Comment: Cuba and sustainable development

Cuba: Breaking corporate power allows sustainable development

Green Left Weekly, September 24, 2011

By Marce Cameron

Cuba is a world leader in ecologically sustainable practices. It is the only country to have begun the large-scale transition from conventional farming, which is heavily dependent on fossil fuels, to a new agricultural paradigm known as low-input sustainable agriculture.

Thriving urban organic farms feed and beautify Cuba’s cities, strengthen local communities and employ hundreds of thousands of people thanks to government support. 

These farms provide about 80% of the fresh fruit, vegetables, herbs and medicinal plants consumed by urban residents. They are now being complemented by “green belts” on the urban fringes aimed at local self-sufficiency and ecological sustainability.

Cuba was the first country to replace all incandescent light globes with energy-saving compact fluorescents and to ban the sale of incandescents. 

It has also pioneered the decentralisation of electricity generation by installing thousands of diesel generators the size of shipping containers where they are needed. This has cut transmission losses and made the grid less vulnerable to disruption.

Many sugar mills burn crop residues to generate electricity for the grid, and rural schools and other social facilities have been fitted out with solar panels. Bicycles have been promoted as a sustainable transport mode and neighbourhood committees play a key role in recycling.

Tree cover is increasing thanks to reforestation efforts. From coral reefs to cloud forests, Cuba’s network of protected areas makes it the ecological jewel of the Caribbean. For visiting ecologists, a trip to Cuba is like stepping back in time.

Like all countries, Cuba has serious environmental problems, from recent severe droughts and flooding that may be linked to climate change, to soil erosion, pollution and loss of biodiversity as a result of unsustainable practices past and present. A small Third World country subjected to a crippling US economic siege since 1962, Cuba cannot afford many expensive green technologies.

Yet Cuba has become a social laboratory for the application of sustainable practices that environmentalists in developed capitalist societies such as Australia can only dream about.

One reason why Cuba leads the world in sustainable practices is dire necessity: Cuba has had to adapt to acute shortages of energy, raw materials, manufacured goods and financing as a result of external circumstances. 

At the beginning of the 1990s, the Soviet Union and its eastern European allies, which accounted for 85% of Cuba’s foreign trade, cut ties with Cuba as they reverted to capitalism. The sudden demise of Soviet bureaucratic “socialism” caused Cuba’s own post-capitalist economy to contract by 35%.

But thanks to the solidarity embodied in its deeply popular socialist revolution, Cuba avoided the descent into abject poverty and political chaos that would have taken place had Cuba not abolished capitalism in the early 1960s.

Cuba turned to oxen to plough the fields because there was no alternative: thousands of Soviet tractors stood idle for lack of fuel, lubricants and spare parts. But once farmers got used to ploughing their fields with oxen, they discovered that oxen offer many advantages over tractors, particularly in small-scale agriculture. 

Oxen are cheaper to “run”, eat grass rather than consume oil, compact soil far less and produce free, natural fertiliser. Integrated into agricultural systems designed for low cost and ecological sustainability, oxen are a step forward as well as a step “backward”.

Necessity may be the mother of invention, but many good ideas for how to begin the transition to a more sustainable civilisation are destined to remain marginal as long as capitalism dominates the planet — even when capitalist societies experience economic crises of the magnitude of Cuba’s post-Soviet “Special Period”.

The very nature of capitalism tends to prevent such good ideas from being applied on a sufficiently large scale to make a real difference. This is mainly because it’s more profitable for capitalist corporations to continue plundering the planet.

Cuba’s socialist revolution abolished capitalist ownership of large-scale productive wealth and replaced the capitalist market with central planning to meet social needs. There is a subordinate role for market mechanisms, cooperatives and small private businesses.

Unless corporate power is overthrown and replaced with a state based on the democratic self-organisation of the millions of workers and farmers that produce most of society’s wealth, corporate power will remain an insurmountable barrier to Australia, and other nations ruled by the corporate rich, following in Cuba’s footsteps.

Cuba treads lightly on the Earth. In 2006, a World Wildlife Fund study concluded Cuba is the only country in the world with both a high UN Human Development Index — a composite ranking based on quality of life indices and purchasing power — and a relatively small “ecological footprint”, a measure of the per person use of land and resources.

