Cuba’s Fidelity to the Earth | Socialism & Democracy

Richard

Levins

– a chapter from “Talking About Trees”

The question I will try to answer is: how did Cuba do it?

While the world environmental problems continue to worsen despite intensive research and rhetoric, how come a poor Third World country besieged by a hostile neighbour has been able to embark on an ecological pathway of development that combines sustainability, equity, and quality of life goals? How did it achieve a commitment to an integral programme of protected areas, ecological and organic agriculture, public health levels behind only the Scandinavian countries, environmental education, occupational health, urban planning and economic development compatible with environmental protection, and compliance with the major world treaties on the environment1?

Although the commitment to agroecology and ecological development is relatively new, it is not, as is often misrepresented, an improvised emergency response to the Special Period, the economic crisis brought on by the collapse of Cuba’s trade relations with the Soviet Union and the tightening of the United States’ economic warfare. Rather, it has its roots in a complex history of colonial science, anti-imperialism, the emergence of a self-conscious community of ecologists, and the transformations of Cuban society since 1959.

Scholars of different disciplines tend to prefer different analytic frameworks, to explain observed processes. Historians may trace the sequence of steps from the early literacy campaigns and plans for botanical gardens through the present national environmental plan. Sociologists might point to the institutional frameworks, the role of the U.N., government departments, research institutions and NGOs that analyze and propose.

Policy analysts might focus on the legal framework and when and how particular decisions were made, or look at the unique events, the right person in the right place at the right time to achieve the ecological commitment. Intellectual historians might show the unfolding and deepening of environmental awareness and concern, the conflicts about pesticides, and the philosophical underpinnings that made the outcome almost inevitable. Economists might point to the Special Period and show how the urgencies of scarcity forced a rethinking of industrial and agricultural strategy2.

As a Marxist, I view these approaches as different modes of abstraction applied to the same complex, multilevel reality, the whole that is the full explanation. Therefore, I will try to place these various descriptions and interpretations in the context of an evolving Cuban socialism.3 A complex, nuanced explanation of a phenomenon is not the antithesis of theory and generalization. Rather, it demands a theory of complexity and process.4

My primary concern is not a description of the state of the Cuban environment or a catalogue of successes and failures but rather the trajectory of Cuban society’s evolving relation with the rest of nature. My thesis is that each kind of society develops its own relations with nature, and that an ecological pathway of development is at least latent in socialist development, co-equal with equity and participation. Despite all the zigzags, vacillations and disputes, it emerges as an increasingly central characteristic. And this is imperative, for socialism cannot succeed without committing to an ecological pathway. Indeed, the failure of the Soviet Union and Eastern Europe to do so was one symptom of the disintegration of the European socialist project.

I will start with Cuban science in general, then environmental science and policy, and finally the specific case of agriculture.

SCIENCE

José Marti’s modernist valuing of learning5 was joined with the traditional socialist appreciation of science to encourage the young revolutionaries to give a high priority to science from the earliest days of the revolution. The traditional socialist view was that scientific knowledge had been produced out of the wealth created by working people but was monopolized by the rich to be used for profit and to build the instruments of power. Therefore the recapture of scientific knowledge for the people was a common goal of radicals throughout the world, and any scientific learning was considered a victory. Further, scientific literacy was seen as liberation from religious obscurantism and bigotry. Scientific news or controversies frequently appeared in the socialist and communist publications. Public lectures in England, the United States, and Russia contributed to this goal. My own grandfather, who had a third grade education, believed that every socialist worker should at least know cosmology, history and evolution. In pre-revolutionary Cuba the lectores (readers) in the tobacco factories were hired by the workers to read from world classics and scientific literature while they worked.

Thus it was natural for Cuban revolutionaries to look toward science for economic development and as part of the necessary culture for a free people. In 1960, Fidel Castro was invited to speak to the Cuban Speleological Society.6 In that talk he proposed that

“The future of our country will be a future of men of science.” (In Silvia Martinez’ 2003 book, she corrects the sexism and paraphrases it as “men and women of science.”)7

The preconditions for today’s modern Cuban science were laid in the early years of the revolution with the literacy campaigns, starting with the battle for the sixth grade. The enemies of the revolution realized the significance of education, and CIA-sponsored counter-revolutionary bands murdered two young alphabetizers, Conrado Benitez Garcia and Manuel Ascunce Domenech. But the country became fully literate and has continued to extend mass education through secondary and, increasingly, university level, with university centres in every municipality and special programmes for seniors, dropouts, people with disabilities, and workers displaced by the downsizing of the sugar industry. Now Cuba, with only 2 per cent of the population of Latin America, has 11 per cent of its scientists, a large fraction of them women. More than 1.3 per cent of the population works in science, a level comparable to the most developed countries. There are more than 100 major research centres as well as research sections of institutions dedicated to other goals. Physics alone has 40 laboratory groups with some 500 researchers concentrated in solid state and nuclear physics, optics, space and geophysics, mathematical physics and medical physics. There are some 80 centres doing social science research, studying such topics as marginality, social dysfunction, issues of race and gender, and residual and newly arisen inequality. Cuban science has been outstanding in the areas of public health and medicine, agriculture, electronics and pedagogy. Table 1 (below) shows some of the major achievements of Cuban science.

