Passion of the insular Caribbean to recover its ecosystems

The project "Community-based coastal remediation in the two largest nations of the insular Caribbean: Cuba and the Dominican Republic" is well received for its impact on environmental improvement.

Its essential objective lies in the rehabilitation of coastal ecosystems, the restoration of functional hydrology after years of degradation by traditional agricultural practices and urbanism, in actions very typical of the heritage of underdevelopment.

It also seeks to replenish coral reef habitats, threatened by warmer waters due to the effects of climate change, and innovative solutions to large-scale strandings of sargassum, a brown marine macroalgae of the genus Sargassum.

Basically, its presence compromises the quality of beaches and destroys coastal ecosystems, including seagrasses and coral reefs, according to specialists from Cuba's Environment Agency, national promoter of the aforementioned environmental proposal.

This project is financed by the Caribbean Biodiversity Fund, executed by the U.S. Non-Governmental Organization Ocean Foundation and implemented in Cuba by the Environment Agency of the Ministry of Science, Technology and Environment, and its official presentation took place recently at the Quinta de los Molinos del Rey.

In practice, it promotes a community participatory process, with a view to the development of strategic plans, in which measures for the restoration of mangroves, corals and Sargassum composting will be applied.

With their gradual restoration to near-natural state, it will ensure benefits in terms of protecting coastal communities from storms, improving water quality and regenerating marine biodiversity.

The initial project sites

According to its projection, the intervention sites will be the Guanahacabibes National Park, in the province of Pinar del Rio; the Playa Cajio Agroforestry Enterprise, on the southern coast of Artemisa; the Batabano Gulf Fauna Refuge, in Mayabeque; and the Jardines de la Reina National Park, in Ciego de Avila and Camagüey.

Cuba is a signatory to the Convention on Biological Diversity and its professionals believe that this initiative contributes, with actions to identify ecosystem goods and services in coastal communities, to implement measures to reduce anthropogenic pressures on the most degraded mangrove areas.

Moreover, it responds to several of the Sustainable Development Goals of the UN 2030 Agenda, such as 13 Climate Action, 14 Underwater Life and 15 Life of Terrestrial Ecosystems, among others.

Cubans and Dominicans signed the Convention on Biological Diversity, in force since 1993, so they are beneficiaries of its conception for the preservation of their endowment of natural wealth, the essential commitment of this new plan, which calls for scientific and institutional capacities.

The text was adopted by statesmen at the United Nations Conference on Environment and Development, in Rio de Janeiro, in June 1992, when Fidel Castro warned that consumer societies are primarily responsible for the horrendous destruction of the environment.

This Summit also led to the Global Conference on the Sustainable Development of Small Island Developing States in 1994, which initiated negotiations for the establishment of a Convention on Combating Desertification and an agreement on straddling and highly migratory fish stocks.

Due to its consequences in the Caribbean region, the rehabilitation of its coastal systems acquires a priority character, if we only take into account the alert of the maximum leader of the Cuban Revolution on the harmful environmental persistence of capitalist societies.