In 2006, the World Wildlife Fund’s Living Planet report named Cuba the only country to achieve sustainable development.[1] (As an aside, I have my own issues with the WWF, but that is another topic entirely.) This distinction may seem like a huge honor, but it masks many issues and almost romanticizes the country’s plight.
On one hand, it feels almost insulting to give a country the sustainable development honor when its people live “eco-friendly” lives not out of conviction but largely out of necessity. This is the case in much of the Global South; people do not hyperconsume carelessly as they do in our own throwaway culture simply because they can’t afford to. I am not saying that once a country becomes wealthy enough to be materialistic that it should be, but the reality is that only when we can comfortably satisfy our most basic present needs do we have the luxury of worrying about long-term sustainability.
Something that Cuba is held up to the world as a model for is urban agriculture, a growing trend that is much needed at a time when more than half of the world’s population lives in cities and there are numerous benefits to locally produced, organic food. I saw several organopónicos (raised bed urban gardens) throughout Cuba during my time there and was fortunate to visit one in Havana and talk with the agronomist who oversees it, Roberto Pérez Sánchez. In addition to providing jobs to the nine people employed at that particular farm, the organopónico provides the community with a source of agrochemical-free produce (mostly herbs and other condiments, though fruits and vegetables with longer growth cycles are more commonly grown on city outskirts) and supports local economies. There are also training programs for people to eventually work in urban agriculture. They are great to have, no doubt, but it’s important to note that they emerged out of necessity during the Special Period of the early 1990s when Cuba lost 85 percent of its international trade due to the collapse of the Soviet Union. To make matters worse, the U.S. tightened its blockade around the same time.
Despite the progress with urban agriculture, Mr. Pérez Sánchez noted that the organopónicos alone do not provide enough to feed the people of Cuba, as they are limited to fruits and vegetables. Cuba still has to rely on imports for much of its other food and drink, including Vietnam for rice and New Zealand for powdered milk. And despite Cuba’s socialism, multinational corporations are still able to find their way onto the island. The Swiss company Nestlé, for example, is EVERYWHERE. It even owns Ciego Montero, pretty much the only bottled water brand available. Cuban officials have been addressing these issues, with an institute devoted solely to researching rice cultivation and a law passed in 2008 that allows usufruct use of state-owned lands, opening the door for more Cubans to produce dairy and meat for the population.
Another topic that came up in our group’s discussions was oil drilling. As much as I believe in reducing humans’ dependence on fossil fuels and investing in cleaner sources of energy, I also believe that no one has any right to tell another country how to go about doing anything unless intervention is absolutely necessary (e.g. human rights are being violated). Drilling for oil now doesn’t have to mean not being able to invest in cleaner sources of energy when doing so becomes more feasible. As we learned from a young man who works for the Cuban foreign service, the country is working with a Spanish oil company on drilling and is going about it slowly and carefully, understanding the risks and potentially horrendous consequences both environmentally and economically, as the important tourism industry would certainly collapse were a BP-like disaster were to happen. Since Cuba uses oil anyway (largely imported from Venezuela, with whom it has great relations), producing it domestically makes sense and could allow the money saved from not importing it to be put toward other services that people need. Many in the U.S. are staunchly opposed to the idea of Cuba producing oil, citing “environmental concerns,” among other issues. (Ileana Ros-Lehtenin, a Cuban-American Member of Congress from Florida, has called for sanctions against foreign companies who invest in Cuban oil production, although that has much to do with the electoral power of Miami’s exile community.) Never mind that these politicians are from the same party that wants to open up the Arctic National Wildlife Refuge for drilling!
In the end, none of these environmental issues in Cuba can be separated from international politics. The blockade plays a major role in so many aspects of life, and as ridiculous as I believe the half century-old restrictions are, I can’t help but feel like it has its benefits, both practical and symbolic. If Cuban are to start cultivating rice on a larger scale than they currently do, for example, then cheap imports from the U.S. would certainly undermine that (although Cuba does already import food from the U.S. under an exception to the embargo). The availability of synthetic fertilizers and pesticides would offer no guarantee that farmers would not use them to increase yields. Furthermore, Cuba has been able to survive and in many ways, thrive despite the restrictions, so this also sends a strong message to the world against U.S. domination and hegemony, a message that deserves to be heard. That said, there are countless reasons to lift the blockade, and for Cuba to succumb to the same negative effects that other countries that have traded freely with the U.S. have experienced, much more would have to change than just the trade restrictions. It will be interesting to see how these issues continue to play out in the years and decades to come.
- Sonia Saini
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