The study concluded that if the world followed Cuba’s example we’d only need the resources of one Earth to sustain us indefinitely. By contrast, if the world followed the example of Australia’s capitalist economy, we’d need about 3.7 Earth-like planets. Recent telescope surveys suggest such planets may be dotted throughout our galaxy, but even the nearest one would be unimaginably far away.

As global capitalism drags humanity towards an ecological meltdown on our own planet — the early stages of which are unfolding before our eyes — the need to replace capitalism with a democratic social order based on common ownership of large-scale productive wealth and human solidarity will be posed ever more sharply. Yet people will struggle for such a society only if it seems possible, realistic and necessary. Here too, Cuba leads the world.

Not only does Cuba offer an inspiring example of what’s possible when even a small, poor country frees itself from the tyranny of the corporate rich, Cuba and Venezuela lead a bloc of Latin American countries with progressive governments — the Bolivarian Alliance for Our America (ALBA) — on the world stage in the struggle for social and environmental justice.

At the United Nations climate change conference in Copenhagen in 2009, the ALBA countries denounced capitalism as the root cause of the ecological crisis, and scuttled a backroom deal that would have placed the burden on the poor countries that are least responsible for rising greenhouse gas emissions.

Next year’s UN Conference on Sustainable Development in Rio de Janeiro, Brazil, will mark 20 years since the first UN Earth Summit. It’s worth recalling the words of then-Cuban president Fidel Castro at the 1992 summit. Castro pointed out that a fifth of the world’s population “consume two-thirds of all metals and three-fourths of the energy produced worldwide”.

“They have poisoned the seas and the rivers. They have polluted the air ... They have saturated the atmosphere with gases, altering climatic conditions with the catastrophic effects we are already beginning to suffer.

“The forests are disappearing. The deserts are expanding. Billions of tons of fertile soil are washed every year into the sea. Numerous species are becoming extinct.

“Population pressures and poverty lead to desperate efforts to survive, even at the expense of nature. Third World countries, yesterday’s colonies and today nations exploited and plundered by an unjust international economic order, cannot be blamed for all this...

“Enough of selfishness. Enough of schemes of domination. Enough of insensitivity, irresponsibility and deceit. Tomorrow will be too late to do what we should have done a long time ago.”

Translation: Guidelines debate 14, Science/Environment

Cuban biotechnologist

Here is Part 14 of my translation of the booklet Information on the results of the Debate on the Economic and Social Policy Guidelines for the Party and the Revolution, an explanatory document published together with the final version of the Guidelines adopted by the Cuban Communist Party (PCC) Congress in April.

For a small Third World country subject to a US economic siege, Cuba has notched up some remarkable scientific advances in sectors such as biotechnology, medical technology and ecologically sustainable agriculture. Cuba has also invested heavily in computer science and software development.

In biotech and medical instruments Cuba is competitive with transnational pharmaceutical companies on the world market. It shares its advances in this sector, which include the first effective vaccine for meningitis B and a host of other innovations, with other Third World countries by selling them cheap drugs and helping them build plants to produce their own medications. By necessity Cuba has had to develop its own armaments and military hardware industry. Factories run by the armed forces were the proving ground for the new system of enterprise management known as Perfeccionamiento Empresarial (Enterprise Improvement) that is being extended to the civilian industrial sector, and whose principles are incorporated in the Guidelines. 

Thanks to the emphasis given to education and training since the 1959 Revolution the country has an abundance of highly skilled scientific and technical workers and educators. A key challenge of the reform process is how to harness the full potential of all this talent and apply it to the urgent problems of industrialisation in a besieged economy battered by two decades of a deep structural crisis precipitated by the demise of Soviet "socialism" and hobbled by a bloated, hyper-centralised administrative apparatus that must be gradually dismantled. Yet Cuba has created strong bases for the take-off of its scientific and technological potential in the context of the new Cuban model of socialist development that is emerging. 

Under capitalism vast resources are squandered on warfare, commercial advertising and technological innovation that has little or nothing to do with real human needs. Scientific talent is held hostage to corporate profiteering. Many of the best inventions gather dust on shelves because they aren't profitable to commercialise or because they threaten corporate profitability, and corporate secrecy undermines scientific collaboration for the benefit of working people. By contrast, socialist-oriented Cuba is subject to none of this irrationality. The socialist revolution has smashed the barriers to scientific and technical collaboration, and innovation is directed to where it's most needed to benefit the working people as a whole.

