Cuba: A Model for Net-Zero?

I find myself increasingly wondering what a Net-Zero future might look like. Is such a future even possible? 

Here in the UK, the government has signed a commitment for this country "to bring all greenhouse gas emissions to net zero by 2050". From where I'm standing at this moment on the cusp of 2023, to achieve this target feels almost farcical while simultaneously imperative.

Some look to Cuba as a model for how to adapt. "The Power of Community: How Cuba Survived Peak Oil" takes this view. On the one hand, I find this documentary quite inspiring. One of its key messages seems to be that overcoming adversity has the power to bring us together for positive long lasting change. A pleasant thought when contemplating how to minimise and even survive climate change.

On the other hand, is this documentary's message too simplistically idyllic to the point of misleading? Hmmm... I fear it might be...

Let's examine Cuba as a case study. What caused the crisis? How did Cuba's citizens coap? How much further does Cuba still need to go? And finally, what insights can we glean from this undeniably remarkable story?

Cuba, as a communist country, had strong political and economic ties with the Soviet Union. The two countries signed a long-standing trade agreement whereby Cuba received petroleum products from the USSR including petrol, diesel, and fertilizer in exchange for sugar. Cuba produced sugar on an industrialised scale in vast monocropped plantations. In fact, at that time Cuba was the World's largest exporter of sugar.

When the the Soviet Union collapsed in the early 1990s, this trade agreement broke down sending Cuba's economy into free fall. In just three years, the country lost 80% of its international trade. Fuel became scarce, plantations and sugar refineries fell silent. In five years from 1989, the average Cuban's daily calorie intake fell from 2,908 calories to only 1,863. People began literally fainting in the streets from hunger. The Cuban government declared the Special Period in the Time of Peace with strict food rationing.

In response, urban vegetable gardens began popping up in vacant lots, roadsides, anywhere they fit. They were organic out of necessity. Pesticides, herbicides, and artificial fertilisers were simply unavailable. 

The government embraced these activities. They created the Urban Agricultural Department that offered and still offers horticultural training, builts communal composting units, and provides veterinary services. Today, an estimated 35,000 hectares of land is cultivated to grow vegetables in Havana, Cuba's capital, helping feed the city's population.

Sweeping reforms swept the countryside too during the Special Period. The government broke up state owned sugar plantations into small decentralised private cooperatives. Additionally, they allowed these businesses to sell directly to consumers by opening numerous local markets, a massive shift in communist policy.

These are truely striking achievements. They demonstrate a willingness by Cuba's people and leadership to not only change their working practices but there underlying beliefs as well. What an extraordinary willingness to adapt in such harrowing circumstances. I find this genuinely inspiring considering the continued economic pressure Cuba still endures from never ending trade embargoes enforced by the United States.

However, even with all these achievements, Cuba is far from the sustainable organic paradise some would have you believe. Still today, 80% of Cuba's international imports are for food products. Additionally, only approximately 20% of Cuba's own grown produce are organic. Consumers must take care to avoid falling victim to unscrupulous farmers passing off their non-organic produce as organic to fetch a higher price. The Cuban farmworker Maikel Márquez expresses it best quoting in The Guardian, "People from abroad see us as this paradise of sustainable farming but we’re not. We’re coming out of a very bad model of agriculture, to something better.” 

How succinctly expressed. Let us all learn from it. Returning now to our own efforts to reach a sustainable Net-Zero lifestyle, I think Cuba demonstrates that striving for perfection is a fool's game, just getting over the line is difficult enough.