Cuba - a Transition Nation

The withdrawl of Fidel Castro from leadership of Cuba after five decades in power marks the end of an extraordinary era in the nation's development. Castro led the revolution, along with the charismatic Che Guevara, that overthrew the previous corrupt Batista regime, and imposed communist rule in 1959.

Land and property were nationalised, and the American mobsters thrown out of the country. Since then the nation has been a thorn in the side of the United States, and Castro has survived numerous assassination attempts, including the CIA-backed Bay of Pigs fiasco.

Cuba is an interesting nation for environmentalists because of the impact of US sanctions and the collapse of the USSR, which have had the combined effect of drastically reducing the amount of oil available to the Cuban economy. Cuba has therefore had to adapt to the very economic forces which seem likely to affect the developed world as Peak Oil pushes global oil prices ever higher, and climate change forces measures to limit the burning of fossil fuels.

The remarkable fact is that Cuba is a success story by any measure other than the lack of democracy and its human rights record. Cuba has standards of health care that match the best in the West, with a longevity that matches the US, an infant mortality rate lower than the US, and rates of literacy among the highest in the world. It is so successful that it can encourage its trained doctors to work in sympathetic nations like Venezuela. Far from crumbling under the US embargo and lack of oil, Cuba has flourished, becoming virtually self-sufficent in food, with around 30% of the population employed in agriculture in a return to the land drive. Cuba has protected its abundant wildlife and is a popular tourist destination. Much of this success derives from Castro's leadership. Cuba's people have largely flourished, unlike the population of North Korea, another nation which suffered from the collapse of the USSR, where people have starved, and there is still widespread malnutrition.

It is for these reasons that Cuba has been seized on by the Transition Towns movement as an example of how an energy descent can be achieved successfully. If Cuba can do it, why not Totnes, Falmouth, Stroud or Brighton? What significance has a command economy played in achieving the transition? Can the same done in a British nation used to consumerism, a free press, and democracy?

What happens next to Cuba will depend on how successful Fidel Castro's 76-year old brother Raul is in keeping this legacy of self-sufficiency going, in the face of ongoing hostility from the United States. For all the criticism, Fidel Castro has handed his brother a nation that has cuts its carbon emissions by around the very amount of 80% that scientists tell us is needed to curb runaway global warming, while giving his people first rate health and services.