During the post-Soviet Special Period a grassroots movement of innovators, many of them workers on the factory floor or farmers in the fields, kept much of Cuba's dilapidated industry running long after the supply of imported spare parts had slowed to a trickle. At periodic national gatherings these inventors would proudly share their inventions, and those judged to be the best won prizes. Social recognition and the desire to serve the Revolution, rather than self-enrichment, were the motivating factors.

These guidelines were amended, and new ones added, on the basis of the mass consultation process that took place in the lead-up to the Cuban Communist Party (PCC) Congress in April. As you can see, important modifications were made to include more content on ecological sustainability; the inclusion of small-scale private and cooperative forms of productive property or management of social property in the scope of the guidelines; and the participation of work collectives at the grassroots level in the application of innovation to production and services. Nearly five thousand proposals were made regarding the new guideline 139, an indication of the strong desire of workers to have more involvement in the management of their workplaces.

As usual, the modifications also make the Guidelines more understandable to non-specialists. The language of the draft document reflected the fact that it was drawn up by teams of specialists. Not surprisingly, though efforts were evidently made to present the proposals in an understandable way, it was still heavily laden with technical and legalistic jargon and "bureaucratese". The final version reads more clearly.

The format is as follows: number and text of the draft guideline, followed by the text and number of the corresponding guideline approved by the Communist Party Congress, followed by the drafting commission's explanation for the change. You'll find it easiest to read on my blog where the amended guidelines are in bold font.

Science, Technology and Innovation Policy

Guidelines

Chapter title: amended to “Science, Technology, Innovation and Environment Policy”

Broadens its scope to explicitly incorporate the environment and give a more systematic focus to the themes of the chapter, given 123 opinions in 11 provinces and the Isle of Youth.

New guideline:

Draw up an integrated science, technology, innovation and environment policy that  takes into consideration the accelerated changes in these areas and their increasing interrelation to meet the needs of economic and social development in the short, medium and long term, aimed at increasing economic efficiency and exports of high added value, import substitution, satisfying the necessities of the population and promoting its participation in the building of socialism, and protecting the environment, heritage and national culture. (129)

Included as a new general guideline. States that the new policy to be drawn up must be integral and incorporate existing environmental policy. In response to 2,775 opinions nationwide, one National Assembly deputy and the discussion at the Congress.       

122. Create the organisational, legal and institutional conditions needed to achieve a form of economic organisation and a system of generalisation that combines scientific investigation, the development of new products and services, productive efficiency and the management of exports.

Proposes studying and taking advantage of experiences, and leaves open the possibility there there may be more than one organisational form. Introduces the aspect of innovation and stresses the idea of stimulating the integral reproduction of the [research-innovation-production-sales] cycle. Incorporates part of the content of the original guideline 202, and includes universities. Given 2,414 opinions nationwide and the Congress discussion.   

123. The results achieved in the biotechnology sector, the production of advanced medical equipment, the software industry, educational technologies, and scientific and technological services of high added value, and bioinformatics and nanotechnology must be sustained and developed.  

Sustain and the develop the results achieved in the biotechnology sector, the medical-pharmaceutical industry, the software industry and the computerisation of society, basic sciences, the natural sciences, the study and application of renewable energy sources, social and educational technologies, industrial technology transfer, the production of advanced technical equipment, nanotechnology and scientific and technical services of high added value. (131)

Introduces other basic branches and strategic lines for scientific and technological development. Based on 846 opinions nationwide, that of one National Assembly deputy and the Congress discussion.

124. Sustain and develop, simultaneously, studies on adaptation, mitigation and climate change; conservation and the rational use of natural resources, in particular of soils, water and forests; and of the social sciences, which are equally necessary with regard to these objectives.      

Sustain and develop integral studies for the protection, conservation and rehabilitation of the environment, and adapt environmental policy to the new projections for the economy and society. Prioritise studies on dealing with climate change and, in general, sustainable development. Emphasise conservation and the rational use of natural resources such as soils, water, beaches, the atmosphere, forests and biodiversity as well as the promotion of environmental education. (133)

Treats the environment and environmental studies separately. Takes into consideration sustainable development, confronting climate change and the conservation and rational use of natural resources. In response to 1,085 opinions nationwide, that of a National Assembly deputy and the Congress discussions.

