Cuba leads the way on the environment
Went in to the Cuban Embassy this week for talks which were productive and we enjoyed the ron, apparently the Green Party sent a delegation to Cuba a few years ago…Cuba has a fantastic record on the environment, we have a lot to learn..I have been experimenting with Cuba’s innovative approach to gardening (worm compost is the secret) and here is an article I wrote for Cuba Solidarity.
We all know about climate change, forest destruction and other ecological threats but in Latin America environmental concern is treated more seriously than perhaps in any other part of the world.
In 2006 I visit Venezuela with my partner Sarah, we were there to see our friend Cesar Aponte who works in the Ministry of the Environment. Although Venezuela is an oil economy and Caracas is a sprawling polluted city, Chavez’s government are working hard to promote ecodevelopment. We visited an ecological high school where kids were taught organic agriculture and saw the huge permaculture city farm in Caracas next to the Hilton Hotel.
Venezuela’s own energy needs are nearly all from renewables and there is a plan to stop using petrol for cars, new railways have been built and organic agriculture is a big priority. Visiting London Hugo Chavez’ praised the congestion charge and defined one person one car culture simply as ‘a thing of stupidity.’
There are other examples from the region. The Peruvian peasant leader Hugo Blanco is part of a huge continental ecology movement and Bolivian President Morales is famous for making an inspiration speech on climate change to the UN.
However, ecological concerns have gone furthest in Cuba and the Cuban government have shown a long term interest in ecology. In 1992 at the United Nations Conference on Environment and Development held in Rio de Janeiro, Fidel Castro observed prophetically:
“An important biological species is at risk of disappearing due to the rapid and progressive elimination of its natural habitat: man.
“(…) consumer societies are fundamentally responsible for the atrocious destruction of the environment.
“The solution cannot be to hinder the development of the neediest.”
The Cuban constitution enshrines environmental protection. Cuba has been identified as the one country in the world that has been able to develop in an ecologically sustainable way by the WWF. Uniquely Cuba has balanced a rising standard of living with practices that are ecologically sustainable. While it is pretty shocking for the rest of the globe that no other state has achieved this, it shows just how important the example of Cuba is if we are to meet environmental challenges such as climate change and to deal with global problems of poverty and injustice at the same time. Put most simply to achieve a green world, we all need to learn from Cuba.
Cuba is perhaps most famous for its organic agriculture. During the 1990s the collapse of the Soviet Union meant that the country no longer received cheap oil from Russia. The ‘Special Period’ as most readers know led to much hardship but it also meant that Cuba had to go on a crash course of oil reduction. Non-organic agriculture is heavily dependent on oil, for example, most pesticides and chemical fertilizers are a by-product of petroleum. To survive Cuba had to go organic. Cubans were encouraged to produce as much of their food as possible and to use low impact ecological methods.
In Havana highly productive organic allotments can be found between tower blocks and all sorts of land that would be otherwise unused. Cuba has over 7,000 urban allotments know as ‘organopinics’ nearly 100,000 acres.
Cuba imported organic expertise from around the global and is celebrated in particular for its use of permaculture. Permaculture uses complementary planting and biological techniques to reduce digging and to make it easier to produce crops. Instead of monoculture where one uniform homogenous crop is grown, interplanting makes it easier to avoid pests and to maintain soil fertility. Organic waste such as vegetable peelings is composted and used to restore soil nutrients. Worm bins are particularly important. The worms accelerate the breakdown of compost, turning waste into horticultural gold.
The special period forced Cuba to go green but in recent years awareness of global ecological problems particularly climate change caused by rising CO2 levels have increasingly motivated the countries environmental reforms. Fidel Castro has been a pioneer of such concern, identifying the ecological costs of neo-liberal globalisation and noting that capitalist economic growth is unsustainable.
By creating unsustainable consumer patterns in industrialised countries and sowing impossible dreams throughout the rest of the world, the developed capitalist system has caused great injury to mankind. It has poisoned the atmosphere and depleted its enormous non-renewable natural resources, which mankind will need in the future.
Please, do not believe that I am thinking of an idealistic, impossible, absurd world; I am merely trying to imagine what a real world and a happier person could be like. It would not be necessary to mention a commodity, it suffices to mention a concept: inequality has made more than 80 per cent of the people on the planet unhappy, and this is no more than a concept. (Castro 2003: 18)
While George Bush has attempted to derail international action on climate change, Cuba has been a world leader. It was one of the first countries to sign the Convention on Climate Change and, its successor the Kyoto Protocol. The country was one of the first to move to low energy light bulbs to cut CO2. While Cuba now swaps oil with Venezuela in exchange for health care, it has developed renewable energy on a large scale including solar and wind generated electricity.
