Cubans find preparing for climate change hard, expensive and essential

Inez Perez in E&E News:  The Malecon stretches for 5 miles along the coast of Havana, flanked by a line of old, pastel-colored buildings. ... During the last couple of years, the area has undergone sporadic renovation in the hopes of bringing it back to its former glory, but now there is a bigger change being put in place: No more residential development will be allowed on the oceanfront.

This decision, and many others like it, can be traced back to the impacts of Hurricane Wilma in October 2005. While the hurricane never made landfall, its strong waves pounded the Malecon sea wall and flooded the streets to unprecedented levels.

The heavy damage -- estimated at around 704.2 million Cuban pesos ($26.6 million) -- and the prolonged disruption of basic public services, was a wake-up call. It prompted a series of actions that would eventually change the country's approach to climate change.

...Cuba has a long history of climate adaptation measures, even if they weren't originally conceived as such. For one, the country has a highly organized disaster prevention and management system, called Civil Defense, designed to protect lives in case of extreme hazards such as hurricanes.

The system was established after Hurricane Flora hit the Caribbean in 1963, leaving over 7,000 people dead in Haiti and Cuba. Now, the island (population 11,241,161 as of the last official census in 2010) consistently experiences the lowest death tolls during hurricane season in the region.

The country has also invested in education over many decades to help people deal with natural disasters. The emphasis, particularly after the Cuban Revolution, helped Cuban experts study and assess the impacts of climate variations.

...According to a report by Oxfam, in 1991, before there was an international commitment to tackle the causes of climate change, Cuba created the National Commission on Climate Change to study the different impacts of the phenomenon.

But as weather grew more extreme, the government realized it couldn't rely on disaster management alone. In 2005, right after Wilma broke havoc in Havana, Cuba's Environment Agency took on the task of mapping out the hazards, vulnerabilities and risks for the entire country....

The Malecon in Havana, shot by Antonio Milena, Wikimedia Commons via Agencia Brasil, under the Creative Commons Attribution 3.0 Brazil license

Untimely rains hit Cuban tobacco harvest

Ivet Gonzalez in IPS: Near the close of the harvest , local people in the Cuban municipality of San Juan y Martínez, which boasts the finest tobacco plantations in the world, are seeing their hopes of a plentiful season dashed by unexpected winter rains.

“It’s been a bad year, a rebellious one as we call it. There was a lot of rain, which rots the plants. Tobacco needs sun during the day and cold at night,” 67-year-old Dámaso Rodríguez, a worker on the Valle plantation in this municipality, 180 kilometres west of Havana, in the province of Pinar del Río, told IPS.

“We are late with the farm chores,” said Yamilé Venero, a young tobacco worker on the same plantation. “It’s not worth planting again,” added María Teresa Ventos, a 54-year-old woman who comes every season to string the tobacco leaves onto long poles for drying in this agricultural industry which is a source of temporary jobs for women.

Since November, when the season started, there has been too much rain in the province which was expected to supply 70 percent of the 26,400 tonnes of tobacco leaf forecast for the 2013-2014 harvest. San Juan y Martínez and the neighbouring municipality of San Luis were severely affected; between them they provide 86 percent of the tobacco for the prized and costly Havana cigars.

Local sources reported the loss of 813 hectares in Pinar del Río and partial damage in a further 1,000 hectares, out of the provincial plan for 15,000 hectares. Many farms had to uproot their tobacco plants and replant three times over. Tobacco is Cuba’s third export, after nickel and medical products...

Tobacco processing in Cuba, shot by Vgenecr, Wikimedia Commons, nder the Creative Commons Attribution-Share Alike 3.0 Unported license

Cuba faces vast land losses as sea levels rise

Seed Daily via AFP: Cuba risks losing a vast stretch of beach front homes and pristine coastal habitat by 2050, because of rapidly rising sea levels, a top environmental official warned Thursday.

At a panel discussion on Cuban environmental policy, Tomas Escobar, director of the island's National Environment Agency, said rising oceans could submerge huge areas of the Caribbean island, with potentially devastating consequences.

The changes "could affect ecosystems, increase the vulnerability of coastal settlements, reduce agricultural soil productivity, crops and forestry and reduce the quality and availability of water," the Prensa Latina news agency quoted Escobar as saying. "At the current rate of increase in sea level, by 2050 we will have lost nearly 2,700 square kilometers of land area and 9,000 homes," he said.