125. To appropriately orient industrial development, the carrying out of studies aimed at elaborating a strategic industrial policy must be institutionalised and systematised, on the basis of the dynamic tendencies of technological change, with the aim of creating the conditions for the industrial sector to assume a key role in economic growth, the capacity for innovation and structural change in the productive sector, and so that it contributes in a significant way to greater economic independence and technological sovereignty in strategic branches of the economy.        

Define an industrial policy that contributes to reorienting industrial development, and that monitors the use of existing technologies in the country with a view to promoting their systematic modernisation, taking into account energy efficiency, productive efficacy and environmental impact, and that contributes to greater technological sovereignty in strategic branches of the economy. Consider the importation of technologies, the country’s capacity to assimilate them and the support services they require, the production of spare parts, and compliance with metrology and quality norms. (135)

Stresses the importance of a technology policy that serves as a basis for the reorientation of industrial development. Responds to the problem of technological obsolescence. Specifies the issues of spare parts, metrology and quality norms. Given 110 opinions in 11 provinces, that of a National Assembly deputy and the Congress discussion.

126. In the specific case of the agricultural sector, the application of science and technology to increasing food production and improving animal health must be boosted in all links in the productive chain, reducing production costs on the basis of the production of biofertilisers, insecticides and similar products that allow for a reduction in imports and dependence on external markets for these product lines.        

In agro-industrial activity, the application of an integrated approach to science, technology, innovation and the environment in the entire productive chain will be boosted, with the aim of increasing food production, improving animal health and producer services, reduced costs, and better utilisation of machinery and inputs for national production and of the scientific-technological capacity at the disposal of the country. (136)

Covers all agro-industrial activity. Prioritises the reduction of food imports. Incorporates the content of draft guideline 187. In response to 1,960 opinions nationwide and one National Assembly deputy.

127. In general, the socialist state enterprise must create conditions for the incorporation of scientific and technological developments, where possible and necessary.  

All forms of management of economic entities will be ensured a regulatory framework that promotes the systematic and accelerated introduction of the results of science, innovation and technological development in productive processes and in services, taking into account the established norms of social and environmental responsibility. (134)

Generalises the guideline to include entities in all sectors and forms of property ownership and management. Highlights the importance of a regulatory framework that promotes the incorporation of the results of science and innovation and of environmental and social sustainability criteria. In response to 970 opinions in 14 provinces.

128. The completion and application of the legal instruments required by the System of Scientific and Technological Innovation must be worked on with urgency.

Adopt the necessary functional reordering and structural measures and update the corresponding legal instruments to achieve the integrated and effective management of the Science, Technology, Innovation and Environment System (130).

Completes the elements to be taken into account in the updating of the system. Given 618 opinions nationwide.   

New guideline:

Continue to promote social science and humanities research on the key aspects of social life, and prefect the methods of introducing the results of these studies in decision-making at all levels. (137)

Makes specific reference to the social sciences and humanities. Establishes as an objective the application of the results of these studies. In response to 935 opinions nationwide and that of a National Assembly deputy.   

New guideline:

Give greater attention to the continual education and training of technical personnel and qualified cadres that responds to and anticipates scientific and technological developments in the key areas of production and services, as well as the prevention and mitigation of social and environmental impacts. (138)  

Gathers together concepts contained in guideline 202 of the draft document. Emphasises the updating of the scientific-technological education of professionals, mid-level technicians, specialists and cadres. Given 563 opinions in 15 provinces.   

New guideline:

Define and promote new ways of stimulating the creativity of the work collectives at the base level, and strengthen their participation in the solution of the technological problems of production and services and in the promotion of ecologically sustainable methods of production. (139)

Adopts as a guideline the promotion of the management of innovation in the work collectives at the base [i.e. factory floor] level. In response to 4,976 opinions nationwide and that of one National Assembly deputy.

Translation: The thorn and the countryside

The thorn and the countryside

By Luis Sexto

Juventud Rebelde, March 31, 2011

Translation: Marce Cameron

The post brought this correspondent the following thorn: "Why don't you and the other journalists, together with the other office workers, go and work in the countryside?" I could respond rudely. But we might understand the reader perhaps thinking that the agricultural insufficiency of the country could be resolved by turning everybody into agriculturalists.