Table 1. Some Major Achievements of Cuban Science and Technology

271 new medications.
24 diagnostic systems.
SUMA (ultramicroanalytic system for HIV detection).
Production of 90 per cent of the medicines needed.
Melagenina (84 per cent effective against vitiligo).
Meningococcus B vaccine.
Hepatitis B vaccine.
Haemphilus influenzae vaccine.
Skin growth factor for treatment of burns.
Monoclonal antibody HB3 for epithelial tumors, especially of the head and neck.
PPG anti-cholesterol agent.
Anti-retroviral medications against AIDS.
Control of HIV/AIDS to .03 per cent of at-risk population through detection, quarantine, treatment and education.
Infant mortality at around 6.5 per 1000 live births (tied with Canada for best in hemisphere).
Elimination of poliomyelitis, malaria, and infant AIDS.
Integrated programme for the treatment of Retinosa pigmentosa.
Neuro-rehabilitation Centre.
Orthopedics: development of external fixators.
Psychiatry: emphasis on outpatient care, occupational therapy, and integration into the community.
100 per cent HIV-free blood bank.
Sanitary seed production (vitroplantas).
Sugar cane derivatives for coolants, medicines, energy, and paper production.
Biological methods for preserving and enhancing soil fertility.
Systems of biological control of pests through release of parasites.
Reforestation and protected areas.

For any Third World country the problem arises, how can it create a science, which is at the same time international in the sense of being linked to the advanced communities of world science, and yet have its own agenda directed at the needs of its society? And how can it do this on a low budget? In Cuba this comes to some 10,000 pesos per scientific worker. The peso is currently 26 to the U.S. dollar, but this grossly underestimates its real value within Cuba. In the U.S., the expenditure is about $200,000 per scientist.

The lack of resources make very strict prioritizing a necessity. This produces a glaring unevenness of availability. While everybody who needs kidney dialysis receives it, reagents are often not available for student chemistry laboratory exercises. As of this writing, a group of my colleagues studying mosquito development in breeding sites in Havana are unable to measure the water temperature regularly, because they do not have sufficient thermometers.

Cuban science is right up there with the best of world science, but it also has its own special features. First, it is publicly owned science. With the recent programme to establish university centres in all 149 municipalities and to make all centres of learning “micro-universities,” research is even more broadly diffused.

Public ownership makes it possible to plan science, to incorporate science into national plans, and to have policies linking the recruitment and training of scientists to research directions. The mass literacy campaigns of the 1960s enlarged the pool of potential scientists, while the struggles for women’s equality and against racism opened up new sources of talent. Today, women make up 52 per cent of the scientific work force8 and 65 per cent of the scientific and technical workforce,9 many in positions of leadership. Among the people I have worked with, the Minister of Science, Technology and the Environment is a woman. The dean of the mathematics faculty at the University of Havana is a woman. So was the director of the Institute of Fruit Research, the head of the Centre for Animal and Plant Protection, its laboratory of phytopathology, the Centre for Mathematics and Cybernetics Applied to Medicine, the Carlos Finlay Institute, and two of the four department heads at the Institute of Ecology and Systematics. A growing number of the scientists are Afro-Cubans. Education is free of charge. Study is regarded as productive labour, the task of producing a skilled and well-informed citizen, rather than as an investment in future high income. Therefore, there are no economic barriers to study.

When the British Marxist, J.D. Bernal, first posed the need for the planning and collective scientific work in the 1930s,10 the very idea was met with derision and hostility. It was denounced as the totalitarian repression of free, individualistic science. But now scientific strategies are an accepted part of government policy throughout the world.

Scientific planning confronts a major contradiction: how do you plan for the still unknown? We can assess national needs and establish priorities. But surprise is inevitable in science, and therefore it is necessary to be able to follow new pathways that present themselves during the lifetime of the plan. But how do you recognize surprises that should be followed up? Exciting new directions and innovations are not yet the consensus of a scientific community, but rather the initiative of a few individuals. On the other hand, the agreed upon priorities represent the consensus of the leaders of science — those who created the field the way it is — and therefore, who are less likely to be critical of its direction. This makes it necessary to have a very flexible form of planning with leeway for departures from the plan.

Cuban scientific planning sets general goals. At a national level, some general research goals are proposed as priority areas.

Provincial governments have their own priorities, and so do the various ministries and institutions. The individual institutions join in the projects that fall within their areas, and there is leeway for individuals to carry on their own work where resources permit. The projects that come down from above have actually gotten there at the initiative of the researchers so that the process of planning moves up and down many times in the formal structure before a plan is adopted.