In March this year Jose Manuel Presa, deputy minister of the Basic Industry (energy and mining) told the Cuban Society for the Promotion of Renewable Energy Sources and Environmental Respect that Cuba had saved the equivalent of one million tons of oil in 2006 and 2007. The Cuban government’s ‘energy revolution’ has not only promoted renewables but carefully planned ways of conserving energy. The country is also exporting its expertise to other Caribbean and Latin American countries.
Recycling is also highly developed the country. Virtually all waste is reused both out of environmental concern and ecological necessity. In contrast in Britain low levels of recycling mean that many local authorities risk being fined by the European Union and there is a drive to build new incinerators despite the pollution they produce. Wildlife conservation is also a priority and the country has recently banned the hunting of all marine turtles to prevent extinction.
Many supposedly green solutions have proved to be both environmentally damaging and social unjust. Sustainability must be driven by sound scientific research and a commitment to ending poverty and inequality. One example of a supposed solution, which is neither, is biofuels. While it sounds like an obvious solution to crop energy crops instead of burning polluting fossil fuels, there are a number of devastating consequences. In South East Asia the fastest growing threat to rainforest is from biofuels, with forests being cut down to make way for palm oil plantations.
Fidel Castro has been one of most important critics of this policy pointing out that while biofuels production from waste may make sense, growing crops for fuel will mean environmental damage and lead to starvation as the area used for food production is reduced.
It would be possible to think of areas where Cuba could make more progress, however criticism must be balanced with an understanding that Cuba is unique in its commitment to raising the standard of living of its people, while maintaining environmental quality.
During the 20th century socialism seemed largely divorced from green concerns. However in the 19th century Marx and Engels were already aware of environmental issues including soil erosion, deforestation and industrial pollution. It is fitting that Cuba more than any other country has come closest to implementing eco-socialist policies that can be traced back to Marx and Engels.
The defence of Cuba is vital task for all serious greens. Capitalism is unsustainable, so an eco-socialist model is necessary. Cuba shows the way and its example is already inspiring other countries, particularly in Latin America, to follow a green path.
Castro, F. (2003) On Imperialist Globalization: Two Speeches. London: Zed.
Further information: The Power of Community – How Cuba survived peak oil
Watch this 53 minute DVD for more details on how Cuba coped with the loss of its oil imports overnight and the lessons for other countries. Available from CSC for £12 + £1 p&p
Thanks for this detailed first-hand report. I’m going to be sharing it with the nearly 1200 subscribers of the CubaNews list, the Yahoo news group I’ve been running on Cuba for almost eight years now. We can learn so much from Cuba. You folks in the UK are so lucky that you have normal relations with Cuba and can go there when you want to.
My father and his parents lived in Cuba from 1939 to 1942. They were German Jewish refugees from Nazi Germany, and not political left-wingers. That family history is where my own interest in Cuba comes from.
Cuban society today represents an effort to build an alternative to the way life was under the dictatorship of Fulgencio Batista, who ran Cuba before Fidel Castro led a revolution there. No one complained about a lack of human rights and democracy in those days, but U.S. businesses were protected.
Some things work, some don’t. Like any society, Cuba its flaws and contradictions, as well as having solid achievements. No society is perfect. But we can certainly learn a few things from Cuba’s experience. I think we can learn more than a few. If we want to bring freedom to Cuba, the best thing we can do is practice what we preach.
Not long ago the New York Philharmonic went to North Korea to perform. Cuba is the only place on earth where people from the United States need a permission slip from the federal government to go for a visit. What are they so afraid that we’ll see? How bad life supposedly is there? Of course Cuba has any number of problems, but somehow the society manages to work despite many obstacles.
Thanks again for your most encouraging report.
Walter Lippmann
Los Angeles, California
Comment by Walter Lippmann — 1 June, 2008 @ 8:45 pm
Impressive stuff, Derek. The Cuba - Venezuela link is particualrly important and what is so vital is that growth is sustainable and environmentally sound. If you consider that 95% of consumption on this planet is to date by a tiny minority in Europe and North America, if the vast majority of the planet’s population is to see their standard of living rise, environmentally friendly solutions are key.I don’t suppose Havana’s building a third runway?
Comment by Howard T — 1 June, 2008 @ 9:40 pm
The reason Cubans are so ‘ecologicaly friendly’ is because they’re SO BLOODY POOR! I take it most Green Leftists would rather we in the developed world were as broke and oppressed as most Cubans are. What a load of crap! Now complete the sentence “The Left in advanced capitalist countries has failed because…”.