My irate correspondent does not realise that for some years we left behind, for weeks and months at a time, our offices and our writing, even factories, and the problem continued unresolved. With regard to journalism, society also needs the press and culture, and the offices, in order to function and develop harmoniously. Of course, if the unproductive abounds rather than the productive then a harmful imbalance is established. Admitting this, this commentator would reformulate the injunction he received in the following way: Why do certain inhabitants of the countryside not work in agriculture? A survey at the beginning of the 1990s revealed that in agricultural municipalities only one percent worked in agriculture.

From these questions and this data we may begin to think more probingly about the causes of the low level of utilisation of our farmlands. It seems to me that the phobia towards the countryside has been a constant in Cuban history. We can't attribute this evil to the Revolution, which must pay for the sins of so many other people's mistaken ideas and above all for the propaganda of the enemies of socialism. Certainly, we revolutionaries are partly responsible for having emphasised the concentration and centralisation of the land. But for centuries a curse was cast over the countryside. The landowners — both in the colony and the neocolony — never worked the latifundia that they allegedly owned legitimately: they exploited and abused the slaves and the peasants.

Usually, the land was not even seen as an attractive landscape. For a long time we preferred days at the beach to days in the countryside for our holidays. We looked more to the horizon of the sea than to the blue mist of the plains or the mountains. Add in as well the fact that work was the most pressing demand of the rural population according to a survey of the Catholic University Association in 1957. And so the lack of employment opportunities obliged a migration to the cities. The motives were various. Many headed for the capital to avoid the destiny of agricultural labour, or to seek a better life. Then there were also other reasons: what doctors were there, what schools were there in a remote little village or in a poor hamlet ... so for all these reasons, it seems to me, the countryside has dragged a hereditary solavaya [Cuban slang: "Good riddance!"].

Traditionally, we've aspired to become university graduates. One of the writers who best studied our national character, Jorge Manach, wrote in 1930 that among Cubans, regardless of a family's economic circumstances, the "desire to be a professional" predominates; parents, even the poorest, want their children to be "doctors". In my own family, my mother entertained us as children with this dream. In the end, rural life offered very little.

Part of the solution to this conflict is rooted, then, in us accepting that Cuba is essentially an agricultural country, and that the farmer has to be treated as the most important worker in the country, because the food security of the population depends on the farmers, as does the elimination of imports which drain the treasury and add to our shame. "Caramba, look how we import fruits, vegetables, grains", one of these peasants could say; but there are not so many, evidently, that make the land produce, loving it as the root of creation.

So we'll have to begin to consider the agricultural worker — be they a peasant farmer, a cooperative member, a wage earner or the beneficiary of Decree Law 259 [promoting the leasing of idle agricultural lands belonging to the state rent-free on a long-term basis] — as the basic worker in the Cuban economy. And for this, we'll have to link his life to what he cultivates, promoting his well-being and his growing autonomy, that is, the capacity to decide what to do and how to do it, though guided by the national interests. What's more, he'll have to be paid on time, and justly, for what he produces, which must be distributed effectively. Respect generates respect.

Do we perhaps disregard the fact that agriculture cannot be a terrain of bureaucracy but a climate of confidence, safe from paperwork that holds back the necessity and the desire to work? If we ignore this, the countryside may continue to suffer from the "Oh, for the streetscapes of Havana" syndrome.

Translation: Cubasolar president on debate

Cubasolar is a Cuban non-government organisation that promotes renewable energy and energy efficiency. The group publishes a colour magazine Energia y Tú (Energy and You, see <www.cubasolar.cu>) that is widely available in Cuba. Below is an interview with Cubasolar president Luis Berriz by cubasolidaridad.org on ecological themes in the debate on the Draft Economic and Social Policy Guidelines. The interview was published by the Basque website cubainformacion.tv.

Interview with Cubasolar president on Draft Guidelines debate

cubasolidaridad.org, March 10, 2011

Translation: Marce Cameron

Cubasolidaridad.org (CS): In the most general sense, in the debates that have been held we don't glimpse a concrete model of development but what would seem to be objectives that are mostly juxtaposed, without a clear integration or harmonisation. For example, [the Guidelines] talk about continuing with the socialist planning model without a corresponding evaluation of how it has functioned, that it must be modified but not the strategy of modification. What energy planning model will be implemented?