There are frequent progress reports during a scientific investigation. This includes discussions with peers and the public that will be affected so that the research is an even more collective process than the interdisciplinary teams would suggest.11 In 2001, 3,093 formal research results were reported, of which 403 came from national programmes, 1584 from ministries and branches of the society, and 1,077 from territorial authorities. From the non-professional end, the National Association of Innovators and Rationalizers (ANIR) presents some tens of thousands of innovations each year, which indicates the breadth of mass participation in Cuban innovation. (ANIR has more than half a million members who have come up with over 100,000 solutions to mostly technical problems.) This experience refutes the notion that innovation would stagnate in the absence of opportunities to get rich from inventions. Amateur groups in computing, botany, and other fields supplement the professional research.

The public nature of science makes it open science. There is no hiding of information for proprietary reasons, as is increasingly common in the U.S. and other capitalist societies. Inventors can receive economic rewards from their inventions, but they do not have the authority to suppress them or restrict their use. There is little duplication of effort by competing entities. This makes it possible for Cuban scientists to collaborate across institutional boundaries. The development of the recent completely synthetic vaccine against Hemophilus influenzae was the work of many research centres concerned with the biochemistry, immunology, clinical and industrial aspects of this innovative project. The National Study of Biodiversity was prepared through the collaboration of the Ministry of Science, Technology and the Environment (CITMA), Ministry of Higher Education, Ministry of Agriculture, Ministry of Public Health, Ministry of the Economy and Planning, and many institutes within these ministries. The same was true for the National Atlas and other major efforts; all involved broad collaboration. In the absence of the obscene race for patents, Cuba has the capacity to wait and see what unexpected consequences an innovation may have. Cubans have been working with genetically modified organisms for more than 17 years but have not released any GMO plant varieties, because they are still exploring the possible risks to the environment.12

A major obstacle to the serious evaluation of research and policy efforts in the U.S. is that the annual reports of grant holders and agencies to their sponsors are a mixture of real assessment and self praise, a pitch for more funding that down-plays difficulties. The large scale of many projects makes it impossible to replicate or for outside examiners to know them well enough to evaluate critically. CITMA is able to look more objectively at the state of the environment and identify weaknesses. In January 1997, CITMA convened a workshop on the environment as a national consultation, “Rio.5,” to evaluate Cuban compliance with the agreements13 that came from the U.N. Conference on Environment and Development, the Earth Summit that had been held in Rio de Janeiro in 1992.

Invitations were extended to various government departments, agencies, NGOs and delegations from nearby provinces. Participants considered each of the categories discussed in Agenda 21, the declaration and plan of action that emerged from the Rio Earth Summit, and also added several of their own. For each problem area, they described achievements and also the major difficulties. For instance, in the chapter on agriculture, the list of achievements includes the system for plant disease prediction, the establishment of centres for the reproduction of natural enemies of pests and diseases, and the expansion of polyculture. Among the deficiencies listed are insufficient and unstable extension work, lack of studies of the environmental impacts of new production systems, and, especially interesting, “the existence at various levels of the opinion that the practice of sustainable agriculture is only a consequence of the Special Period destined to disappear when the present limitations make it [possible] and there will be a regression to high inputs of fertilizers, pesticides, mechanization, etc14 .”

Later that year, The National Environmental Strategy evaluated recent experience (up to 1997). After listing their achievements, they report (my editing of the Cuban version in English):

Parallel to these gains there have been mistakes and shortcomings, due mainly to insufficient environmental awareness, knowledge and education, the lack of better management, limited introduction and generalization of scientific and technological achievements, still insufficient incorporation of the environmental dimension in the policies, developmental plans and programmes, and the absence of a sufficiently integrative and coherent juridical system. Moreover, the scarcity of material and financial resources has prevented us from attaining higher levels of environmental protection, which has worsened in the last few years due to the economic situation in which the country has been immersed because of the loss of commercial ties with the former socialist bloc and the continued and intensified economic blockade by the United States of America.

Although it is often asserted in the United States that the Cuban government blames the United States for all its troubles, here we see a nuanced analysis that includes the economic warfare against Cuba as only one factor among many that influence the situation.

One common misconception is that the science of a developing country should concentrate on the applications of the achievements of world science and that fundamental research is a luxury of the rich. However this condemns a country to dependence on the basic research done in other countries for other reasons. A coherent scientific community has to develop its own underpinnings for its work and the education and morale of its participants. In the National Environmental and Development Programme, established by CITMA in 1995, there is a group working on protection of the atmosphere. It includes such immediately practical tasks as the monitoring of air pollution on different temporal and spatial scales and linking this to morbidity and mortality data. It studies the chemistry of rain and the ocean/atmosphere exchange. The group also includes neurobiologists who work with problems of autism, trauma and the neurological correlates of emotion, investigating potential links between air pollution and these issues.

In agriculture, a doctoral thesis has to include a section on the contribution of the work to practice and how it enriches science. However, Cuban science includes themes that are not directly related to practice, such as underwater archeology and the theory of complex systems. For example, a recent international symposium15 on complexity included presentations by Cubans such as: Entropy and Complexity: the Problem of Irreversibility; Contingency and Causality in Natural Disasters; Complexity and Morphogenesis: From the Properties of Systems to the Very Existence of Systems; Construction of a Critical-Analytical Model for the Study of Cultural Identities in the Social Complexity; Aesthetics and Reasoning about Complexity: an Epistemological and Methodological Approach; Evidence for the Mind as a Dynamic Attractor; The Treatment of Attention Deficit as a Non-equilibrium State; Transformations of a Citrus Agroecosystem in Conversion to Organic; and The Complexity Barrier: the Next Challenge for Immunology. As is increasingly common in Cuba, the symposium included musical performances as part of the plenary sessions.