Answers not on a postcard please.
Comment by John Robert Whitley — 1 June, 2008 @ 10:13 pm
John Robert Whitley might like to consider why 95% of the world’s consumption is by less than 20% of the world’s population and why the only thing the multi-nationals leave in the countries of the world’s majority is pollution. Or maybe this is just wealth creation?
Comment by Howard T — 2 June, 2008 @ 12:50 am
While it’s true that the carbon footprint of people in third world is smaller than those of people from the first world, it’s absurd to reduce Cuba’s successes to this alone.
For one Cubans have a near first world standard of living, particularly in level of health and education, but also very importantly there is no food crises, there is enough domestic food production to ensure their nutrition levels are similar to those of the first world.
There was a great report produced on January 21 by ISIS, which you can access at http://www.i-sis.org.uk/OrganicCubawithoutFossilFuels.php.
The report stated: “Production levels of vegetables have double or tipled every year since 1994, and urban gardens now produce about 60 percent of all vegetables consumed in Cuba”
The point is that they have been able to achieve this, in the context of a complete loss of oil, fertiliser and pesticide imports from USSR, and a crippling economic blokade imposed by the US. They had a crisis and rather than let the people starve, they reorganised production and invested their resources in developing sustainable agricultural techniques and energy efficiency measures - including installing 9 million energy efficient light bulbs in the space of a few months.
The point isnt aiming for the generalisation of third world conditions to avert a climate crises, i.e. generalised poverty, but instead to achieve more or less first world conditions (although im not talking about everyone having access to plasma tvs, V8 cars, but the guaranteed fulfillment of our needs) in a sustainable manner.
What Cuba shows is that when we have control of the main levers of production it is actually possible to rationally organise resources and reorganise production in a sustainable manner.
Comment by Trent Hawkins — 2 June, 2008 @ 2:20 am
I may have mentioned before on this site the recent Australian tour by leading permaculturalist Roberto Perez, featured in the Power of Community film, but it’s worth repeating. It drew an incredible 5500 people, including in numerous small towns where the radical left is unknown, though also big crowds in the cities, including at the recent Climate Change Social Change conference sponsored by Green Left Weekly. There was involvement by members of the Democratic Socialists and Socialist Alliance in some of the events, but the main organising centre was a permaculture group in Nimbin, NSW, (near me) with longstanding links to Cuba.
This very important collaboration has made me think that things like permaculture us Marxists may have traditionally thought of as nice enough but individualistic or utopian as solutions have a very different character when connected with collective/class movements (not to mention revolutionary governments). The rest of the organised far left didn’t help or even seem to attend unfortunately.
The Greens as such didn’t seem to be involved (as opposed to undoubtedly many Greens members coming along), although other recent news is that Greens leader Bob Brown is going to formally invite Chavez here, which is great.
Comment by Nick Fredman — 2 June, 2008 @ 2:35 am
Actually Robert John Whitley there are plenty of other countries that are as poor or poorer than Cuba that do not have a consciously implemented and broad reaching sustainability program like Cuba’s.
Furthermore, better economically resourced countries are actually at greater liberty to go even further than Cuba because we can invest in more expensive things like wide scale renewable energy and public transport wheras Cuba’s ability to invest in these areas is somewhat limited.
It is not a question of being poor, there is nothing that says developed economies are necessarily going to be polluting.
Its just that under capitalism the extra cost of cleaning up industries, the extra cost of renewables versus fossil fuels, and the high rate of profit that can be reaped from the fossil fuel industries means the ecological crisis prevails.
Perhaps we will not have an eco-socialist revolution to stop runaway climate change.
But its a bit nihlistic and stupid to celebrate the power of a system that is literally killing the planet I reckon.
‘Crises precipitate change’.
I think the human survival instinct is stronger than capitalism and we won’t let the system totally foul our nest.
Only time will tell. Big ups to the Cubans for leading the way to sustainability I say.
Comment by Zane A — 2 June, 2008 @ 4:32 am
It looks like Cuba has started to dig itself out of the hole it gone into as a result of its dependence on cheap Soviet oil and the failure to diversify away from sugar monoculture.
Good on Cuba, what’s been achieved is a step forward from the situation they were in.
In an era where cheap oil is no longer available, permaculture looks like a good solution for producing vegetable crops.
There was never any reason for Cubans not to be able to have enough fish and chicken to feed every family.
But as far as grain production for bread and rice - which is the basic sustaintance for the majority of the world’s population - organic farming and oxen ploughing may well lead to a fall in production.
The world’s population has grown since the war on the basis of nitrogen fertilisers. Basically, they come from the ammonia produced from coal, oil and natural gas via the Haber process.
