Jean-Marc Ram­per­sad

Fol­low­ing the dev­as­ta­tion by Hur­ri­cane Melis­sa, a ma­jor hur­ri­cane that se­vere­ly im­pact­ed east­ern Cu­ba, the coun­try is fo­cused on re­cov­ery and dam­age as­sess­ment, ac­cord­ing to Cuban Sci­ence, Tech­nol­o­gy and En­vi­ron­ment Min­is­ter Ar­man­do Ro­dríguez Batista.

Cru­cial­ly, de­spite the storm’s in­ten­si­ty, the prepa­ra­tion ef­forts proved suc­cess­ful, re­sult­ing in ze­ro fa­tal­i­ties.

Batista said, “Our gov­ern­ment had the chance to evac­u­ate a lot of cities and a lot of the pop­u­la­tion all over this east­ern part of the coun­try so that they were pro­tect­ed dur­ing the pas­sage of the hur­ri­cane.”

Batista com­mend­ed the work of the Cuban sci­en­tists and those in­volved in the evac­u­a­tions, but now, res­i­dents are re­turn­ing to their homes to eval­u­ate the ex­tent of the dam­age.

Cu­ba is al­so re­ceiv­ing es­sen­tial sup­port from Unit­ed Na­tions pro­grammes and reap­ing the fruits of its long-stand­ing in­ter­na­tion­al sol­i­dar­i­ty, ac­cord­ing to Batista. Lo­cal­ly, sup­port for Cu­ba was co­or­di­nat­ed by the Trinidad and To­ba­go Friends of Cu­ba, re­quest­ing fi­nan­cial do­na­tions in col­lab­o­ra­tion with the Cuban Em­bassy.

De­spite the progress in dis­as­ter pre­pared­ness, Batista stressed that the biggest hur­dle to achiev­ing the na­tion’s sus­tain­abil­i­ty goals is the long-stand­ing Unit­ed States em­bar­go, which Cubans re­fer to as “el blo­queo”, or the block­ade.

“The most im­por­tant chal­lenge for the achieve­ment of Cuban sus­tain­abil­i­ty goals is pre­cise­ly the block­ade be­cause it lim­its our ac­cess to tech­nolo­gies, it lim­its the ac­cess for fund­ing, for a lot of re­sources, and it’s not on­ly a bi­lat­er­al thing.”

While the ma­jor­i­ty of the UN Gen­er­al As­sem­bly re­cent­ly vot­ed in favour of end­ing the em­bar­go, its ef­fects re­main per­va­sive. Cu­ba con­tin­ues to lean on sci­ence and in­no­va­tion as a com­pre­hen­sive ap­proach to man­ag­ing risk and find­ing new path­ways for de­vel­op­ment de­spite the ad­ver­sar­i­al eco­nom­ic pres­sure.

Look­ing be­yond these set­backs, Cu­ba has a proac­tive, sci­ence-dri­ven plan to adapt to fu­ture cli­mate change chal­lenges, known as Tarea Vi­da (Task Life or Project Life), which was ap­proved in 2017. This gov­ern­men­tal plan in­cludes sev­er­al mit­i­gat­ing ac­tiv­i­ties, such as the re­lo­ca­tion of vul­ner­a­ble com­mu­ni­ties near the coast, based on maps pro­ject­ing ar­eas that will be un­der­wa­ter by 2050 due to sea-lev­el rise and in­creas­ing hur­ri­cane in­ten­si­ty. Ris­ing sea lev­el al­so means in­creas­ing soil salin­i­ty near the coast. There­fore, agri­cul­tur­al re­silience is part of the project. For nat­ur­al de­fences, the aim is to fo­cus on restor­ing man­grove ar­eas and study­ing ma­rine ecosys­tems like coral reefs and sea­grass­es to act as nat­ur­al buffers.

Batista al­so said, “We are work­ing very hard on the so­cial com­mu­ni­ca­tion of our vul­ner­a­bil­i­ties and to make peo­ple more aware of the chal­lenges we are fac­ing.”

To nav­i­gate a fu­ture marked by the in­ten­si­fy­ing ef­fects of cli­mate change, Cu­ba must con­tin­ue lever­ag­ing its suc­cess­ful, sci­ence-based Tarea Vi­da adap­ta­tion plan while si­mul­ta­ne­ous­ly in­no­vat­ing to over­come the crip­pling eco­nom­ic bar­ri­ers posed by the en­dur­ing US block­ade.