Lázaro Raúl González, CPI
HERRADURA, May - That Havana was chosen as one of the sites for the
celebration of World Environment Day could lead one to suppose that Cuba had a
model environmentalist system. Far from it.
Rivers are used to dump contaminants from aging State industries, which use
the rivers as natural sewers. The island's bays are contaminated in proportion
to the economic activity around them. The most contaminated, Havana's, receives
effluents from the whole metropolitan area. Mounds of refuse can be seen
everywhere; waste water systems overflow due to broken pipes that go weeks
without repairs.
The lack of zeal and money invested by the government in the environment are
the greatest threats to the protection of the landscape. Nature in Cuba, its
exploitation, protection and even monitoring, are State property. Too many hats
for one head.
It's time to end the State monopoly on the care of the environment. It's
time that the government allow and even encourage independent environmental
organizations, instead of repressing them as it has been doing up to now.
The deterioration of the soil is a good example of how official institutions
are incapable of combatting negligence by government entities: 76.8% of Cuban
soils have lost productivity, 40% show worrisome degrees of erosion, and 14% of
the arable land evidences high levels of salinity.
The government cannot be at the same time judge and participant. If the
government does not open its monopoly on environmental protection, allowing for
example, environmental groups to impede the deforestation of westernmost Cabo de
San Antonio whose wood is being used in the tobacco industry, then Cuba slowly
but irreversibly will be consumed.
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