Cuba suffers one of most intense droughts in history.
| Autor | Vazquez, Daniel |
Cuba is suffering through a severe drought caused by climate change and two consecutive years of negligible rainfall, which has killed thousands of cattle and affected drinking-water supplies in several cities, including the two largest on the island, Havana and Santiago de Cuba.
The drought began in November 2008 and intensified in 2009, which was classified as the fourth driest in the past 109 years. Drought is a part of the country's natural climate variations, but in the last 40 years it has occurred with greater frequency and intensity, sources at the Instituto de Meteorologia de Cuba (INSMET) indicated.
The past dry season, from November 2010 to April 2011, experienced less precipitation than expected because of the phenomenon La Nina-Southern Oscillation (ENSO), the cooling of the surface waters in the equatorial Pacific Ocean, which reached its greatest level in December.
Experts fear the expansion and intensification of the drought in the future, especially in the eastern region where 25% of the nation's 11.2 million people reside. However, in recent months the westernmost province, Pinar del Rio, and the nation's capital, Havana, recorded a sharp drop in rainfall and in their water reserves.
Among the most severe years of drought in the island's history were 2004 and 2005, with economic losses of US$1.2 million and direct damage to 2 million people and 900 municipalities. Now, the damages have worsened in urban areas owing to the age and reduced maintenance of the water systems.
Death in the fields
Scenes from Cuban state television show campesinos carrying water from rivers in wobbly ox-drawn carts and feeding their cattle the remains of the recent sugarcane crop. In the central area of the island, inhabitants have had to deepen existing wells because of the dropping groundwater levels.
From November 2010 to April 2011, 79% of Cuban territory lacked rain, and in 17% of these areas the situation became "extremely severe." The island depends largely on tropical cyclones to fill the nearly 250 dams, but they often bring floods, landslides, and other calamities.
In Camaguey, the country's main livestock center, the lack of pasture, water, and feed for livestock killed 20,000 cattle. This was reported in May when official television broadcast the devastating images of animals dead from starvation baking under the tropical sun and bony cows searching for grass in the parched and dusty plains.
Desertification and land degradation...
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