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dir="ltr"> <font size="-2"><a id="reader-domain" class="domain"
href="http://www.sciencemag.org/news/2018/01/cuba-embarks-100-year-plan-protect-itself-climate-change">http://www.sciencemag.org/news/2018/01/cuba-embarks-100-year-plan-protect-itself-climate-change</a></font>
<h1 id="reader-title">Cuba embarks on a 100-year plan to protect
itself from climate change<br>
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<div id="reader-credits" class="credits">By Richard Stone - Jan.
10, 2018 <br>
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<p>On its deadly run through the Caribbean last September,
Hurricane Irma lashed northern Cuba, inundating coastal
settlements and scouring away vegetation. The powerful
storm dealt Havana only a glancing blow; even so,
10-meter waves pummeled El Malecón, the city’s seaside
promenade, and ravaged stately but decrepit buildings in
the capital’s historic district. “There was great
destruction,” says Dalia Salabarría Fernández, a marine
biologist here at the National Center for Protected
Areas (CNAP).</p>
<p>As the flood waters receded, she says, “Cuba learned a
very important lesson.” With thousands of kilometers of
low-lying coast and a location right in the path of
Caribbean hurricanes, which many believe are
intensifying because of climate change, the island
nation must act fast to gird against future disasters.</p>
<p>Irma lent new urgency to a plan, called Tarea Vida, or
Project Life, adopted last spring by Cuba’s Council of
Ministers. A decade in the making, the program bans
construction of new homes in threatened coastal areas,
mandates relocating people from communities doomed by
rising sea levels, calls for an overhaul of the
country’s agricultural system to shift crop production
away from saltwater-contaminated areas, and spells out
the need to shore up coastal defenses, including by
restoring degraded habitat. “The overarching idea,” says
Salabarría Fernández, “is to increase the resilience of
vulnerable communities.”</p>
<p>But the cash-strapped government had made little
headway. Now, “Irma [has] indicated to everybody that we
need to implement Tarea Vida in a much more rapid way,”
says Orlando Rey Santos, head of the environment
division at Cuba’s Ministry of Science, Technology, and
Environment (CITMA) here, which is spearheading the
project. The government aims to spend at least $40
million on Project Life this year, and it has approached
overseas donors for help. Italy was the first to
respond, pledging $3.4 million to the initiative in
November 2017. A team of Cuban experts has just finished
drafting a $100 million proposal that the government
plans to submit early this year to the Global Climate
Fund, an international financing mechanism set up under
the United Nations Framework Convention on Climate
Change.</p>
<p>Many countries with vulnerable coastlines are
contemplating similar measures, and another island
nation—the Seychelles— has offered to collaborate on
boosting coastal protection in Cuba. But Project Life
stands out for taking a long view: It intends to prepare
Cuba for climatological impacts over the next century.
“It’s impressive,” says marine scientist David
Guggenheim, president of Ocean Doctor, a nonprofit in
Washington, D.C., that has projects in Cuba. “Cuba is an
unusual country in that they actually respect their
scientists, and their climate change policy is science
driven.”</p>
<p>Rising sea levels pose the most daunting challenge for
Cuba. Over the past half-century, CITMA says, average
sea levels have risen some 7 centimeters, wiping out
low-lying beaches and threatening marsh vegetation,
especially along Cuba’s southern midsection. The coastal
erosion is “already much worse than anyone expected,”
Salabarría Fernández says. Storms drive the rising seas
farther inland, contaminating coastal aquifers and
croplands.</p>
<p>Still worse is in store, even in conservative scenarios
of sea-level rise, which forecast an 85-centimeter
increase by 2100. According to the latest CITMA
forecast, seawater incursion will contaminate nearly
24,000 square kilometers of land this century. About 20%
of that land could become submerged. “That means several
percent of Cuban land will be underwater,” says Armando
Rodríguez Batista, director of science, technology, and
innovation at CITMA.</p>
<p>To shore up the coastlines, Project Life aims to
restore mangroves, which constitute about a quarter of
Cuba’s forest cover. “They are the first line of defense
for coastal communities. But so many mangroves are dying
now,” Salabarría Fernández says. Leaf loss from
hurricane-force winds, erosion, spikes in salinity, and
nutrient imbalances could all be driving the die-off,
she says.</p>
<p>Coral reefs can also buffer storms. A Cuban-U.S.
expedition that circumnavigated the island last spring
found that many reefs are in excellent health, says
Juliett González Méndez, a marine ecologist with CNAP.
But at a handful of hot spots, reefs exposed to
industrial effluents are ailing, she says. One Project
Life target is to squelch runoff and restore those
reefs.</p>
<p>Another pressing need is coastal engineering. Topping
Cuba’s wish list are jetties or other wave-disrupting
structures for protecting not only the iconic Malecón,
but also beaches and scores of tiny keys frequented by
tourists whose spending is a lifeline for many Cubans.
Cuba has appealed to the Netherlands to lend its
expertise in coastal engineering.</p>
<p>Perhaps the thorniest element of Project Life is a plan
to relocate low-lying villages. As the sea invades,
“some communities will disappear,” Salabarría Fernández
says. The first relocations under the initiative took
place in October 2017, when some 40 families in
Palmarito, a fishing village in central Cuba, were moved
inland.</p>
<p>Other communities may not need to pull up stakes for
decades. But Cuban social scientists are already fanning
out to those ill-fated villages to educate people on
climate change and win them over on the eventual need to
move. That’s an easier sell in the wake of a major
hurricane, Rodríguez Batista says. “Irma has helped us
with public awareness,” he says. “People understand that
climate change is happening now.”</p>
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