Cuba has an area of 109,884 square kilometers (42,426 square miles), and more than 5,700 kilometers (3,500 miles) of coastline that includes everything from steep cliffs to sandy beaches to swamps...

International aid helps Cuba adapt to climate change

Patricia Grogg in AlertNet via IPS: "Adaptation to climate change is urgent and must be part of development," said Bárbara Pesce-Monteiro, the United Nations resident coordinator in Cuba, assessing the damage done by hurricane Sandy in the eastern region of the country.

She said the damage was very serious, especially in Santiago de Cuba, a city of almost half a million people and a services hub for other towns. In order to support the country at such a difficult time, the United Nations system in Cuba designed an action plan that will serve as a framework for assistance from the international community.

The plan, to be put into effect over the next six to 18 months, will benefit three million people in the most affected provinces: Santiago de Cuba, Holguín and Guantánamo. The main areas of concern are early recovery, housing, water and sanitation, health and education.

Sandy, regarded as the most devastating hurricane to strike the eastern part of the island in the last 50 years, claimed 11 lives in late October and caused considerable losses in housing, educational and health facilities, agriculture and food crops, as well as major interruptions in electricity and water supply, now largely overcome.

United Nations agencies initially mobilised 1.5 million dollars in emergency funding, supplemented by an appropriation of 1.6 million dollars from the Central Emergency Response Fund of the United Nations Office for the Coordination of Humanitarian Affairs.

The action plan entails seeking 30.6 million dollars to deal with the urgent needs of the population that suffered the brunt of the hurricane's impacts, along with a strategy aimed at improving living conditions for those affected....

Hurricane Sandy damage at Guantanamo Bay, Cuba. Photo by Sgt. Ryan Hallock Date Taken:10.25.2012, credited to DVIDSHUB, Wikimedia Commons via Flickr, under the Creative Commons Attribution 2.0 Generic license

Isaac rains boost Cuba water reserves

Terra Daily via AFP: Tropical Storm Isaac, which swept across Cuba at the weekend before heading toward the southern United States, substantially boosted the communist nation's water reserves, state media said Monday.

The rains from Isaac added 74.4 million cubic meters of water to the five reservoirs closest to the storm's path, according to the official daily Granma.

Before the tropical storm hit the island, 11 reservoirs in Santiago de Cuba province were at 57 percent capacity but have now increased to 66 percent said the island's Institute of Water Reserves.

Dams in the central province of Ciego de Avila, meanwhile, are at 96 percent capacity, a local official said....

Feminine creativity in the face of natural disasters in Cuba

Ivet González in IPS: Blanca Lima raises all her appliances above flood level, puts boxes of clothes on top of wardrobes, and fills the shelves she installed near the ceiling with all kinds of objects. In less than an hour, she is ready to evacuate her home in case of a flood in the Cuban capital.

“When they announce that there will be a high sea and flooding, I already know where I’m going to put the refrigerator and set up a platform to raise the mattresses. I have weathered so many floods that I now have a whole system for dealing with them,” Lima told IPS.

In their homes, Cuban women come up with strategies to minimise the danger and losses during natural disasters like hurricanes. Gender expert Isabel Moya says women have special talents in terms of organising and empowering their communities during extreme events.

“The strengths of women have helped transform traditional practices and dynamics, in environmental protection and risk management, for example,” Moya told IPS. She advocates the recognition not only of the double workday of women, their jobs and household responsibilities, but of a triple workday, which includes their work in the community.

According to Moya, girls are educated in “the culture of care, a capacity that is later transformed into strong neighbourhood involvement by women. “They relate to each other and establish solidarity among themselves in a different way. These skills can generate a change in community ties,” she said....

A street in old Havana, shot by Angelo Lucia, Wikimedia Commons, under the Creative Commons Attribution-Share Alike 3.0 Unported license

Tropical Storm Isaac drenches Haiti, aims for Cuba

Susana Ferreira in Reuters: Tropical Storm Isaac emerged over warm Caribbean waters on Saturday slightly weaker but ready to regroup after dumping torrential rains on Haiti, where thousands of people remain homeless more than two years after a devastating earthquake.

Heavy rains and high winds lashed Haiti's southern coast, flooding parts of the capital Port-au-Prince, and flattening tents in some of the fragile resettlement camps that house more than 350,000 survivors of the 2010 earthquake.

