Guantanamo.- Faced with desertification and drought, Guantánamo Province responds to the call of the United Nations Organization (UN) to establish actions to recover the land and achieve adequate management, in correspondence with the global mandate to restore one billion hectares by 2030.
This is above all in Guantanamo an imperative, as it has in its territory the Southern Coastal Strip, considered the Cuban Semidesert, due to its characteristics of fragile soils and low rainfall, conditions that are aggravated by the impact of climate change that rises the temperature and more marked drought periods.
Guantanamo is today at the forefront of the Cuban provinces with the largest number of Areas Initiated in Sustainable Land Management (MST), a distinction conferred by the country’s Environment Agency and the World Environment Agency of the UN.
#Cuba se suma hoy a las celebraciones globales por #DíaMundialMedioAmbiente, enfocada en restaurar los ecosistemas, frenar los procesos de degradación de las tierras y recuperar capacidades de respuesta ante sequías extremas@EdMartDiaz @SANTANACITMA @citmacuba @adianez_taboada pic.twitter.com/d5byQteGEe
— Ministerio de Ciencia, Tecnología y Medio Ambiente (@citmacuba) June 5, 2024
This initiative is aimed at sustainably managing the land, reducing degradation, increasing productive capacity, promoting its goods and services, and mitigating the effects of drought and salinity in agricultural areas of the Guantanamo Valley and the southern coastal strip of the territory.
On June 7, 2022, lots one and three of the Hatibonico Ecological Reserve (protected area located west of Guantánamo Bay), were declared with the aforementioned category, as a result of the application of Project 1 of Operational Program 15 (OP -fifteen).
Under the motto “United for the land: Our legacy, our future”, is the motto of this year’s commemoration of the World Day to Combat Desertification and Drought, for which the United Nations Organization calls this June 17 to mobilize the different actors to sustainably manage soils.
It is necessary to act and change the panorama marked by the degradation of 40 percent of the land on the planet, the impact of the drought that causes food instability and water supply for a quarter of the world’s inhabitants, and the effects of desertification suffered by 3.2 billion people.
Mobilizing all generations to support sustainable land management is the central theme of the Desertification and Drought Day celebrated today amid the global effort to combat this scourge. pic.twitter.com/Ur6tMhlcFO
— Cuban Embassy in US (@EmbaCubaUS) June 17, 2024
Translated by Liubis Balart