Luis Berriz (LB): Paco, before answering your question, let me tell you that what has been published is the Draft Guidelines and not the Guidelines. This draft is published as a basic document to begin the discussion with all of the people. I'll also tell you that this Draft has been discussed in hundreds of thousands of meetings in every workplace and even in every neighbourhood, where everyone has participated with all of their opinions. I can inform you that up to February 7 there have been 127,113 meetings with the participation of 7 million citizens, who made more that 2,346,000 interventions which comprise 619,387 proposals for deletions, additions, modifications, doubts and concerns about the content of the Draft Guidelines. You know that Cuba has 11 million people and a quarter of these are children, in other words, everyone has participated in the discussions. Now we'll see what happens to the Guidelines after the [Communist Party] Congress [in April].

Now I'll answer your question. The energy policy we aim to implement is that which leads to energy independence, that is, a policy based on the natural resources of Cuba, principally the sources of renewable energy, and premised on savings and energy efficiency.

CS: Also in the general sense, there is no mention of an environmental strategy, either in terms of conservation or the sustainable exploitation of natural resources. Why does this not appear in a development program such as this?

LB: This is something that has been widely discussed by the people and no doubt the Guidelines will be modified to reflect this.

CS: Concretely, it seems to us to be hardly a sustainable model in environmental and energy terms —the proposal for the tourism sector, with the priority given to the construction of marinas, golf courses, a model we're all too familiar with in Spain that's an ecological disaster, with its use of water, destruction of the coastline ... how can these proposals be made sustainable?

LB: I can't talk about Spain, but what we're talking about in Cuba is developing sane tourism, nature tourism and mainly the kind that involves contact with the Cuban people so they understand the reality of Cuba. As you know, Cuba does not promote sex or gambling tourism but prohibits them. Unfortunately, foreign tourism always has negative consequences in Cuba, where we face an undeclared war with imperialism and enemy agents can come here in the name of tourism to finance the counterrevolution.

CS: In terms of energy, sectors such as the co-generation of energy by the sugar industry through the use of bagasse [sugar cane stalks after sugar extraction] and sugar cane agricultural and forestry residues, and creating the conditions to co-generate energy in the inactive period in both refining and distillation, are prioritised. Given this, it seems to us that the decline in cane production makes such an alternative proposal possible. Does this not open the door to the production of biofuels such as ethanol via distillation?

LB: Paco, our country has produced ethanol for centuries as a by-product of sugar cane. It has been produced for medical and industrial uses and also, primarily, for our fine Cuban rum which I'm sure you've tried. Also, we're not against biofuels. What we're against is using products such as corn and soya for the production of fuels to satisfy the powerful [consumers in developed countries] when there are so many hungry people in this world. We're in favour of the production of biofuels in order to guarantee food production. Biofuels must be produced at a local level and for local use, and solely to achieve energy independence and sustainable development.

CS: Regarding renewable energy sources, "those that have the greatest economic impact in the short term" are prioritised. Is this not a contradiction, given that it may be better to prioritise those with a greater impact in the medium or long term?

LB: I don't know if this may be a contradiction in Spain, Europe or the US, but in country like Cuba that has been blockaded [by US trade sanctions] for more than 50 years and after the collapse of the socialist camp, when at one time we were absolutely alone, we're obliged to think about doing things that have short term economic benefits while also thinking about the medium and long term.

CS: Among the renewable energy sources there does not appear to be sufficient emphasis on the use of biomass, other than mentioning the sugar industry. Are there proposals for this?

LB: Yes, there are such proposals.

CS: Finally, is there a plan to quantify these Guidelines with indicators to ensure their implementation and objectives?

LB: Sorry, I don't understand your question. All I can tell you is that these proposed Guidelines aim to ensure the updating of the Cuban socialist system based on Marxism-Leninism. We have committed errors and all Cubans are aware that we have to change, but always for the better, that is, to strengthen our social system: Marxist-Leninist socialism.

You know us very well. If anyone believes in miracles — regardless of their beliefs, whether they be Christian, Islamic or something else — they'd realise that our Revolution is a miracle, because it has been able to overcome the cruel imperialist blockade for more than 50 years and help save thousands of lives in other countries of this world with its solidarity.