Saturday, June 21, 2014

Cubans find preparing for climate change hard, expensive and essential

Inez Perez in E&E News:  The Malecon stretches for 5 miles along the coast of Havana, flanked by a line of old, pastel-colored buildings. ... During the last couple of years, the area has undergone sporadic renovation in the hopes of bringing it back to its former glory, but now there is a bigger change being put in place: No more residential development will be allowed on the oceanfront.


The heavy damage -- estimated at around 704.2 million Cuban pesos ($26.6 million) -- and the prolonged disruption of basic public services, was a wake-up call. It prompted a series of actions that would eventually change the country's approach to climate change.

...Cuba has a long history of climate adaptation measures, even if they weren't originally conceived as such. For one, the country has a highly organized disaster prevention and management system, called Civil Defense, designed to protect lives in case of extreme hazards such as hurricanes.




But as weather grew more extreme, the government realized it couldn't rely on disaster management alone. In 2005, right after Wilma broke havoc in Havana, Cuba's Environment Agency took on the task of mapping out the hazards, vulnerabilities and risks for the entire country....

The Malecon in Havana, shot by Antonio Milena, Wikimedia Commons via Agencia Brasil, under the Creative Commons Attribution 3.0 Brazil license

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