns and villages, 122 may be exclusively affected by the rise in sea level, with permanent loss of ground area, buildings, power grids and public services. “Immediate measures must be taken in these settlements for concrete regulation and adaptation,” he said.

Fifteen settlements are likely to disappear under water by 2050, and another seven by 2100. These communities must be relocated or protected, depending on their characteristics and importance, although most of them have few permanent residents and are basically beaches for local recreation, located on the lowest parts of the coast, he said.

Rodríguez stressed that adaptation measures must also be planned for inland areas impacted by the combination of higher sea levels and over-height waves from the swells and storm surges produced by hurricanes.

In these cases, adaptation must aim, among other things, at reducing the vulnerability of houses and buildings, creating protection systems, recovering and implementing drainage systems and carrying out essential works for the protection of the population.

“Every new investment and every plan for coastal areas in our country must necessarily take climate change forecasts into account. Twenty years ago we did not have the knowledge that we have now. We should not reproduce our vulnerabilities, but reduce them and learn to live with the risks,” Rodríguez said.

In his view, adaptation in the field of urban planning involves finding ways to resettle people in the same place, putting up lightweight installations in public spaces in the most exposed areas in already existing settlements and towns, and reducing both building density and the number of residents per block.

Plans also need to be made for the removal of some buildings to higher ground, and to ensure that designs for new building projects include the use of more resistant materials and stronger roofing from the outset, to cope with the combined actions of rain, wind and storm surges.

“There are also engineering solutions such as containment dikes, although they are more expensive,” Rodríguez said. He pointed out that all Caribbean islands must prepare for higher temperatures, recurrent droughts and shortage of drinking water, among other challenges accompanying climate change. “In Cuba, the biggest risks are concentrated in coastal areas and the eastern part of the island,” he said.

Rodríguez said Cuba can offer cooperation on climate change issues to the rest of the Caribbean region. “We have the trained human resources and the knowledge, as well as an organised society and political will to enable us to address the problems and identify affordable solutions,” he said.

By - - and Patricia Grogg
HAVANA, Mar 2 2012 (IPS)

Subject to the double impact of the global economic crisis and climate change, the Caribbean island nations are in need of adaptation strategies in which international cooperation and citizen participation play key roles, says Cuban expert Ramón Pichs.

Ramón Pichs, deputy director Centre for the Study of the World Economy. Credit: Jorge Luis Baños/IPS

Q: What are the main environmental challenges faced by Cuba and the rest of the Caribbean region? A: There are a number of common challenges, including a propensity for extreme events such as hurricanes, drought, water stress, pollution, loss of biodiversity and rising sea levels, which seriously endanger the lowest-lying coastal areas.

We also should take into account that Caribbean island states especially are extraordinarily dependent on the large markets of industrialised countries. Generally, they are food and oil importers, and they have been very much affected by the sharp increase in prices for these strategic products.

Most of these islands make a living from tourism, with facilities that are preferably near the shore and that endure the impact of hurricanes and flooding, especially if they are in low-lying areas.

We should also mention the bleaching of coral reefs, an important Caribbean resource that is being harmed by the impact of high temperatures.

Q: In that context, what joint adaptation strategies are the most advisable? A: A number of actions are underway. For example, capacities are being created for responding to many of these climate phenomena that tend to be increasingly intense and devastating. Cuba has given important support to national response teams, not just in the Caribbean, but also in Central and South America.

We need to keep working in those areas. We should also include initiatives that are being carried out as part of the Bolivarian Alliance for the Peoples of Our America bloc, which seek to bolster sectors like education and health, both of them strategic for sustainable social development and adaptation to climate change.

Moreover, there is a need for adaptation actions in other key areas, such as agriculture, tourism, water supply and the protection of coastlines and human settlements.

Early warning systems are very important, and Cuba’s experience in this realm can be very useful; that is, a strategy for responding to extreme events such as hurricanes, where the integration of a country’s main institutions is essential.

Q: What should be taken into account when designing these adaptation programmes? A: There are three levels of analysis: national efforts, regional integration and international cooperation. In the first case, a lot of work and progress are needed to integrate the economic, social and environmental aspects as part of strategies for sustainable development.

In this sense, for decision makers, it would be fundamental to chart socioeconomic and environmental scenarios in different circumstances, with the goal of using that as a basis for designing the policy options that would be most convenient according to the priorities and interests of those countries.

When I refer to scenarios, I am not talking about making predictions, but about thinking about the possible trajectories of what could happen, and depending on that, deciding to act in one direction or another.

These national efforts would necessarily have to be complemented with processes of sub-regional integration, such as the Caribbean Community, CARICOM, and regional processes, via the recently-created Community of Latin American and Caribbean States.

Q: You mentioned international cooperation as a third element. What is its role? A: It is a key element of strategies for responding to global environmental challenges, especially when taking into account the large gaps in equality that exist in today’s world. However, that collaboration must, in the first place, take into account the priorities and interests of sustainable development in recipient countries.