There is a special style to Cuban science that is very much influenced by the Marxist dialectical philosophy of science, with its emphasis on historicity, social determination of science, wholeness, connectedness, integrated levels of phenomena, and prioritizing of processes over things. All doctoral candidates must study Social Problems of Science and Technology, which has emerged in the 1990s as a distinct field of study. The impact of this preparation can be observed in the self-conscious view of the development of science as a social process, with the organization, recruitment, priorities, preferred approaches and tools of investigation all being recognized as products of the social relations that promote, support, apply and reward scientific endeavor. This allows for a critical examination of the state of a field internationally and the capacity to make active choices about what to concentrate on. For instance, by recognizing that the pharmaceutical industries develop only those medications for which there are large and lucrative markets, the Cubans have been able to select areas of research that are ignored, because the knowledge is not easily turned into commodities, or because the disease is uncommon among the wealthy. Thus Cuba has been in the forefront in work on Retinosa pigmentosa, vitiligo, and malaria. It also encourages a view of science that combines its contributions to the economy and to the general culture of society with an awareness of its own internal needs for balance among the disciplines, the integration of practical and theoretical concerns, and the cooperative organization of research.

A major characteristic in the Marxist dialectical perspective is wholeness and the critique of reductionism. A recurrent theme in all of Cuban science is the breadth with which problems are approached and the willingness to span levels of organization. Agostín Lage, immunologist and director of the Centre for Molecular Immunology, has been an outspoken critic of molecular and genetic reductionism. He sees the immune system as “a system of recognition and control of the composition of its own organism, whose regulation depends not only on the presence or absence of specific cellular clones but also on the interaction of these clones among themselves (supra-clonal properties).”16 He sees the future of immunology as including interaction with neurobiology and calls for a synthesis of the high-tech molecular sciences with social medicine. Lage also raises ethical issues in science, particularly the question of whether science is used to increase or remove inequality in the world.

This multilevel approach pervades much of Cuban science. In medicine, modern technical tools coexist with herbal medicine (the “green pharmacy”), social epidemiology, and various kinds of alternative medicine. These are not seen as in opposition: the Carlos Finlay Institute, which has pioneered in the development of molecular biology to produce vaccines, antibiotics and anti-cholesterol agents, also has a controlled experimental programme for testing the macrobiotic diet. The very successful Cuban response to HIV/AIDS has combined chemotherapy (everyone who needs retroviral drugs receives them) with population-level interventions that include temporary quarantine and community education. Work in rehabilitation combines advanced neuroscience and occupational therapy. The prevalence of HIV/ AIDS in Cuba is currently about 0.035 per cent, and there have been no cases of infant infection since 1997. As a result of its strong commitment and broad approach, Cuba is the healthiest Third World country and is tied with Canada for the lowest infant mortality in the hemisphere, making it a global health leader.

Another dialectical theme is the priority given to processes over things. Nilda Perez, a leading Cuban agricultural ecologist, poses the direction of change as from an agriculture of inputs to an agriculture of processes.

Science is defined more broadly in Cuba than in the U.S. The recent colloquium that produced the book, Cuba, Dawn of the Third Millennium: Science, Society and Technology, included participants from the usual fields as well as economics; pedagogy; science, society and technology; and communications and the audiovisual media. The discussions started with each participant describing the state of his or her own field and perspectives for the future and then entered into open discussion around general questions. Ethical issues were recurrent themes.

Thus Cuban science made possible the effective commitment to an ecological pathway of development by being publicly owned, planned, collaborative, holistic, multilevel, integral to the education of all Cubans, and committed to meeting the material and cultural needs of the people.

The above description stresses the directions in which Cuban science is different from science in capitalist societies. In Cuba, not all institutions work the way they are supposed to, not everybody thinks dialectically, and we can always find examples of narrowness and parochial interest. But the significance in Cuba is the pathway that is being built, the direction of change.

DEVELOPMENT OF AN ENVIRONMENTAL PROGRAMME

The political programme of the Cuban Revolution did not have an explicitly ecological perspective at the beginning. The urgent concerns of the new government were eliminating extreme poverty, providing water and sanitation, housing, and literacy. But even before the triumph, the commander of the 26th of July Movement in Matanzas, Onaney Muñíz, was planning for a botanical garden. The destruction of Cuba’s forests, the erosion caused by monoculture and the sugarcane economy, the prevalence of infectious diseases that could be prevented, and the need to develop the resources of the country to eliminate poverty all led to the creation of separate programmes that later nourished ecological development as a conscious goal.

