How Cuba is going ecological

Capitalism, Nature, Socialism

Volumn 16, Issue 3, 2005, Pages 7-25

  Levins, Richard ^a  

^a INSTITUTO DE ECOLOGÍA Y SISTEMÁTICA   (Cuba)

Author keywords

[No Author keywords available]

Indexed keywords

ENVIRONMENTAL ISSUE; ENVIRONMENTAL POLICY; NATURE-SOCIETY RELATIONS; SOCIAL BEHAVIOR; SUSTAINABILITY;

ATLANTIC ISLANDS; ATLANTIC OCEAN; CARIBBEAN ISLANDS; CUBA; GREATER ANTILLES; OCEANIC REGIONS; WORLD;

EID: 24944548002     PISSN: 10455752     EISSN: None     Source Type: Journal    
DOI: 10.1080/10455750500208706     Document Type: Article

References (32)

1. This paper was prepared for the Latin American Studies Association meetings, October 6-10, 2004. Richard Levins works in the Department of Population and International Health at the Harvard School of Public Health and the Institute of Ecology and Systematics, Boyeros, Havana, Cuba.
2. The following references introduce each of the areas of Cuban achievement not discussed in this paper. Jerry M. Spiegel and Annalee Yassi, "Lessons from the Margins of Globalization: Appreciating the Cuban Health Paradox," Journal of Public Health Policy, 25, 1, 2004, pp. 85-110;
3. Anuario Estadistico, Ministerio de Salud Publica de la Republica de Cuba, Candido Lopez Pardo, Miguel Marquez and Francisco Rojas Ochoa, "Desarrollo Humano y Equidad en América Latina y el Caribe," XXV Internacional Congreso of the Latin American Studies Association, October 2004;
4. Francisco Rojas Ochoa and Candido Lopez Pardo, "Desarrollo Humano y Salud en América Latina y el Caribe," Revista Cubana de Salud Pública, 29, 1, 2003, pp. 8-17;
5. United Nations Development Program, "Report on Human Development, 2004, Published online at http://www.undp.org;
6. Mario Coyula and Jill Hamburg, "Understanding Slums: the Case of Havana, Cuba," David Rockerfeller Center for Latin American Studies, 4, 2004-5;
7. Maria Caridad Cruz and Roberto Sanchez Medina, Agriculture in the City: A Key to Sustainability in Havana, Cuba (Kingston, Jamaica: Ian Randle Publishers, 2003), pp. 210.
8. Miren Uriarte, Cuba Social Policy at the Crossroads: Maintaining Priorities, Transforming Practice (Boston: Oxfam America, 2002).
9. Minor Sinclair and Martha Thompson, Cuba Going Against the Grain: Agricultural Crisis and Transformation (Boston: Oxfam America, 2001), p. 56.
10. For the purposes of this study, socialism refers to a society in which the associated producers (past, present and future workers) own most of the means of production locally or nationally, in cooperative or state enterprises, and make decisions about the society through combined participatory and representative democracy (both state and non-state). Production is decided on the basis of judgments about human needs, distribution is according to work and need, and labor power is not a marketable commodity. Within this framework many kinds of organization and ways of working have been and are being tested.
11. Complexity has become a fashionable buzz word in discussions about science, a recognition that fragmented, reductionist, and ahistorical science has caused major disasters and left us unprepared for the resurgence of infectious disease, for antibiotic resistance in bacteria and pesticide resistance in agriculture, for flooding as a result of flood control engineering, for the emergence of hospitals as foci of infection, food aid leading to hunger, and economic growth giving rise to new forms of poverty. The rediscovery of complexity emphasizes uncertainty, non-linearity, connectedness, the interaction of chance and determinism, and the near orderliness of chaos. In one sense it is a groping toward dialectics without acknowledging the Marxist tradition. See Richard Levins, "Dialectics and Systems Theory," Science and Society, 62, 3, 1998, p. 375;
12. Richard Levins, "The Butterfly ex Machina," in Rama S. Singh, Costas B. Krimbas, Diane B. Paul and John Beatty (eds.), Thinking About Evolution, Vol. II: Historical, Philosophical, and Political Perspectives (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2001), p. 606.
13. Josefina Toledo Benedit, La Ciencia y la Técnica en José Martí (Havana: Editorial Ciencia y Técnica, 1994), p. 209.
14. The Cuban Speleological Society was organized by teenage boys from Havana who loved exploring the countryside. They began as a Boy Scout troop but broke away when they decided that the Boy Scouts were a conservative, militaristic organization dominated by the United States. The geographer Antonio Nuñez Jimenez was a member and introduced Fidel Castro to cave exploration in the early years. The Society continued as a small ecology-minded NGO.
15. Silvia Martinez Puentes, Cuba Mas Allá de los Sueños (Havana: Editorial Jose Marti, 2003), p. 112.
16. Martinez Puentes, op. cit., p. 128.
17. Fidel Castro, speech at the closing of the Congress of Pedagogy, February 2, 2003.
18. J.D. Bernal, The Social Function of Science (London: Routledge, 1939).
19. Jorge Aldoregía Valdes-Brito, Pablo Resik Habib, and Hector Rodríguez Báster, "Organización y Administración de la Investigación," Revista Cubana de Administración de Salud, 11, 1985, pp. 305-316.
20. Carlos Borroto, discussion in Fidel Castro Diaz-Balart, op. cit., p. 257.
21. CITMA (Ministerio de Ciencia, Tecnología y Medio Ambiente), Taller "Medio Ambiente y Desarrollo: Consulta Nacional Rio + 5" (Havana: CITMA, 1997), p. 74.
22. Ibid., p. 22.
23. The Second Biennial International Seminar on the Philosophical, Epistemological and Methodological Implications of Complexity Theory and Parallel Workshop on Complex Biological Systems, Havana, January 7-10, 2004.
24. Agostín Lage, discussion in Fidel Castro Diaz-Balart, op. cit., p. 145.
25. Gina Rey, "Cuba, Integral Development, and the Environment," Xerox of presentation at Dalhousie University, 1989.
26. CITMA, National Environment Strategy, 1997.
27. José Luis Garcia, discussion, in Fidel Castro Diaz-Balart, op. cit., p. 306.
28. CITMA, Programa Nacional de Medio Ambiente y Desarrollo, 1995.
29. The people mentioned in this paper are an idiosyncratic sampling of names I happen to remember and people I have worked with. Others whose contributions are just as important have been omitted.
30. Fernando Funes, Luis Garcia, Martin Bourque, Nilda Perez and Peter Rosset, Sustainable Agriculture and Resistance: Transforming Food Production in Cuba (Oakland: Food First Books, 2002), p. 307.
31. Maria Caridad Cruz and Roberto Sanchez Medina, op. cit.
32. A classic example is the case of Alar, a possible carcinogenic chemical used on apples. Environmentalists were successful in getting Alar removed from the American market in 1989 following a major exposé on the CBS News program, 60 Minutes. But this turned into a major defeat for environmental activism after a food and chemical industry-sponsored public relations campaign successfully spun this legitimate victory into "environmental fear-mongering," a label that has become a potent weapon against environmentalism in general.