Lessons on sustainability from Cuba
Friday, February 13th, 2009Eds. Note: Seattle developer Kevin Daniels, president of Nitze-Stagen & Co. and Daniels Development, recently returned from a week in Cuba on a sustainability research mission sponsored by International Sustainable Solutions through the Global Exchange program. He shares his thoughts with SeattleScape:
By KEVIN DANIELS
I accompanied more than 20 other architects, engineers and developers from Seattle and Portland to Cuba to see what lessons might be adaptable to our communities.
I was struck by the massive contradiction posed by a country whose people continue to overwhelmingly support a specific political agenda and leader while living within a failed economy for most of the last 50 years.
But since I am not a political or social scientist, I’ll leave that contradiction to others and focus on lessons to be learned from the decisions made by the Cuban people after the collapse of the Soviet Union — the “Special Period,” during which the country’s gross national product was reduced to 34 percent of its former self within a few weeks.
Numerous interesting sustainable approaches were adopted. One of the most interesting is how the country adapted to its loss of ability to trade major commodities (sugar, hardwoods, construction materials, etc.) for food products. Following a Soviet agricultural model, Cuba had ruined its farmlands with pesticides, applying more than 10 times the amount on average that our farmers do in the U.S. At the beginning of the Special Period, soils were infertile and incapable of feeding the population, and trading options were limited by the U.S. embargo. The average Cuban lost 20 pounds in the first year alone.
To combat the soil infertility, organic farming methods were adopted that are slowly repairing the land and increasing its productivity. Today, the crop yields within certain cooperatives exceed our national averages. It’s a great model for further study. (more…)