Secondly, it should be directed at creating endogenous capacities in countries that receive this cooperation; that is, when the cooperation is withdrawn, the conditions should be created for those projects to be sustainable. Lastly, the aid provided should contribute to integrating national efforts, instead of fragmenting them.

Q: What are the responsibilities of civil society and its organisations, especially in concrete projects for adapting to climate change? A: Any project for adapting to climate change or other environmental challenges will be more successful when the communities where they are carried out have an adequate level of awareness about the problems they face. Citizen participation is fundamental in this process.

A number of elements interact in this capacity for response, including financial, technological and human resources; institutional networks; government and political will, and the presence of social organisations as active subjects in these processes.

Excerpt:

No one who lives in this fishing village on the south coast, 70 km from the Cuban capital, can forget the devastation wrought by hurricanes in 2008.

People living in low-lying coastal areas are most exposed to sea-level change. Credit: Jorge Luis Baños/IPS

If any reminders are needed, the destroyed houses, the erosion and a beach that no longer appeals are right there in plain sight.

“The sea flooded all this area. It also piled up mountains of sand, so much so that they had to take it away in trucks. They say that the cyclone of 1944 was similar, and that people died in it. This last time no one was killed, because they evacuated the entire population, as usual,” said Mario, a voluble bartender in the small tourist complex, completely empty during this winter season.

The emergency plans put in place ahead of the hurricane season, lasting from June to November each year, prevent loss of human life or reduce it to a minimum. However, they are not so effective against economic damage.

Hurricanes Gustav, Ike and Paloma which lashed this Caribbean island within a three-month period in 2008, caused damages officially estimated at 10 billion dollars.

So there is no doubt that, while prevention is a good thing, so is adaptation to the consequences of climate change, of which the rise in sea level is among the most fearsome. Yet it is a risk that families living on the coastline do not always appreciate.

“Yes, yes, we know that we are close to the ocean, but the water has not risen much here. Besides, we’re building our new house on higher ground,” said a woman relying on her own resources to put up her new home. “My son receives cash remittances from his father, and he helps me with the building work which we are doing a little at a time, as we are able,” she said.

Studies by Cuban scientists on the vulnerability of coastal ecosystems in the Caribbean region warn that the sea level will rise by 27 to 85 centimetres between 2050 and 2100, a prospect with major geographical, demographic and economic implications for island states.

Official estimates indicate that 2.32 percent of Cuban territory may be permanently under water by 2050. If the necessary adaptation measures are not taken, as many as 79 coastal settlements will be affected and 15 will completely disappear.

Coastal ecosystems occupy five percent of the total area of the island, which has 588 km of beaches. An estimated 250 km of coastline are urbanised, and 1.4 million people live in 244 settlements, 63 of them urban and 181 rural.

“Above all, people need to know why and what adaptation is necessary,” Gisela Alonso, head of the government’s Environment Agency, told IPS. “We are undertaking climate studies in Cuba, and we have our own evaluations and our own models to predict the impact levels we have to face.”

She said financial resources, knowledge, technology and a national infrastructure of both material and human resources are needed in order to combat problems that are not primarily of developing nations’ making. “How can they take climate adaptation on board, when they lack education, health and nutritional security?” she asked.

A study carried out in eight Caribbean island nations, published in 2010 by the Caribbean Catastrophe Risk Insurance Facility (CCRIF), said these countries could lose up to nine percent of annual GDP due to storms and floods, believed to result from climate change.

Cuba is facing “above all, increased frequency and intensity of extreme weather events, particularly related to water circulation in the atmosphere, on land and underground, including not only tropical hurricanes but also drought, serious floods, higher temperatures and – for us as an archipelago, one of the greatest dangers – rising sea level,” Alonso said.

However, the expert said Cuba has “a certain advantage” because it has developed its scientific potential, with the result that for many years now it has been able to evaluate and offer alternatives for social measures “within which health issues are essential”, and for economic and environmental problems.

According to Alonso, the island nation has a programme on climate change that covers previous studies on hazards, vulnerability and risks, including possible impacts from rising sea levels, as well as action that should be taken by each sector.

The plans, as yet unpublished, include land use measures that establish how far from the coast tourism investments and new urban zones should be located; and the replanting and recovery of mangrove forests, which together with coral reefs are important natural barriers protecting the coastline. On the agricultural front there will be close monitoring of water used for irrigation.

“The island of Cuba rests on a layer of karst (rock dissolved by groundwater, forming interconnected caves), and sea level elevation will increase saline infiltration. Water tainted with seawater will increase soil salinity, harming agricultural production,” Alonso said.

From the educational and social point of view, Alonso said, the community ought to know what it is up against, because climate change added to soil degradation, water pollution, shortage of water for human consumption and other environmental problems are creating a complex global scenario.