Sustainable Cuba

Anyway, in response to my previous post about the 2010 Yale/Columbia study (see below) my friend Jem suggested I check the score of Cuba. I’ve just done it and it comes 9th overall and 2nd in its peer group, The America’s.

So, according to this study Cuba is the 9th best environmentally-performing country in the world and the second best in The America’s (second to Costa Rica only).

Old news perhaps? And, yes, it is.

Jem actually blogged about this in 2006. He read the 2006 WWF Living Planet Report and, in his own words (which I hope he doesn’t mind me replicating here) found;

“On page 19, in a section comparing the amount of resources each country is gobbling up in comparison to the social development they have acheived, as indicated by the UN’s Human Development Index, shows that only one country has achieved a level of social development and environmental protection that can be considered “sustainable development”. That country? Grey-painted communist Cuba”

Obviously there are explanations for this. See Jem’s 06 posting on Jem Bendell’s Journal. And the compilers of the 2010 Yale/Columbia study highlighted a lack of data and poor data sources in a New York Times article. Did Cuba massage the figures?!

A bit possibly, but the truth is always somewhere in the middle. Cuba is more sustainable than most.

Start as you mean to go on...

So this is my first blog post to what I hope will become an interesting and useful - if not sometimes lighthearted too - take on sustainability and corporate social responsibility issues in Costa Rica and Central America.

Interesting because, despite its size - a population of only 4.5m and a land mass of 51,000 thousand square kilometers (Island has 70,000!) - Costa Rica is generally considered one of the most sustainable countries in the world.

At least that's if you believe the 2010 Environmental Performance Index produced by Yale and Columbia Universities or indeed the persuasive environmental marketing of the Instituto Costarricense de Turismo (ICT); the Government's Tourism Ministry.

Light hearted bacause I don't believe everything I read and am told, and because Costa Ricans never take themselves too seriously either.

So, here I'll start and we'll see how we go. English for now, but maybe the odd post in Spanish in the future. And please forgive my english spelling. It was never very good, but seems to have degenerated badly now that I'm writing regularly in Spanish!