Cuba and the environment, by gimleteye

In “Conserving Cuba, after the embargo” the New York Times (Tuesday, December 25, 2007) writes: “Through accidents of geography and history, Cuba is a priceless ecological resource. That is why many scientists are so worried about what will become of it after Fidel Castro and his associates leave power and, as is widely anticipated, the American government relaxes or ends its trade embargo."

The story dances around the key issue: the record of mismanagement of natural resources in South Florida, where the ascent to power by Cuban American developers depended, in large part, on exploiting the environment.

Cuba “has an abundance of landscapes that elsewhere in the region have been ripped up, paved over, poisoned or otherwise destroyed in the decades since the Cuban revolution.”

The New York Times doesn't say so, but it's clear as day: Miami and its environs are Exhibit A. In Cuba, "a stagnant economy helped to guard the environment." In South Florida, the economics of suburban sprawl chewed up the environment as easily as a wood chipper turns a gumbo limbo to sawdust.

David Guggenheim, former co-chair of the Everglades Coalition and now an executive with a Washington-based conservation organization, is quoted in the Times article, “the best lessons for Cubans to ponder as they contemplate a more prosperous future can been seen 90 miles to the north, in the Florida Keys. There, he said, too many people have poured into an ecosystem too fragile to support them… ‘We don’t want to see and they don’t want see the same mistakes, where you literally love something to death.’”

Loving something to death is a flimsy euphemism for Florida that has outlived its purpose (in magazines and newspaper articles ad nauseam), as applied to what happened outside Miami. In South Florida, what remains of fantastic and extravagant biodiversity exist mostly as skeletal reminders or accidental survivors.

Cuban scientists and policy makers have good reason to fear what may happen when the current regime fades and Miami-style investment guns its engines to build in Cuba and to excavate, dredge fill and build wherever possible, as fast as possible.

The political elite in Florida wrestled long and hard to tame the growing power and influence accumulated by Cuban American developers. The intersection of interests, paving over divisions between old Florida crackers from the north and Miami's Cuban American elite from the south, is around the policies and laws and incentives surrounding growth, primarily of suburban sprawl. Would it be any different in post-Castro Cuba, once the lid pops off?

To the extent that the environment has been protected in Florida, it is through a flimsy patchwork of regulations unable to withstand the pressure of successive generations of political pressure. Take, as just a small example, how under the Jeb Bush regime, the Florida Wildlife Commission stripped the word “conservation” from its title, or, how the Florida Department of Environmental Regulation embraced its motto, “less process, more protection” while dodging numeric pollution standards that would hold polluters accountable.

Cubans have every reason to be worried about what happens to the environment after the embargo and beyond Castro. In Miami, when the prospect of environmental regulation hindering growth has ever raised its head, it has always been accompanied by accusations and intimations flowing from the socialist experiment on the other side of the Florida Straits.

In South Florida, Cuban American developers wait with bated breath, for the next big deal.