The literacy campaign of the Sixties made possible the massive commitment to science, which in turn laid the foundations for environmental sciences. As soon as Rachel Carson’s Silent Spring reached Cuba, Fidel Castro was circulating it among his associates, and environmental consciousness began to spread. Already in the 1960s there were programs for reforestation, introduction of the Voisin system of rotational grazing, the digging of thousands of ponds as micro-reservoirs, cleaning up of foci of infection, and massive immunization campaigns. The Institute for Physical Planning, a new discipline for Cuba, undertook the first environmental studies for the selection of sites for development.17 El Grupo, the Centre for the Integral Development of the Capital, is one of the catalysts for innovative participatory neighbourhood development.

The priority goals in agriculture were a stable food supply, income and safety for the rural population, sugar for export, and inputs for industry. The dangers in the use of pesticides were recognized and confronted, at first, mostly by measures to protect agricultural workers. But agricultural development was still largely within the paradigm of the “Green Revolution,” which depended on high yielding plant varieties and massive infusions of mechanical and chemical inputs, most of which had to be imported. There was not yet any organized field of ecology. Cuban biology was typical of colonial biology throughout the tropics: biology applied to medicine and agriculture, and systematic botany and zoology, with systematists making ecological observations. At the University of Havana the zoology curriculum started with two years of mostly descriptive zoology, surveying the major families of animal life. In discussions within the university in 1968, the administration and the students supported proposals for electives in ecological topics, but many in the faculty thought this would force the omission of whole families of animals from the curriculum, “thus losing the whole picture of evolution,” as if evolution were a catalog of its results. In any case, the faculty was not yet itself prepared to teach those subjects. But there was already experimentation with Voisin’s rotational grazing system, polyculture, and biological pest control.

Table 2. Some Milestones in the Development of an Ecological Pathway

1960s

Founding of the Institute of Physical Planning and the Group for the Integrated Development of the Capital.
Introduction of the Voisin system of rotational grazing.
The beginning of restoration of open pit mining areas.
Construction of some 1,400 micro reservoirs for energy, water resources, recreation, and fish production.

1970s

Transition toward low-input agriculture.
The creation of botanical gardens.

1972–73

National Atlas.

1974

Cuba joins UNESCO’s Man and the Biosphere programme and selects the Sierra del Rosario montane rainforest as its study area.

1975

Zoning of Havana.
First Congress of the Communist Party adopts thesis on environment.
Waste treatment facilities are required for all new plants.

1976

Constitution adopted. Article 27 links environmental protection to sustainable economic and social development and recognizes the obligations of the state and citizens to protect the environment.
COMARNA (Commission on Natural Resources and the Environment) established.

1978

Law passes allowing veto of development projects that would harm the environment.

1980s

Experiments with ecological agriculture and organopónicos.
Establishment of the Centres for the Reproduction of Entomoparasites and Entomopathogens (CREE) for biological pest control.
Legal and institutional structures for environmental inspection and licensing of development projects are created.
Plan Turquino-Manatí for the sustainable development of the mountains is implemented.
Widespread adoption of urban organopónicos.

1990s

National Environmental Strategy is implemented.
Legal instruments for environmental protection, inspection and enforcement are developed.
National Survey of Biodiversity is established.
Antonio Nuñez Jimenez Foundation for Nature and Humanity vision statement: “a Cuban society with a developed environmental consciousness that recognizes nature as part of its identity, and an institution active in the development of environmental and cultural values in Cuba and the world.”
Network of protected areas established.
Forest cover reaches 23 per cent of land area.
System of Protected Areas.

Table 2 shows some major events in the evolution of an environmental perspective and commitment. In general, the 1960s were a period of laying the foundations for later development. The public health system was able to eliminate polio by 1963, malaria by 1968, and diphtheria in 1971. The first law of agrarian reform in 1959 made national land available for development programs. Within three years, illiteracy was almost eradicated. The abolition of legal racism, the recognition of equal rights for women, and the expansion of free education and scholarships widened the pool of potential scientists. Cuba sent thousands of students to study abroad, mostly in the east European countries. Maps were prepared of soil, water resources, and endangered species. In the 1970s, Carlos Rafael Rodriguez introduced his argument differentiating development from growth and arguing for integral development, laying the groundwork for a goal of harmonious development of the economy and social relations with nature. This implied a rejection of Stalin’s approach, the view popular among east European communist governments that production decided everything, and that only after abundance was achieved would society be able to confront the task of bringing social relations into harmony with the economy. Despite his disagreements with Rodriguez on how the economy should be organized, until he left for Bolivia in 1967, Ché Guevara had already been stressing that social relations and economic development must evolve together. At the same time, UNESCO initiated its International Biological Programme, a ten-year international programme of biological studies that concentrated on the productivity of biological resources and human adaptation to environmental change. Cuba joined in and selected the montane rainforest of the Sierra del Rosario as its area of study. There, sitting on the sopping litter under an endless tropical rain, zoologists and botanists came together to begin to think of themselves as ecologists.

