Cuba’s environmental concerns

Erica Goode has an article in The New York Times about environmentalism in Cuba:

Like many of his countrymen, Jorge Angulo hopes the United States will lift the decades-old economic embargo against Cuba.
But Dr. Angulo, a senior marine scientist at the University of Havana, is also worried about the effects that a flood of American tourists and American dollars might have on this country’s pristine coral reefs, mangrove forests, national parks and organic farms — environmental assets that are a source of pride here.
“Like anywhere else, money talks,” Dr. Angulo said. “That might be dangerous, because if we go too much on that side, we lose what we have today.”
As relations between the United States and Cuba have warmed — the countries announced on Wednesday that their embassies in Havana and Washington would reopen by July 20 for the first time in more than 50 years — and as the renewal of trade seems more of a possibility, the Cuban government faces pivotal choices.
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The country is in desperate need of the economic benefits that a lifting of the embargo would almost certainly bring. But the ban, combined with Cuba’s brand of controlled socialism, has also limited development and tourism that in other countries, including many of Cuba’s Caribbean neighbors, have eroded beaches, destroyed forests, polluted rivers, damaged coral reefs and wreaked other forms of environmental havoc.
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A crocodile under a mangrove near a research station in Cuba. Many Cubans are worried about how new ties with the U.S. will affect the natural world. Credit Todd Heisler/The New York Times
Already, American corporations are poised to rush into a country only 90 miles from Florida’s shores.
In March, a delegation from the U.S. Agriculture Coalition for Cuba, an agribusiness group that includes Cargill, the National Grain and Feed Association, the National Chicken Council and other companies and organizations, flew to Havana to meet with Cuban officials.
And cruise ship companies and hotel chains like Marriott and Hilton have indicated their enthusiasm. “I can’t stop thinking about it,” Frank Del Rio, chief executive officer of Norwegian Cruise Line Holdings, said in an interview. “Cuba and the cruise industry are just a match made in heaven, waiting to happen.”
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The Cuban flag flies on the deck of a floating hotel in a protected area south of the island. Credit Todd Heisler/The New York Times
Despite modest economic advances in the last 15 years, much in Cuba can seem frozen in time, with crumbling Havana buildings and old Chevys and Ladas serving as markers of how far the country has been left behind. But that also means that much of Cuba’s more than 3,500 miles of coastline has remained undeveloped.
In Jucaro, on the south coast, weatherworn fishing boats line the harbor, but the condos and souvenir shops that clutter most Caribbean seaside towns are nowhere to be seen.
Over the last two decades, Cuba has taken steps to preserve its natural resources and promote sustainable development. Environmental problems remain, including overfishing and the erosion and deforestation left from earlier eras. But the ministry overseeing environmental issues has a strong voice. And since 1992, when Fidel Castro denounced “the ecological destruction threatening the planet” in a speech to the Rio de Janeiro Earth Summit, a series of tough environmental laws has been passed, including regulations governing the management of the coastal zone. The government has designated 104 marine protected areas, though some still exist only on paper, with no administration or enforcement, and it has set a goal of conserving 25 percent of the country’s coastal waters.
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Iguanas on an island in the Jardines de la Reina, a protected area south of Jucaro, Cuba. Credit Todd Heisler/The New York Times
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Yet Cuba’s commitment to environmental protection has never been tested, or tempted, as forcefully as it is likely to be should the trade and travel barriers with the United States fall. Despite the thaw between the United States and Cuba, many obstacles to tourism and commerce remain. Congress would have to vote to ease the embargo, an unlikely development during the presidential campaign. And even if the embargo were lifted, Cuba’s labyrinthine tax structure, legal system and laws regulating business present their own hurdles.
Cuba’s green sensitivities evolved as much out of necessity as ideology.
The collapse of the Soviet bloc in 1991 and the continued isolation by the United States forced the country to fend for itself. With the tools of big agriculture — fuel for heavy machinery, chemical fertilizers, pesticides — out of reach, farming moved away from the increased sugar production that characterized the Soviet era, turning more to organic techniques and cooperatives of small farmers. Oxen replaced tractors, and even today, a farmer walking behind his plow is a common sight in the countryside.
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The southern port town of Jucaro is used mainly by fishing boats. Some fear American developers will ruin Cuba's pristine coastlines by dotting them with hotels and condominiums. Credit Todd Heisler/The New York Times
“Basically, folks said we need the farmers to go out and figure out how we’re going to feed ourselves,” said Greg Watson, a former agriculture commissioner for Massachusetts, who visited Cuba last fall with a delegation studying sustainable agriculture.
At the same time, scientists, who are held in high esteem here, promoted the value of keeping marine resources intact — both to draw European tourism, essential for an island country with little domestic industry, and to help sustain the fisheries that formed a vital part of the economy.
Cuban officials insist that the country’s strong environmental laws and commitment to protecting natural resources will hold up in the face of American money and influence. And they note that Cuba is no stranger to tourism: Europeans, Canadians, Australians and others flock to cafes in Old Havana, visit Vinyales or sun themselves on the beach at Varadero or Cayo Coco, resort areas that already have hotels, developed with the help of foreign investment.

