Sustainable Development in Cuba: April 1-9, 2009

GLOBAL EXCHANGE REALITY TOURS

“Sustainable Development in Cuba"
Health, Education, Religion, Science and Culture

Study Tour

April 1 – 9, 2009

“One day we will have to build a monument to the “special period” because it forced us to find
truly sustainable ways to meet our food, energy and medical needs.”
-- Rosa Elena Simeon, Former Minister,
CITMA, Cuban Ministry of Science, Technology and the Environment

Dear Friends and Colleagues,

We are writing to invite you to accompany us on a Sustainable Development Study Tour of Cuba. This trip will study both the environmental and the human aspects of Sustainable Development. For twenty years, Global Exchange has organized these tours to study Cuba's internationally lauded progress in all field of sustainable development as it is reflected in all aspects of Cuban life.

In its 2006 Sustainability Index Report, the World Wildlife Federation (WWF) determined that there was only one nation in the world that could truly be designated as living “sustainably,” and that nation was Cuba. In making this determination, the WWF utilized a combination of the UN Development Program’s Human Development Index (educational achievement; adequate food; clean, available water; access to health care, etc.) and the Ecological Footprint (or natural resource use per capita) of nations. The ideal, of course is a high HDI and a low Ecological Footprint. How did Cuba, a small island nation of 11,000,000 people, struggling with issues of poverty, the U.S. embargo, and devastating annual hurricanes, achieve this extraordinary distinction? And what can environmentalists in the U.S. learn from Cuba’s struggles and successes?

Throughout the 1960's, 70's and 80's, the Cuban people enjoyed the highest quality-of-life indices in Latin America, rivaling the United States and other countries of the developed world. Cuba was internationally praised as the one developing country that had eradicated hunger and the World Health Organization touted the Cuban health care system as a "model for the world." As early as 1989, Cuba ranked 11th in the world in the Overseas Development Council’s Physical Quality of Life Index, (which includes infant mortality, life expectancy and literacy) while the U.S. ranked 15th.

Despite the setbacks of the 1990's, caused by the dissolution of the Soviet Union and the tightening of the U.S. Embargo, Cuba's quality of life indices did decline slightly for a few years, but then steadily improved. Denied their former imports of petroleum products and pharmaceuticals, Cuba’s 35,000 scientists, operating in 200 research institutes across the island, began to explore indigenous and more sustainable ways to meet their food, medicine and energy needs; extraordinary innovations in organic agriculture and urban gardens earned Cuban agriculturists the Alternative Nobel Prize/Right Livelihood Award; advances in renewable energy including solar, wind, micro-hydro, biogas, and biomass, and island-wide energy efficiency campaigns earned the Cuban NGO Cuba Solar, the UN Global 500 award; and the development of alternative and traditional health care practices earned Cuba recognition by the UN Development Council, as one of the five most important projects in health care internationally.

Cuba was the first nation to complete its biodiversity census after the Rio Earth Summit in 1992; 22% of its land is officially designated "Protected Areas"; it’s coral reefs are healthy (Jacques Cousteau used to say that whenever he was in despair about the state of the world's ocean ecosystems, he thought of Cuba and his hope was rejuvenated; and it is one of the few nations in the world to have increased its percentage of forested land in the past several decades.

Cuba models, for the rest of the world, the possibility of obtaining a high quality of life, on a relatively small national budget, while utilizing low levels of the planet's limited resources. This tiny island nation is showing us a possible way to live simply, healthfully, and sustainably on the Earth.

We invite you to travel with us and to see Cuba for yourself!

The price of this 8 day study tour is $2375 Cancun/Havana/Cancun,
double occupancy accommodations (when available); for single occupancy, add $300.

Price includes: the RT flight, Cancun/Havana/Cancun, accommodations, two meals per day, translation, transportation, and program fees.
Price does NOT include: airfare to/from Cancun, beverages, gratuities, travel insurance, personal expenditures etc.

A sample itinerary is available, along with an application form, and additional information about Cuba travel, by contacting Leslie Balog at Global Exchange, leslie@globalexchange.org

Some additional websites and articles on Sustainable Development in Cuba you might enjoy:

BIODIVERSITY AND PROTECTED REGIONS

“Deep Cuba” by Chris Clarke and Bill Belleville, Earth Island Journal
http://www.earthisland.org/journal/index.php/eij/article/deep_cuba/

CUBA NATURALLY, National Geographic, November 2003, Slide Show
http://ngm.nationalgeographic.com/ngm/0311/sights_n_sounds/media2.html

CUBA NATURALLY, National Geographic, November 2003, by Steve Winter
http://ngm.nationalgeographic.com/ngm/0311/feature4/index.html


RENEWABLE ENERGY

Four Articles by Laurie Stone, Solar Energy International on Renewable Energy in Cuba
http://www.solarenergy.org/resources/articles.html


SUSTAINABLE AGRICULTURE

"Cuba's New Agricultural Revolution: The Transformation of Food Crop Production in Contemporary Cuba," by Laura Enriquez, May 2000 http://www.foodfirst.org/en/node/271

"Cultivating Havana: Urban Agriculture and Food Security in the Years of Crisis,"
by Catherine Murphy, Feb 18, 1999 http://www.foodfirst.org/en/node/273

"The Greening of Cuba," by Peter Rosset. ACLA Report on the Americas, 1994
http://www.interconnection.org/resources/cuba.htm

HEALTH CARE AND TRADITIONAL MEDICINE
http://www.yesmagazine.org/article.asp?ID=1733

URBAN SUSTAINABILITY


We look forward to hearing from you,

Leslie Balog
Cuba Reality Tours Coordinator
leslie@globalexchange.org
800-497-1994 x 242

www.realitytours.org
415 575-5530 for this and other research tours in Education, Art and Culture, Architecture and Urban Planning, Sustainable Agriculture, Renewable Energy, and customized groups.


Global Exchange Reality Tours is a licensed Travel Service Provider by the Office of Foreign Assets Control (OFAC) of the U.S. Treasury Department. Study Tour participants must qualify under the general license as full-time working professionals in a relevant field or as journalists.