A 10-year-old girl was killed in Port-au-Prince when a wall fell on her, the Civil Protection authority said. Power outages and flooding were reported as Isaac moved across the hilly and severely deforested Caribbean country.

"There's a lot of rain, a lot of wind," said Magdala Jean-Baptiste, who huddled with her frightened children in their home in the southern coastal city of Jacmel. "We haven't had any power since the storm started yesterday. We passed the night with no sleep."

Isaac was forecast to sweep over eastern Cuba on Saturday and strengthen into a hurricane as it approaches the Florida Keys. It was on track for the Gulf of Mexico, where major energy companies have begun offshore evacuations that could end up shutting nearly half the area's oil output...

Tropical Storm Isaac on August 23, 2012

Community drills part of Cuba's top-notch disaster response system

Patricia Grogg in IPS: A well-oiled prevention system that involves the entire country, from the highest spheres of government to the most isolated rural community, makes Cuba one of the best-prepared countries in the world when it comes to preventing deaths and mitigating risks in case of disasters.

Two-day community drills begin to be carried out a few weeks before the start of the Jun. 1-Nov. 30 Atlantic hurricane season, under the name Meteoro.  In the simulations run by the Civil Defence System, the authorities and ordinary Cubans rehearse their roles in prevention and evacuation plans to be implemented in case of disasters like hurricanes, earthquakes, drought, fires or epidemics.

On Sunday, May 20, the western province of Pinar del Río rehearsed measures to be taken in case of flooding, while the central province of Cienfuegos held an evacuation drill to prepare for a possible ammonia leak. And mountainous regions in the east of the country practiced what to do in case of a major earthquake.

"This keeps us free of worry, because we know what we have to do in case of danger," a nurse commented to IPS during an evacuation drill at the América Arias Obstetrics and Gynecology Hospital, which is located just 500 metres from the coast in Havana.

..."Our basic premise is to guarantee people’s safety," said Osmany Galbán, director of the 280-bed hospital which serves more than 300,000 people in four Havana municipalities. Because of its proximity to the sea, the hospital is at risk of flooding during hurricane season....

A Cuban television tower wrecked by Hurricane Ike in 2008, shot by Toledo Ramirez, Wikimedia Commons, under the Creative Commons Attribution-Share Alike 3.0 Unported license

Cuba to conduct anti-disaster drill

CRI-English.com via Xinhua: Cuban authorities are preparing to conduct a nationwide anti-disaster drill aimed at taking stock of existing measures and heightening disaster awareness among the population, officials said Saturday.

The May 19-20 drill, the 26th of its kind and code-named Meteoro 2012, will help to train people how to respond in case of such disasters as hurricanes, earthquakes, drought, forest fires and exotic diseases, officials said.

The exercise aims to raise the country's disaster preparedness and review the measures set for state agencies and institutions to cope with natural and industrial disasters, said Colonel Miguel Angel Puig, chief of the Operations Department of Cuba's National Civil Defense.

Puig said the drill would be focused on reassessing the measures to protect human lives and key economic targets in case of different kinds of disasters.

The maneuvers will also include assessing the evacuation processes of the population in areas susceptible to quakes or tsunamis, he said.

Puig stressed that Cuba's civil defense system is based on serious and complex risk studies on the threats for the Caribbean island country, which is prone to frequent hurricanes and to earthquakes in its eastern provinces, and suffers from the impact of climate change....

Planning for higher seas in Cuba

Patricia Grogg in 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.

...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.

...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....

Playa Mayabeque in Cuba, shot by Rogelio Guerra Riverón, public domain

Climate change as a priority for Central America

Jose Armando Fernandez Salaz in Political Affairs: International research on the adaptation to climate change for Central America and the Caribbean pointed out in 2008 the main consequences for agriculture, human health and even the style of living in the eastern province of Las Tunas, Cuba.

According to the research, which had the participation of experts from the Dominican Republic and Cuba, proposed 146 actions, which will be implemented depending on the required conditions. In Las Tunas the proposed actions are responses to environmental deterioration, making this province the most deforested region on the island (only 14 percent of the total surface covered with forests) and with the lowest rate of rain (1,038 millimeters a year).

The recent rainy season saw the highest amounts of rainfall relative to previous years. However, 2009 is among the driest seasons since 1901. Figures from the Provincial Meteorological Center show that since 1971 there is a tendency toward a dry phase.

The increase in the minimum average yearly temperature of 1.2 degrees and the period of over 30 days between dry and rainy seasons also confirms the incidence of climate change in eastern Las Tunas province.

