Cuba: Red or Green?
Wednesday, 09/12/2009
Does "Cuba" conjure up an instant flash of red or do shades of green spring to mind?
Jeremy Tarbox says more people are attracted to the country for its lead in sustainability practices rather than traditional aspects, just.
He has a degree in chemical engineering but is now studying a second degree in international development.
He visited Cuba with the Australia-Cuba Friendship Society and as part of his study researched why members of that society travelled to Cuba.
"I'd studied a lot about the sustainable agricultural methods and permaculture that had been developed in Cuba with the collapse of their export sugar market," he says.
"And I wanted to see whether people were going for other sustainability reasons, like me, or whether there were people who were more interested in the traditional, I would say, like revolution or socialism kind of aspects."
"The research came out that it was about 50/50 each way but a few more for the environmental and sustainability side, which I thinks a very interesting difference between what the bulk of society thinks about Cuba compared to what the people who are going there, the reasons they're going."
It was the collapse of the USSR in the late 1980s, and the loss of its major sugar market, that forced Cuba to produce food for its own people.
"Cuba through its history had always been a sugar exporter, first to the Spanish Empire then to the USA and then once the Cuban Revolution happened in 1959 almost all their sugar went to the USSR," says Mr Tarbox.
"Then in 1989 with the collapse of the USSR they lost their market and 84 per cent of their trade and finance had been between Cuba and the USSR, so when that went huge problems for Cuban society."
"They quickly realised that they needed to change their agricultural method from being export of sugar to being subsistence agriculture in large part to produce for the people and that in large part was because they only had one - two weeks of rations in a month for the people."
He says throughout Cuba's sugar period there were large state farms, but these were then broken up and co-operatives formed.
"Those workers then produce to a Government quota and that supplied for the rations for people and then if they produce extra then they could sell that surplus on the local market and make a profit," he says.
"Then throughout urban areas they also said 'we've lost our oil imports through the collapse of the USSR so if we don't have to transport food that's a huge win' so they started doing a lot of urban agriculture."
Organiponics were set up in disused lots within the city limits applying permaculture techniques so all material used on site is recycled on site.
"Starting to use plants as natural insecticides and pesticides instead of fertilisers, bringing in a lot more composting techniques and worm farms and out of that mix, together with people doing similar things on their balconies, they were able to get to the point where about 58 per cent of their vegetable production within city limits," he says.
Mr Tarbox says this change has helped the country cut its carbon emissions.
"Groups like the World Wildlife Fund and other environmental organisations point to Cuba because in 1989 they had 3.3 tonnes of carbon dioxide emissions per capita and by 2004 they reduced that to 2.2 tonnes of carbon dioxide emissions," he says.
"So at a time when the rest of the world in general going the other way, they were reducing so they've been rated as the only sustainable economy by various organisations and other organisations have said they're the only country reducing their ecological footprint."
Jeremy Tarbox has been selected as a Rotary World Peace Fellow and will study a masters in International Development in Argentina during 2010 - 2011.