NEWS CLIPS By The Associated Press 00:57
Obama Says U.S. Embassy Will Open in Cuba
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Obama Says U.S. Embassy Will Open in Cuba
President Obama announced that the United States and Cuba have agreed to open embassies in Havana and Washington. By The Associated Press on Publish Date July 1, 2015. Photo by Doug Mills/The New York Times. Watch in Times Video »
“We are not afraid of you coming to Cuba,” José Ramón Cabañas Rodríguez, chief of mission for the Cuban Interests Section in Washington, said at a panel on Cuba and the environment last month. “The conservation of the environment is in our Constitution.”
But much will depend on the government’s determination to see that environmental laws are enforced, said Liliana Núñez Velis, president of the Antonio Núñez Jiménez Foundation for Man and Nature, a quasi-independent environmental organization in Havana.
“This tsunami is coming,” Ms. Núñez said, referring to American interests. And inside Cuba, she added, “An internal tsunami is asking for consumption, consumption, consumption and profit, benefit and profit.”

U.S. & POLITICS By Erica Berenstein 2:28
Returning Stars and Stripes to Havana
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Returning Stars and Stripes to Havana
Wayne S. Smith honeymooned in Cuba before taking a post at the United States Embassy in Havana. He is one of the last living American diplomats who witnessed the day the embassy closed in 1961. By Erica Berenstein on Publish Date June 30, 2015. Watch in Times Video »
How fully the country will pursue development is likely to be a leading topic at the Seventh Congress of the Cuban Communist Party next year, said Dan Whittle, a lawyer and senior director of the Cuba program for the Environmental Defense Fund.
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Within Cuba’s government, “there are some who would prefer to move faster than others,” Mr. Whittle said, adding that environmental officials in Cuba were trying to identify gaps in oversight and laws that need to be strengthened.
“They would like to see the party congress embrace sustainability and sustainable development,” he said.
Government officials know that they need to be more flexible and efficient in dealing with potential investors, Mr. Whittle said.
“There’s a widespread recognition that you can’t spend years debating whether to approve a new hotel or a golf course,” he said.
But, he added, Cuba is also aware of the perils of unchecked economic growth, and some officials consider countries like China, which sacrificed environmental concerns in favor of development, examples of what to avoid.
Whether they will have the discipline to do so, he said, remains to be seen.
Senator Sheldon Whitehouse, Democrat of Rhode Island, who has worked to promote collaboration between American and Cuban scientists, said the amount of money that may be available close by “does put them at a choice point, in terms of whether they’re willing to sacrifice what they’ve got environmentally in order to develop and look more like Miami Beach or Montego Bay.”
Mr. Whitehouse said he suspected, however, that Cuba would wade into American economic waters with caution. “I don’t think they’re so lustful of development that they will just roll over and completely prostitute themselves to whomever comes by with a checkbook,” he said.

Rico says WHAT