At the first national meeting on ecology in 1981, which I attended with the plant ecologists, representatives of research groups in botany, zoology, agriculture, oceanography, and from the tourism and food processing industries gathered to debate pesticides and consider what can be done with industrial wastes. The food processors called our attention to the pollution they were causing and asked what they could do with the mountains of rice husks and mango pits they were accumulating. The tourism institute asked how to develop environmentally friendly facilities. We ended the meeting with a resolution calling for the Commission on the Environment to have enforcement powers. This was soon accomplished, and the Commission was elevated to cabinet status, the present Ministry of Science, Technology and the Environment (CITMA). Its formation “resolved a contradiction in the old structure of leadership of environmental activity in the country in which ministries were in charge of environmental matters for the same resource that they exploited for productive purposes, making them both ‘judge’ and ‘interested party’ of the same activity.”18 The sugar industry was responsible for some 47 per cent of the polluting outflow load on coastal ecosystems. But that industry also pioneered recycling systems, using residues for energy production and an almost closed-system production design.

A decade later, the Institutes of Zoology and Botany finally merged into the present Institute of Ecology and Systematics. This group has led the way in developing programmes in biodiversity, protected areas, and protection of the coastlines and forests.

One issue that has not been fully resolved is nuclear power. To a country dependent on fuel imports, a nuclear power plant seemed very attractive. Soviet technical and economic help encouraged Cuba to begin the construction of a nuclear power station at Juraguá, near Cienfuegos. Misgivings arose: could Cuba really be safe in the event of a disastrous meltdown? In a small country, a major radioactive release would be even more devastating than in Russia. Would even normal operations without a catastrophic event poison the surroundings with radioactivity? Would the plant demand too much water? Could they be sure of finding a safe and secure home to put the deadly waste products? But while they pondered these questions, the Soviet Union collapsed, no further aid was forthcoming, and alternative forms of energy generation advanced. The half-plant still sits there, and the issue has been put on hold. Meanwhile, nuclear engineers have been encouraged to study alternative energy.

Cuba has, in practice, renounced the electro-nuclear path, partly because alternatives have appeared in the short run based on national oil and gas. “But doubtless,” says the engineer José Luis Garica, “in strategic terms, we cannot rule out the possibility that at some time we might opt for electro-nuclear energy.”19 In September 2004, the principal turbine at the Juraguá plant was removed to replace a damaged turbine at the Guiteras thermoelectric plant. As in other fields, Cubans take a very broad view of the environment. The conception of an ecological pathway of development is emerging from the perspectives of conservation of natural areas, agriculture, public health, urban planning, alternative energy, clean production and waste disposal, community participation, environmental education, and issues involving different sectors of society, particularly vulnerable habitats. Workplace and neighbourhood pollution problems are included within the same framework.

The National Environment Plan of 199520 integrates a vast array of problems and proposals and is executed by the coordinated efforts of government agencies, NGOs and community participation.

AGRICULTURE

One of the outstanding achievements of Cuba’s advance toward ecological development is the acceptance of agroecology as a national strategy. Agricultural development was at first dominated by the high-tech “Green Revolution” perspective of the international development community. But soon, Cubans in many institutions began a critical reevaluation looking at the economic structure of agriculture, geography of production, farm organization, pest management, soil fertility and mechanization.

This came about through the convergence of several different initiatives. Within agriculture, people such as Nilda Perez, Luis Ovies and Tenelfe Perez in plant protection, Miriam Fernandez in entomology, Magda Montes in citrus research, Rafael Martinez Viera and Antonio Castañeiras in the Alexander Humboldt Institute for Fundamental Research in Tropical Agriculture, and Ricardo Herrera in the Institute of Ecology and Systematics carried out projects in polyculture, soil microbiology and biological pest control.21 Ecologists began to speak up against the pesticide treadmill.

There was fierce debate about pesticides and the ecological pathway. The traditional progressivist viewpoint of European socialism was that there is an inevitable progression from “backward” to “modern.” Capitalism inhibited the full development of the “modern” and monopolized its benefits while unloading the costs onto the workers and peasants. Therefore, the task of a liberated country was to proceed as quickly as possible along that pathway of “progress,” avoiding the barriers inherent under capitalist governance. Features of agricultural modernization included the transition from labour-intensive to capital-intensive, from small-scale to the economies of large-scale, from the patchwork heterogeneity of peasant production to the rationalized homogeneity of agribusiness and specialized state farms, from subjection to nature to the conquest of nature, from superstition to scientific knowledge. Advocates of this approach saw themselves as rigorous materialists and mocked the ecological viewpoint as “idealist,” sentimental nostalgia for some golden past that never really existed.

We fought back with the argument that it was the height of idealism to expect that we could pass resolutions about production and have nature obey. We proposed that development was a branching process in which technical choices were not socially neutral, and that each kind of society had to find its own pattern of relating to the rest of nature. Accumulating experience was showing that agroecology was productive, economical and safer than chemical means.22 In particular, we argued that beyond the dichotomy of labour-intensive versus capital-intensive was a knowledge- and thought-intensive agriculture. Instead of mobilizing vast amounts of energy to move large masses of materials, we sought the design of systems that were as self-operating as possible. Mechanization was sometimes very important but at other times destructive of the soil, inefficient in very wet soils, too expensive, and a constraint on other agronomic practices. A combination of tractors and animal traction according to circumstances seemed a better choice.