Although these developments may be regarded as a work of nature, they are also a response to the uncontrolled exploitation of resources. The main ecological battle is the consciousness of the people. That is why it is so important to promote early consciousness on the need for sustainable development and the adaptation of new environmental circumstances….

Locator map of Las Tunas province in Cuba, created by NordNordWest, Wikimedia Commons, under the Creative Commons Attribution-Share Alike 3.0 Unported license

Tropical Storm Paula drenches Cuba

Rigoberto Diaz in the Montreal Gazette via AFP: Hurricane Paula weakened to tropical storm status Thursday, but still packed a punch when it hit western Cuba on its way toward the center of the island and Havana. Cuba's civil defense called on coastal residents in Pinar del Rio province, in western Cuba, to take precautions. It said the storm, even in its weakened state, may also cause damage to the Isle of Youth and the capital city Havana.

General Ramon Pardo Guerra, head of Cuba's civil defense authority, urged inhabitants to "take all possible measures to protect life and property," in an alert directed especially at coastal dwellers. At 5 p.m. ET, Paula's center was over Cuba, 60 kilometers southwest of Havana moving towards the east a near 15 kilometres an hour, the Miami-based National Hurricane Center reported.

The storm's maximum sustained winds dropped to around 95 kilometres an hour, with higher gusts. "Weakening is forecast during the next 48 hours and Paula is expected to become a tropical depression on Friday," the NHC said….

The track of Paula at six-hour intervals, through October 11, by Titoxd

Hurricane Paula heading for Cuba

CNN: Category 2 Hurricane Paula was brushing the tip of Mexico's Yucatan Peninsula on Wednesday and heading for Cuba, forecasters said. As of 8 a.m., the center of Paula was moving over the Yucatan Channel between Mexico and Cuba, the Miami-based National Hurricane Center said. It was about 55 miles (90 kilometers) east of Cancun, Mexico, and about 70 miles (115 kilometers) west-southwest of the western tip of Cuba.

The storm was packing winds of 100 mph (160 kph) as it moves north at about 9 mph (15 kph). It was expected to continue moving north for the next few hours, then turn northeast and slow later Wednesday, the hurricane center said.

Hurricane warnings were in effect for the coast of Mexico from Punta Allen north to Cabo Catoche, including Cozumel, and for the Cuban province of Pinar del Rio. Tropical storm warnings were in effect for the Mexican coast from Cabo Catoche to San Felipe, although forecasters said the Yucatan warnings likely will be canceled later Wednesday.

Tropical storm-force winds affecting Mexico are forecast to diminish later Wednesday, forecasters said. Tropical storm-force winds are anticipated to reach western Cuba by Wednesday afternoon, with hurricane conditions expected Wednesday night. "The small core of Hurricane Paula will continue to move over the Yucatan Channel today and be near or over western Cuba by tonight or early Thursday," the hurricane center said….

Hurricane Paula, October 12, 2010

Hurricane-proofing a Caribbean island

Patricia Grogg in IPS, via Tierramérica: The residents of Isla de la Juventud (Isle of Youth), the second largest of the Cuban archipelago, know a lot about hurricanes, but it wasn't enough to avoid the destructive power of Hurricane Gustav two years ago. It was a huge disaster, and many still shudder at the memory. Concern is growing in this unique municipality, situated 100 kilometres off the southwestern coast of Cuba, because the forecast is for a very active and intense hurricane season, which runs Jun. 1 to Nov. 30.

…What is now a housing complex used to be a rural pre-university institute. It was shut down after a decision to move those classes to urban areas. The large classrooms were transformed into apartments, and the lower level converted to spaces for a nursery, small primary school, cafeteria and other services.

…Emergency preparation measures prevented deaths, but more than 40 people were injured and needed emergency treatment at the Héroes del Baíre Hospital, the only fully-equipped medical centre for serving the nearly 87,000 residents on the island.

…The hospital is now part of a project to be the country's first "safe hospital" in cases of natural disasters, with support from the Latin American Centre for Disaster Medicine (CLAMED), the Pan-American Health Organisation (PAHO) and the Spanish Agency for International Development Cooperation (AECID). The initiative, already under way, will create an institution that can continue to function as long as possible in a hurricane, which means ensuring the availability of water supplies, electricity and waste treatment.

