Hudson Valley Activist Newspaper January 4, 2007

Cuba is the only country in the world that enjoys sustainable development, according to the World Wildlife Fund’s (WWF) The Living Planet Report 2006. In addition, despite unrelenting U.S. enmity, Cuba registered a 12.5% increase in its Gross Domestic Product (GDP) during the last 12 months, the highest such indicator in Latin America and the Caribbean in 2006, according to a Dec. 22 disclosure by Economy and Planning Minister Jose Luis Rodriguez. The average GDP growth for the region was 5.3%.

In 2007, according to year-end figures supplied by the Havana government, Cuba will assign 22.6% of its GDP for public health and education, a figure that is four times the standard of the Latin American nations for those sectors. Spending for health, education, culture, sports, security and social assistance represent 69% of the 2007 budget.

Sustainable development, the WWF’s 44-page report points out in its section on Human Development and Ecological Footprints, is a commitment to improving the quality of human life while living within the carrying capacity of supporting ecosystems.

The progress of countries toward sustainable development can be assessed using the United Nations Development Program’s (UNDP) Human Development Index (HDI) as an indicator of well-being, and the ecological footprint as a measure of demand on the biosphere. The HDI is calculated from life expectancy, literacy and education, and per capita GDP. UNDP considers an HDI value of more than 0.8 to be high human development. A footprint lower than 1.8 global hectares per person, the average biocapacity available per person on the planet, could denote sustainability at the global level. Successful sustainable development requires that the world, on average, meets at a minimum these two criteria. As world population grows, less biocapacity is available per person. In 2003, the latest period available for measuring, Asia-Pacific and Africa regions were using less than world average per person biocapacity, while the European Union countries and North America had crossed the threshold for high human development. No region, nor the world as a whole, met both criteria for sustainable development. Among all countries, only Cuba qualified, the WWF pointed out in its October report.

Despite Washington’s economic and political subversion (see below), the Havana government has organized a socialist society with a high level of literacy, education, long life expectancy, low infant mortality (the lowest rate in Latin America and the Caribbean), and efficiently low energy consumption — the principal factors contributing to its sustainable development.

Cuba is a relatively poor developing country which emerged less than a half-century ago from nearly 450 years of Spanish colonialism followed by 60 years of U.S. neocolonialism until the Cuban Revolution of Jan. 1, 1959 – but it is the world’s undisputed leader in organic agriculture, and it is making significant contributions to medical research, not to mention that Cuban doctors are serving the people in poor developing countries throughout the world. Also, according to the authoritative scientific journal Nature, Cuba has developed a considerable research capability — perhaps more so than any other developing country outside of Southeast Asia.

In a message from his sick bed to the Cuban people on the 48th anniversary of the revolution, ailing President Fidel Castro declared: Humanity is going through difficult times, marked by wars and dangers that arise everywhere, plus a non-stop consumption process — typical of the globalized imperialist system — which is exhausting important natural resources and polluting the environment. That alone justifies our heroic struggle.

This article was posted on Sunday, January 7th, 2007 and is filed under Cuba, General. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. You can leave a response, or trackback from your own site.