Instead of having to decide between large-scale industrial type production and a “small is beautiful” approach a priori, we saw the scale of agriculture as dependent on natural and social conditions, with the units of planning embracing many units of production. Different scales of farming were to be adjusted to the watershed, climactic zones and topography, population density, distribution of available resources, and the mobility of pests and their enemies.

The random patchwork of peasant agriculture, constrained by land tenure, and the harsh destructive landscapes of industrial farming would both be replaced by a planned mosaic of land uses in which each patch contributes its own products but also assists the production of other patches: forests give lumber, fuel, fruit, nuts and honey but also regulate the flow of water, modulate the climate to a distance of about ten times the height of the trees, create a special microclimate downwind from the edge, offer shade for livestock and the workers, and provide a home to the natural enemies of pests and the pollinators of crops. There would no longer be specialized farms producing only one thing. Mixed enterprises would allow for recycling, a more diverse diet for the farmers, and a hedge against climactic surprises. It would have a more uniform demand for labour throughout the year. One example is the “El Carmen” UBPC, a new cooperative in Ciego de Avila. It has assumed national leadership in designing the transition from the previous conventional citrus monoculture to mixed production of fruit, annual crops and livestock products.

The arrogant presumption of the conquest of nature had to be replaced with a strategy of nudging nature here and there while respecting its autonomy and complexity.

Traditional knowledge could not be dismissed as superstition but must be understood as a pattern of insights and blindness, just like modern science. Our task was to look at both of them critically in order to integrate the detailed, particular and nuanced peasant knowledge with the more general and comparative but abstracted knowledge of agricultural science, an integration that depended on scientists and farmers meeting as equals in a common enterprise. This is made easier by the fact that so many agricultural scientists come from peasant families. More recently, solidarity groups from New Zealand and Pro Naturaleza, an NGO organized by the Antonio Nuñez Jimenez Foundation, are spreading the Australian system of permaculture in Cuba.

The Special Period, with critical shortages of fuel, chemicals and feed, revealed the fragility of high-tech agriculture and encouraged the adoption of ecological agriculture. But it also reduced the capacity to carry out measures already adopted. Environmental inspections lapsed for lack of monitoring supplies and fuel to get to the sites to be inspected. Tough, thorny weed trees invaded fields abandoned for lack of tractors. Badly polluting buses were kept in service for lack of spare parts or replacements. Economic urgencies encouraged ignoring some protective regulations. We had the paradoxical situation that environmental conditions worsened while environmental consciousness deepened. When sound measures were introduced, some producers were convinced of their value only as an emergency measure. Our task became to convert these ecologists by necessity into ecologists by conviction before the emergency ended and they could resume the peaceful destruction of Cuba. This conversion is being carried out by education at all levels, the training of ecologically oriented agronomists, and ongoing debate.

Meanwhile in the 1970s and 1980s the Ministry of Defence, developed a new doctrine of defence that assumed the possibility of Cuba being partly occupied by a hostile power. The Cuban response would be a war waged by all of its citizens. But this required local self-sufficiency in the absence of central organization and exchange. A civil defence manual from that time had chapters devoted to first aid, herbal medicine, organization of schools, and food production. This led to military experiments in low-input agriculture. And in 1987 Raul Castro called for the widespread introduction of organopónicos, raised beds of enriched and composted soils where crops could be grown in small areas with no dependence on outside resources. The first pilot organopónico in Havana on Fifth Avenue and 44th street in Playa was organized by the armed forces and is still a showcase of urban agriculture. Today agriculture is evolving in the direction of agronomically and socially sustainable diverse production that emphasizes combining rural, suburban and urban farming; diversification; and biological and natural pest control.

COMBINING RURAL, SUBURBAN, AND URBAN FARMING

Urban agriculture now takes place on some 30,000 hectares producing more than 3 million tons of fresh vegetables per year for 11 million people. Like most Cuban programmes, it serves multiple purposes: It provides abundant, diverse fresh vegetables throughout the year for consumers. This has transformed the Cuban diet in the communities, schools and workplaces and encouraged the spread of vegetarian restaurants. It lowers the costs of transportation and storage by selling directly to consumers. It provides employment for some 300,000 people at a time when capital is not available to invest in more industrial employment. This comes to about ten people per hectare, a very labour-intensive system that would be regarded as highly inefficient in the United States, though each worker is producing ample vegetables to feed 36 people. In the context of the unemployment that appeared with the Special Period, it is socially efficient. Urban agriculture increases the green area of cities, detoxifies the air, and provides foci of neighbourhood social integration.

