There's an interesting point in one of the Mint Press articles I've just
posted. Obama opened up to Cuba, not because he wanted good relations with it,
but as a means to regime change. I had figured this out before I ever read the
article. It was a soft means of regime change, to sort of sneak in Capitalism.
Miriam
-----Original Message-----
From: blind-democracy-bounce@xxxxxxxxxxxxx
<blind-democracy-bounce@xxxxxxxxxxxxx> On Behalf Of Carl Jarvis
Sent: Friday, February 26, 2021 6:13 PM
To: blind-democracy@xxxxxxxxxxxxx
Subject: [blind-democracy] Re: Managing Water in Cuba
While I would never say that Cuba is a perfect government, show me one that is,
still it is interesting that under a Communist form of government the needs of
the people are being cared for, rather than draining off the people's wealth
into the bank accounts of the corporations?
Carl Jarvis
On 2/26/21, Miriam Vieni <miriamvieni@xxxxxxxxxxxxx> wrote:
Managing Water in CubaWhile I would never say that Cuba is a perfect government, show me one that is,
February 25, 2021
Rain is increasingly scarce on the island and the plan aims to ensure
the availability and efficient use of water to cope with droughts,
Luis Brizuela reports.
Yayabo River in the central Cuban city of Sancti Spiritus. (Jialiang
Gao, CC BY-SA 2.5, Wikimedia Commons)
By Luis Brizuela
in Havana
Inter Press Service
With the construction of aqueducts, water purification and
desalination plants, and investments to upgrade hydraulic
infrastructure, Cuba is seeking to manage the impacts of droughts and
floods that are intensifying with climate change.
The “initiative to strengthen hydrological monitoring” in Cuba, signed
in Havana on Feb. 11, aims to boost capacities to measure, transmit,
process and analyze hydrological variables and systematically assess
water availability at the national level.
According to water sector authorities, the modernization and
optimization of hydrological observation networks will be an essential
component of early warning systems for floods and droughts.
The initiative will be implemented by the National Water Resources
Institute (INRH), with the support of the United Nations Development
Programme (UNDP) and funding from Russia.
It also plans to redesign the observation network for both groundwater
and surface water quality, explained INRH Director of Hydrology and
Hydrogeology Argelio Fernandez.
The initiative is in line with Sustainable Development Goal (SDG) 6,
which calls on governments to ensure availability and sustainable
management of water, as well as sanitation.
It also responds to national policies and priorities contained in
“Tarea Vida,” the government plan in place since 2017 to address climate
change.
Among its multiple strategic guidelines, the plan aims to ensure the
availability and efficient use of water to cope with droughts, based
on the application of technologies to save water and meet local demand.
It also urges the optimization of hydraulic infrastructure and its
maintenance, as well as the introduction of actions to measure water
efficiency and productivity.
Pathways for Water
The long, narrow shape of the island of Cuba, the largest in the Cuban
archipelago, means many rivers are short and the water flow is low and
highly dependent on rainfall, more abundant in the May to October wet
season and during the passage of tropical storms.
Satellite Image of Cuba. (Jacques Descloitres, NASA, Wikimedia
Commons)
With average annual rainfall of 1,330 mm, the records show that rains
are increasingly scarce, particularly in the eastern region where the
country’s longest and largest rivers, the Cauto and Toa, respectively, are
located.
From 2014 to 2017, the country faced the greatest drought in 115
years, affecting 70 percent of the national territory.
Studies predict that Cuba’s climate will tend toward less rainfall,
higher temperatures and more intense droughts, and that by 2100 water
availability could be reduced by more than 35 percent.
Another consequence of climate change is that sea levels are projected
to rise, a phenomenon that will aggravate saltwater intrusion, to
which 574 human settlements and 263 water supply sources are currently
vulnerable, according to official figures.
Law No. 124 of the Land Water Law has been guiding the integrated and
sustainable management of water since 2017, while the new constitution
in force since April 2019 protects the right of Cubans to drinking
water and sanitation, with due remuneration and rational use.
Since 1959, the government has promoted an ambitious engineering
program for artificial water reservoirs, to guarantee the water supply
for a population that almost doubled to 11.2 million inhabitants since
then, and to promote plans for industrial development and agricultural
irrigation.
The data shows that from just over a dozen small reservoirs six
decades ago, there are now more than 240 in the 15 provinces and the
special municipality of Isla de la Juventud – the second largest
island in the archipelago – with a storage capacity of more than 9
billion cubic metres.
According to the 2020 Statistical Yearbook, more than 95 percent of
the Cuban population has access to drinking water, but only 86.5
percent of the urban population and 42.2 percent of the rural
population receives piped water at home.
Despite the economic crisis the country has suffered for three decades
and the impact of the U.S. embargo since 1962, in recent years
millions of dollars have been invested to mitigate the water deficit
and improve water quality.
Among the engineering works, the water transfer aqueducts stand out,
with more than a dozen throughout the country, considered strategic
pillars in building resilience to the effects of climate change.
These interconnected systems of dams, canals, aqueducts, tunnels and
bridges transfer water hundreds of kilometres from places where it is
abundant to agricultural and industrial areas and human settlements.
They also make it possible to control floods, lessen the impact of
drought and allow the siting of hydroelectric power plants.
Cuba has three plants that produce high-density polyethylene pipes
1,200 mm in diameter for laying new aqueducts and to replace the aging
and leaking hydraulic infrastructure that in some cities is over 100 years
old.
High-density polyethylene pipe is laid on a street in the Cuban capital.
(Jorge Luis Baños/IPS)
It also seeks to prioritize the manufacture of fittings and parts for
domestic water supply networks, where almost a quarter of the piped
water is lost.
Of the total investment in the water system, which in recent years has
averaged more than 400 million pesos (16.5 million dollars) a year,
more than half comes from the government budget for construction and assembly.
The rest comes from international cooperation through projects and
funds from nations such as Saudi Arabia, Kuwait, Japan, Spain, France
and the OPEC Fund for International Development.
Thanks to these investments, in the 2018-2020 period, desalination
plants were inaugurated in the provinces of Havana, Matanzas, Santiago
de Cuba, Granma, Guantánamo and the municipality of Isla de la
Juventud, in order to create easy access points in populations
affected by high levels of salinity in their water supply sources.
Meanwhile, in Camagüey, the third most populated city in Cuba located
538 km east of the capital, a water treatment plant with a capacity to
process
1,800 litres of water per second is nearing completion, which will
make it the largest in the country.
Although the water that reaches most homes is treated and chlorinated,
people remain concerned about the presence of microorganisms or salt
that require boiling.
“It would be useful if shops sold water filters more frequently and at
affordable prices, because they help protect our health,” a Havana
resident, Yolanda Soler, told IPS.
However, building resilience also involves encouraging a water culture
in the business and private sectors and among citizens as a whole,
hydroeconomics engineer Luis Bruzón, who lives in the western province
of Mayabeque, told IPS in a telephone interview.
“Do we know how much water is used to produce a ton of a given
agricultural or industrial product or to provide a specific service?”
asked Bruzón, who believes that having such data would improve
decision-making in a nation that must increasingly optimize and save water.
This article is from Inter Press Service.