Just compare a northern temperate country like Britain, with a growing season of around 6-7 months per year, with a tropical country like Cuba:
Cuba
Population: 11,394,043
Area: 42 803.2853 sq miles
Pop Density: 266.195 per sq mile
UK
Population: 60,776,238
Area: 94526 sq miles
Pop Density: 642.958 per sq mile
Some convincing arguments need to be provided to prove that these methods will feed those 60 million, as well as heat their homes. If not, you are inevitably put in the position of arguing that socialism means a drop in living standards.
Comment by prianikoff — 2 June, 2008 @ 7:22 am
Your last point prianikoff is interesting because it poses a real problem and I do not know the answer to: can organic farming feed the existing population? Can it do so with planned production, which capitalism cannot manage? If only the latter, then obviously the choice will be ecology v famine prevention. If the former is possible, then the left has a clear direction.
Organic farming methods have tended to be based on small scale production. I see no reason as to why large scale production methods cannot be developed.
But whatever the answer, I do think that prianikoff has stated the problem.
Comment by Harold — 2 June, 2008 @ 7:58 am
#8 As I understand it permaculture is actually quite different in key respects to organic gardening - but I’m not an expert on this stuff.
What is interesting about the Cuban example, is that normally these ideas of permaculture are tried out in a lifestyle way, on a small scale. There has been some attempt in Cuba to re-orientate the entire economy/society on a mass scale.
Comment by Adamski — 2 June, 2008 @ 9:39 am
The point that needs to be made to John Robert Whitley about material poverty in Cuba and more particularly in the less developed countries where the vast majority of the world’s population lives is that precisely they are poor materially because the majority in the wealthy nations are materially rich. It’s called imperialism: the super-exploitation of oppressed nations by a handful of oppressor nations. It allows the ruling class in the oppressor nations to bribe (for a period of time)a large section of the working class with high material standards of living. These are unsustainable economically ( with the advent of the credit crisis) and ecologically. However, Whitley does not want this affluent lifestyle to disappear. So he thinks that socialists in Britain should defend living off the backs of the rest of the world?
Comment by Robert Claridge — 2 June, 2008 @ 10:10 am
Cuba might be green when you fly over it but it is VERY polluted. You socialists should really do your homework on Cuba before assuming that it’s a perfect society.
Don’t get me wrong, I love Cuba but it is not the perfect society you think it is.
Comment by Rob Sequin — 2 June, 2008 @ 12:53 pm
Is anyone saying Cuba is a perfect society?
I don’t think any socialist thinks it’s perfect. How could it be? It is a pretty impressive place however, compared to most other third world countries, considering that it’s been under a harsh economic blockade for decades.
Comment by Ed — 2 June, 2008 @ 12:59 pm
Cuba a perfect society? There can be no ‘perfect’ society until imperialism is overcome and societies with a history of under-development are allowed to flourish.
On this particular development, I would tend to trust Derek Wall’s judgment in terms of mapping out its significance, especially as his analysis is based on supporting a country struggling to develop 90 miles from Miami and suffering the blockade. Can we learn anything from Cuba? It’s in our interests to do so, rather than dismissing any progress because of prejudice. This is hardly the Soviet Union reporting cattle feed statistics as part of the five year plan for the Nigni-Novgorod Autonomous Region after all!
Comment by Howard T — 2 June, 2008 @ 1:41 pm
In other Latin American news, further proof of the barbaric, fascist nature of the scum leading the slaveholder rebellion in Bolivia:
http://www.ipsnews.net/news.asp?idnews=42539
It would seem they’re trying to provoke violent confrontation -typical behavior of CIA destabilisation campaigns. Notice how the international news media have largely ignored this events. What are the odds that when Movement for Socialism supporters respond in kind it will be held up as an unprovoked act violence incited by Morales’ “divisive policy”.
Comment by Joepolitix — 2 June, 2008 @ 3:30 pm
The question of being able to grow staples like wheat and corn is an important one. I would be interested to see how much of those foods are imported to the UK.
I read somewhere that you can get more crop yield using organic growing techniques (compared to standard agrobusiness methods) but that the plots need to be smaller and its more labour intensive.
I don’t think the use of oxen in Cuba is something socialists/ environmentalists should universally seek to get back to- I’m sure that you could make an eco-friendly solar or electric tractor which does not compress the soil as much as the traditional tractor.
Whether or not petro-based fertilisers are required to feed the current population is another important consideration.