DIVERSIFICATION

Geographic diversification is a protection against regional disasters such as hurricanes, which may have zones of destruction 200 miles across. More locally, instead of having large monoculture farms, enterprises are converting to mixed production of fruits, vegetables, basic grains, livestock and fish. This results in a mosaic land use that makes better use of the topography and microclimates and permits recycling within the farm. Each patch of the mosaic has its own products but also contributes to the whole. As mentioned above, woodlands provide a wide range of forest products and ecological services. Pastures support livestock for meat and dairy products, manure for composting, combat erosion, and serve as nectar sources for honey and beneficial wasps. Oxen are integrated with tractors in a complex traction strategy, and horses and other animals are helpful in weed control. Diversification is a hedge against natural disasters that affect particular crops, and it more uniformly spreads the need for labour and assures local diversity of food supplies. By combining constant evaluation and decision making with the hard physical labour or farming, it also raises the technical level of agricultural labour for a rural population too educated to aspire to a life limited to wielding a machete. Composting, crop rotation, the use of nitrogen-fixing bacteria, fungi that mobilize potassium, phosphorus and other minerals, as well as the cultivation of earthworms maintain soil fertility.

BIOLOGICAL AND NATURAL PEST CONTROL

These methods are proving more effective than chemical control, more economical, and protective of people’s health and the environment. Here’s just one example: sweet potatoes grown using integrated pest management yielded 8.9 metric tons per hectare at a net per hectare value of $904.70 compared to 7.8 tons worth $818.60 per hectare for sweet potatoes grown with conventional methods using pesticides. Ecological protection makes use of polyculture and the spatial arrangement of crops, rotation, encouragement of predators, introduction of parasitic wasps and fungi, and, finally, biological products such as neem. All urban agriculture is now organic, and much of the rest of Cuban agriculture is advancing in that direction. The Antonio Nunéz Jimenez Foundation for Nature and Humanity is a major NGO in Cuba. It has developed strategic documents for urban sustainability and has been the leading group in the promotion of permaculture.23

The ecologists eventually won the struggle over develop-mentalism. It took a long time, and the debate was fierce at times, but it had a very different flavour from similar debates in the United States. All parties were looking for ways of meeting the needs of society so that the disagreements were just disagreements, not surrogates for clashing interests. Nobody was pushing pesticides or mechanization to make profit. And agroecology proponents were not demonized as “Luddites,” or worse.

CUBAN SOCIALISM AND THE ENVIRONMENT

We can now return to the original question: how did Cuba do it? At the most abstract level, the short answer is socialism. That is, socialist social arrangements and ideological priorities made ecological development an almost “natural” correlate of the economic and social development and of the commitment to improving the quality of life as the primary goal of development. But an abstraction does not mobilize resources or change minds. Change occurs through the actions of particular people, through the decisions they make. And decisions are made in response to the questions that are posed, the social setting in which answers are sought, the tools available for providing answers, and the criteria for judging whether a solution is satisfactory. “Natural” only means that it was easier to make good decisions in the long run and that when poor decisions are made or institutional arrangements obstruct ecological rationality, there is a collective incentive to correct the errors.

The logic of decision-making under Cuban socialism starts with the priority given to human need. Therefore, questions about the environment arise more or less independently in areas such as urban development, health, agriculture, defence, conservation, and economics. There are no externalities—environmental harm that can be thrust upon the society as a whole and responsibility denied.

In each of these spheres, law reinforces the general ideological commitment. If one sphere lags, the others advance, and the convergence of ecological imperatives from different sources creates the direction of movement. The feedback mechanisms in the society favour ecology. Each success encourages further extension of the ecological commitment by showing that it is possible to develop in a way that departs from the conventional developmentalist wisdom. This is a positive feedback. When ecological rationality is subordinated to expediency and destructive decisions are made, these are visible, and there is a collective incentive to correct the error. A case in point is the stone causeway built from the Cuban coast to the tourist centre on Cayo Coco. Ecologists had warned that this would disrupt the hydrology of the area and harm the mangroves. But economic urgency prevailed. The causeway was built in spite of the warnings, and the mangroves began to die. But when this was observed, sections of the causeway were removed and replaced by bridge spans to permit the flow of the water.

In contrast, in capitalist society, each victory restricting the free destruction of our biosphere by business intensifies corporate resistance with an urgency to defend not only their profits but also their property rights. Thus there is a powerful anti-ecological negative feedback expressed as “backlash,” amidst claims that environmentalists are “going too far.” And environmental victories do not necessarily encourage further struggle.24 When they don’t unleash an environmental backlash, they are often co-opted as examples of “partnership.” Of course there are also positive feedbacks at work under capitalism, which are important in movement building.

Socialism made ecological choices more likely. In spite of the incentives and commitments to an ecological pathway, Cubans could have decided otherwise. In fact, they did so at the beginning when in the absence of ecological consciousness, the urgency to meet the needs of the people led to harmful decisions. But when the first, Green Revolution developmentalist approach turned out to be destructive of productive capacity and poisoned people and nature, this was sufficient reason to reexamine the strategy. There were no greedy institutions committed to defending the harmful course with lobbyists, public relations firms, lawyers and hired witnesses. It meant that Cuban scientific and political leadership, which is strongly committed to a broad, dynamic and integral approach, was able to recognize the origins of the different developmental strategies in the world political economy and the implications of alternative choices. It meant that there were scientists prepared to argue the case for ecological development, receptive ears in the leadership and public to receive the arguments sympathetically, and a logic of decision-making that made an ecological pathway of development along with equity and collectivity an essential part of Cuban socialism. That’s how they are doing it.