As for human resources, staff will be trained to deal with extreme emergencies. "When a phenomenon of this type occurs, everything revolves around that emergency, the doctors' duties adapt to the need," hospital director Yosvany Tamayo Garrido explained to Tierramérica....

Hurricane Ike approaching Cuba in 2008, via NASA

Intensifying actions against drought in a Cuban province

Brunei Times via Prensa Latina: State agencies in [Ciego de Avila] this central Cuban province have adopted emergency measures to address the severe drought affecting groundwater reserves, the main source of supply of the precious liquid in the area. About 73 percent of water consumed comes from Ciego de Avila 15 sectors hydrogeological, whose storage capacity is approximately 900 million cubic meters, Rafael Gonzalez, a specialist hydrological services said.

He said that currently these basins show only 44 per cent of the volume, and hence the need to take steps to save and make proper use of the resource. Agriculture, industry heavyweight in the province of Ciego de Avila, 430 km east of Havana, is the largest consumer of water, and hence the need to work out urgent strategies to address the water crisis.

The efficient use of irrigation systems, planting of crop varieties resistant to water shortages and intercropping, are some of the provisions of farmers Ciego de Avila, Gonzalez said. He stressed that livestock owners were working in the relocation of livestock to coastal areas to improve the nutrition of animals, mainly from milk and meat production.

Another agency handling house hold waste is creating awareness among the population to achieve cost-saving measures in homes, he said….

In a nature reserve called 'Loma de Cunagua', near Moron, in Ciego de Avila province. Shot by Lagaly de, Wikimedia Commons, under the Creative Commons Attribution-Share Alike 3.0 Unported license

Cuba leaders call for resources to support climate change adaptation

Caribbean Net News: Heads of Government of the Caribbean Community (CARICOM) and Cuba called upon developed countries to contribute new and additional financial resources to implement measures aimed at adaptation to climate change and mitigation of greenhouse gases. This was one of the clauses of the Declaration of Santiago de Cuba which was issued following the Third CARICOM-Cuba Summit which ended in that city on Monday 8 December.

The Declaration also called upon the international community to support through the establishment of an international financial framework, those countries that managed and preserved their forests in a sustainable way and also to support the inclusion in the post Kyoto agreement incentives for countries with standing rainforests in acknowledgement of their important role in mitigating the effects of climate change. The leaders emphasised the need to invest in sustainable-renewable energy programs, and the infrastructure that would advance the objective of sustainable development of resources and contribute to Regional energy security.

Cuban coastal dweller to relocate far from the sea

IPS: She was born, grew up and lived all her life just a few steps from the sea, in the part of the city that everyone knows simply as La Playa (the beach). Although she was lucky enough to return to a home and belongings that withstood Hurricane Paloma’s mighty waves, Iramis Rodríguez has made up her mind to move inland. "If they’ll take me, I’ll go," the 30-year-old Santa Cruz resident told IPS. Rodríguez is part of the janitorial staff in a government facility located "right here in Santa Cruz," she says.

…Some 3,000 people were killed that day in 1932, "stabbed" by all sorts of objects that were hurled through the air by the powerful winds, trapped inside their homes, swallowed up by the sea as it pulled back, or scorched among the debris burnt by order of the authorities who wanted to prevent an epidemic at all costs. This time, when the families returned on Nov. 11 to this town located some 600 kilometres east of Havana, the landscape they found was both similar and different to the one left 76 years ago. Dogs with glazed eyes roamed streets that had turned alien; here and there an animal was trapped under boards. But the community had survived.

…More than 20,000 people were evacuated from Santa Cruz del Sur, a municipality of 49,900 people, as Hurricane Paloma -- the third major hurricane to hit Cuba this year -- approached. While in 1932, the entire town was left waiting for an evacuation train that never arrived, this time not a single person stayed back in the poor district of La Playa.

…Cuba has suffered an estimated 10 billion dollars in losses from the damages caused by hurricanes Gustav, Ike and Paloma, when they stormed through the island on Aug. 30, Sept. 8-9, and Nov. 9, respectively. But statistics say nothing of all the memories the hurricanes took with them: family photographs, children’s toys, books painstakingly collected by a local teacher throughout her life. "If you were given the chance to leave this place, would you go?" IPS asked more than 15 La Playa residents. The answer, in a sad but firm tone, was invariably yes.