Marx observed the initial stages of the ‘metabolic rift’ whereby as england moved from feudalism to capitalism there was a tendency for food to be cultivated where it always had been but the new mode saw it being bought to the cities at a much greater rate. When people were living off the land their compost and faecal waste would ostensibly be re-ploughed into their immediate plot of land.
With the advent of capitalism though, nutrient was ‘robbed’ from the country and taken to the city, and then ‘pumped into the Thames, at great expense’.
I think herein lies the solution. If it is possible to grow large amounts of crops without synthetic fertilisers there would need to be a program which harnesses urban compost and greenwaste- possibly in a network of worm farms- and returns rich soil to the farms.
Sewage could also be partially treated (and methane harvested in the process) and then used to irrigate crops. This is not uncommon in China. If you believe there are health issues with using sewage to grow food crops, then certainly you must agree it could be used to grow things like cotton, hemp, plantation timber etc.
Hemp and timber by products could then be composted in the worm farms producing soil for food crops.
I don’t think this sort of stuff would be easy- there would need to be a massive public works program to establish these networks of waste harvesting and recycling. But I think fundamentally it would be possible to eliminate the use of most fossil fuel based fertilisers without causing a massive drop in food production.
And at the end of the day, using soil as a substrate for chemicals (i.e. the standard agrobusiness mode of agriculture) destroys the soil’s natural richness. Part of the reason the Cuban transition is so impressive is that they addressed this problem and successfully rehabilitated highly depleted soils.
Oh and who said Cuba is perfect? Not me. But for some odd reason they have really well resourced scientific organisations who had been working on the shift to organics for years in the leadup to the collapse of the USSR.
Cuba is not the only country subject to a crushing blockade but unlike North Korea, Palestine or pre-invasion Iraq they manage to get everyone fed and in a highly ecologically sustainable manner. Thats pretty damn impressive I reckon. Which is to say nothing of their international doctors, their healthcare and education system, marine and forestry reserves, judicial system… And women and young people are well represented in the Cuban parliament, with a fair turnover of candidates in the last several elections…
It aint perfect- but there are some pretty impressive aspects to the Cuban model.
Comment by Zane A — 2 June, 2008 @ 4:17 pm
Funny how all the US haters blame the Embargo for Cuba’s problems. Fidel is such a great guy right?
You really should know about Cuba before you blame everything on the Embargo.
Comment by Rob Sequin — 2 June, 2008 @ 8:28 pm
re #16
Actually, the UK is a major wheat producer, with the highest productivity per hectare of any country producing over 10 million tonnes per year.
(Much higher than China, India or the US which have a far higher acreage and absolute level of production)
The most recent figures I can find show the UK as having 1,837,000 hectares producing 14,288,000 tonnes
Giving a yield 7.78 Mt/ha compared to the world average of 2.75 Mt/ha.
Obviously, this involves heavy use of nitrate fertiliser, pesticides and selective breeding of crops which are resistant to rainfall and mould.
China, India and the US, the world’s biggest producers of wheat, have greater problems with drought.
The need for UK imports arises from the quality of soft wheat produced in the UK climate. Normally about 7-10% of hard-wheat is imported from Canada, Australia or the US for bread production.
According to a reply in Hansard UK Imports of wheat were as follows:-
Thousand tonnes
2002 1368
2003 985
2004 784
2005 1175
2006 1162
Note: 2006 data are provisional
http://www.parliament.the-stationery-office.co.uk/pa/cm200607/cmhansrd/cm070517/text/70517w0014.htm
Cuba doesn’t really produce wheat as a major crop, but is a maize and rice producer. The most recent figures I can find for Cuban production show the following:-
Maize
132,247 hectares 360,000 Mt 2.72 Mt/ha (World average yield 3.41Mt/ha)
Rice
204,600 hectares 715,800 Mt 3.50 Mt/ha (World average yield 3.37 Mt/ha)
http://nue.okstate.edu/Crop_Information/World_Wheat_Production.htm
Which indicates that Cuba’s productivity levels compare favourably to Mexico’s in Maize, but are slightly poorer in Rice. China has better productivity in both crops.
So my point stands - permaculture and city gardens can be a solution for getting vegetable crops to urban dwellers without heavy petrol use and maybe produce some meat protein too. But in terms of feeding people in the most heavily populated countries, the case that nitrogen based fertilisers and mechanised agriculture can be totally dispensed with, remains unproven.
Comment by prianikoff — 2 June, 2008 @ 8:32 pm
Useful article:
CUBA: URBAN FARMERS ‘MAKE SOIL FROM SCRATCH’
http://www.tradingmarkets.com/.site/news/Stock%20News/1650321/
Comment by Trent Hawkins — 4 June, 2008 @ 1:25 am