Cuba Environment Profile 2012

Environmentally sustainable growth receives sporadic consideration, but lacks an autonomous institutional framework and is subordinate to economic growth. Dam construction, poor soil management policies, and “Stakhanovite” campaigns – campaigns aimed at overachieving on the job – have long been sources of ecological damage. Accelerated tourist development in the early 1990s compounded ecological damage. However, Cuban scientists have succeeded in introducing environmental concerns into tourism project design and assessment, and the Ministry of Science and Technology has changed its name to include “Environment” as part of its mandate.

Cuba spends a large fraction of the state budget on education, and has done so for decades. It has also offered an example of extremely low economic return on its vast investment in education. Cuba has a large network of basic, secondary and higher education institutions, and many significant research institutions. There is no private educational system. The quality of its science and scientists in some fields is world class. However, the transformation of research into useful products has been a problem; Cuba has long invested huge sums in the development of biotechnology, with few commercially significant results. This vast investment in human capital began to pay off in the mid-2000s with the massive export of Cuban health care, education and sports services to Venezuela in a barter arrangement for Venezuelan oil shipments, which may augur well for the future.