Building Partnerships for Sustainable Land Management and Food Security in Cuba

Full text: Soil erosion and the associated land degradation have long been recognized as major environmental concerns and a constraint to food security and sustainable development. The United Nations has highlighted soil degradation as one of the most significant challenges for sustainable food production in the 21st century (World Summit on Sustainable Development, 2002 Johannesburg, South Africa). The ARCAL (Regional Cooperative Agreement for the Advancement of Nuclear Science and Technology in Latin America and the Caribbean) Regional Strategy Profile identified the inefficient use of soil resources and the resulting permanent loss of productive agricultural land as major limitations to achieving food security in the Latin American and Caribbean region. Currently, about 300 million hectares of land have been affected by degradation. Indicators of the present soil conservation status and probable environmental consequences are essential for an assessment of national economic potential and evaluation of political and social consequences. Large-scale soil erosion assessments, for example in a watershed, cannot be based on direct conventional measurements because of methodological restrictions and excessively high temporal and spatial variability. This can be addressed through the use of fallout radionuclides (caesium-137, lead-210 and beryllium-7), which are widely distributed in the environment, adsorbed by soil particles and hence transported in the landscape in a similar way to soil particles. Therefore the monitoring of their redistribution provides an excellent fingerprint for soil redistribution by erosion or sedimentation. These radionuclide techniques also offer an advantage over the conventional methods, by being much less laborious and pinpointing the sources of soil loss. In 2009, a regional technical cooperation project (RLA/5/051 - ARCAL) was initiated for Latin America, with 15 countries (Argentina, Bolivia, Brazil, Chile, Cuba, El Salvador, Haiti, Jamaica, Mexico, Nicaragua, Peru, Dominican Republic, Uruguay and Venezuela) participating in the use of radionuclide techniques (http://arcal.unsl.edu.ar) to address soil erosion resulting from deforestation, overgrazing and inappropriate soil cultivation. In several countries the RLA/5/051 project has been linked with complementary national and international initiatives. For example, in September 2009 the Republic of Cuba implemented the Country Partnership Programme (CPP) supported by the Global Environment Facility (GEF, http://www.theGEF.org). The CPP comprises a package of interventions to address land degradation, including policy, regulatory and institutional reforms and capacity building. The CPP priorities are consistent with Cuba's national action programmes on desertification, sustainable land and water management, and agricultural production. This partnership between the RLA/5/051 and the CPP in Cuba has enhanced the optimization of skills in the use of radionuclide techniques to improve soil management and promote sustainable agriculture. The two RLA/5/051 participants (Centre for Radiation Protection and Hygiene of the Ministry of Science, Technology and Environment, and the Soil Science Institute of the Ministry of Agriculture) are associated with the CPP to assess soil erosion rates for two pilot project sites located in Western and South-Eastern Cuba (Llanura sur-occidental de Pinar del Rio and Franja costera Guantanamo-Maisi, respectively) through the use of radionuclides. Both sites with a total area of around 2400 hectares, represent typical subhumid and semi-arid agroecosystems in Cuba, which are characterized by severe soil erosion and soils of poor health. (author)