That seems to be the only solution possible for communities like Santa Cruz del Sur, Cajío, Guanimar, or so many others, which year after year live under the threat posed by the sea. In 2002, an official report calculated that there were 244 neighbourhoods, villages or towns, home to 1.4 million people, that were vulnerable to coastal floods…

Recent hurricanes devastate crops in Cuba and Haiti

Guardian (UK) via McClatchy: …A busy hurricane season has hit Cuba and Haiti where it hurts most: in the heart of agriculture. This hurricane season hasn't just brought death, but also destruction to those two countries as well as to the Dominican Republic and Jamaica, washing away months of food staples at a time when nations face rising global food and fuel prices.

For Haiti, the toughest loss was in the Artibonite valley, the heart of the country's already paltry breadbasket. Cuba suffered agricultural losses on both coasts, where storms wiped out not just the bananas that farmers scrambled to recover, but the entire sugar cane crop, 135,000 tonnes of citrus and a staggering 700,000 tonnes of food. "That's devastating," said Bill Messina, an agricultural economist at the University of Florida, who monitors Cuba's farming industry. "For agriculture, this is a tremendous blow."

…"The big unanswered question in this story is the food supply," said Cuba expert Phil Peters, vice-president of the Lexington Institute think tank in Arlington, Virginia. "They lost food in the warehouses, crops in the fields, and the crops that earn the foreign exchange they use to earn revenue to import food. That's three problems that add up."

Feeling an equal blow is Haiti, where widespread hunger triggered deadly riots earlier this year, and where the storms ruined more than 50,000 acres of crops and dashed any hope of reviving this nation's agriculture to replace expensive, imported rice and other food products. Government officials estimate the loss at $180m (£100.6m) - and counting.

"This couldn't have happened at a worse time for us," said Joanas Gue, the country's new agriculture minister. …."We will have a huge food deficit," said Gue.

…."We have a good recipe for a disaster that's worse than a humanitarian crisis," said Joel Boutroue, the United Nations Development Programme resident representative in Haiti. Boutroue, like others in the international community, is concerned about how long Haitians, resilient in the face of misery, will battle hunger this time around before a repeat of April's deadly riots.

Outline map of the Caribbean, apparently by Mr Bullitt, Wikimedia Commons, under the terms of the GNU Free Documentation License, Version 1.2

Prized Cuban wetlands in danger

IPS: If the worst outcomes predicted for climate change in Cuba become reality, a large portion of the Ciénaga de Zapata, the largest and best preserved wetland in the islands of the Caribbean Sea, could disappear by the second half of this century.

The Ciénaga de Zapata provides habitat for birds that are only found in Cuba, like the Zapata wren (Ferminia cerverai), sparrow (Torreornis inexpectata) and rail (Cyanolimnas cerverai). It is estimated that the marsh holds 65 percent of Cuba's birdlife, in addition to 1,000 plant species. The area, dominated by low plains, marshes and semi-wetlands, with savannah vegetation, holds forests, rivers and lakes, as well as 70 kilometres of caves in which semicircular freshwater lagoons have formed, known in Spanish as "cenotes".

But people who live less than 40 metres from the coast are not ready to give up the pleasure of being lulled to sleep by the sound of the waves. "People are resistant to leaving. They like to live near the sea," acknowledges Luis Lazo, a delegate from the citizen commission of Caletón, a neighbourhood near the water, where waves nearly reach the patios of the houses.

According to Lazo, so far this century the wetland has already survived several tropical cyclones and hurricanes that have thrashed this vast municipality in Matanzas province, which covers 4,520 square kilometres and has fewer than 10,000 inhabitants….

Map shows the Matanzas Province, "Qyd," Wikimedia Commons

Cuban permaculturalist to tour Australia

From Greenleft.org (Australia), an informative piece on Cuba's commitment to sustainability shows that a socialist government can surprise you: ...Cuban agriculture is now over 95% organic, and the city of Havana itself now produces over 60% of its fruit and vegetables within the city’s urban and peri-urban spaces, in community gardens and cooperatives. Multi-cropping, worm-farms, appropriate crops and water efficiency have led to an explosion in urban agriculture, and local food production has been a source of employment, while cutting down on unnecessary transport costs.

At the same time, Cuba has been engaging in a massive reforestation campaign, and has invested massively in alternative energy production, particularly solar and biofuels. When the World Wildlife Fund released their Living Planet report in 2007, only one country — Cuba — managed to meet the criteria set for sustainable development, by “improving the quality of human life while living within the carrying capacity of supporting ecosystems”...