Faculty Research

Report on Watson Trip to Cuba
Vicki Watson, Professor, Environmental Studies

Watson and Birkas with professionals who run the Almendares River Restoration Project in Havana.

Yumuri River in Mantazas.

Woman with fish she caught in Yumuri River.

Biosphere reserve called Sierra del Rosario which contains sustainable communities based on eco-tourism

In October 2004, Vicki Watson (UM Environmental Studies) and Anna Birkas (UM Forestry) traveled to Cuba with a group of water resource professionals from business & nonprofits. The group attended a professional conference on watersheds in Habana (Watson gave a paper at the conference) & met with watershed researchers & managers in western Cuba interested in collaboration. We toured the Almendares River Restoration project in Habana and interviewed the director of the project as well as several engineers working on improving sewage treatment facilities in Habana. We also toured the upper river's protected watershed which supplies drinking water to Habana. Watershed professionals in Cuba were generous with their time.

We also interviewed taxi drivers, artists, nursing students, tobacco field workers, farmers, and others citizens we met, asking about Cuba 's water problems and how they were being addressed.

We learned that Cuba now supplies potable water to almost all its population, but still only provides sewage treatment to about 20%. Finding the resources for such projects is a struggle. Most sanitation & watershed projects are funded by international aid. Habitat concerns are not really on the radar screen of most Cubans as yet. We were told that ecology is not an occupation in Cuba , so we mainly met with engineers. All the Cuban scientists & engineers we talked with expressed interest in collaboration (especially with ecologists) and asked us to write our congressional delegation and urge them to work for policies that would allow more collaboration. The Bush administration has greatly reduced opportunities for such scientific collaboration.

All the Cubans we met were very friendly towards us and expressed a strong wish for normalizing relations between the US and Cuba. They also felt that their government was doing a reasonably good job of meeting human needs and were willing to criticize specific programs that they felt could be improved. No police followed us around to monitor our interactions with Cubans.

It was very interesting to compare our life experiences with people in a society where the basic needs of life are free or very affordable, and there is a fairly narrow range of incomes. The Cubans said 'we are poor, but we are all poor together.'

The Cubans felt it was more important that everyone's basic needs be met, than that a few could become very rich. But we did note that two Cuban economies are developing - one based on those who interact with tourists & so have access to much more US dollars and another based on those who do not have tourist based jobs.

A few highlights of our trip:

• Learning about conservation of coral reefs on Cuba 's north coast from an activist marine biologist;
• Discussing Cuba 's dam building program with the president of the National Union of Architects & Engineers (who directs that program);
• Touring some internationally financed tourist developments on rivers & the north coast with a long time Cuban environmental activist for wetland conservation;
• Touring the Sierra del Rosario International Biosphere Reserve & some of the sustainable communities inside that reserve;
• Attending the World Water Celebration sponsored by the Instituto Nacional de Recursos Hydraulicos (where we gave water testing kits to school children).