The territorial Delegation of the Ministry of Science, Technology, and Environment (CITMA) in Las Tunas is part of six international projects, of which it coordinates two, Ecovalor and Mi Costa, intending to promote sustainable development.
Las Tunas, Cuba.- Yandira González Mejías, head of the Department of Natural Resources, Prioritized Ecosystems, and Climate Change, told 26 that these initiatives have a strong interest in strengthening the resilience of communities in the face of various vulnerabilities.
Mi Costa, for example, is working in the municipalities of Jobabo, Colombia, and Amancio to adapt coastal areas and 24 settlements to climate change. It is focusing its work on 1,300 kilometers of the southern coastline to protect the surrounding ecosystems.
The Koica project in the Manatí region, the specialist says, works to strengthen local food production by assisting small farmers and other important actors in the face of gaps such as gender inequalities and risk management. Food will be the value chain that will be privileged.
The expert confirms that similar goals are pursued by Sustainable School Feeding (AES+), implemented in Puerto Padre and Colombia, which also seeks to promote healthy nutrition habits in primary schools in eastern Cuba and the Family Assistance System (SAF), by strengthening local production that includes the environmental dimension, sensitive to nutrition and resilient to disasters and climate change.
Specifically, the municipality of Manatí, marked by such a damaging phenomenon as drought, is the site of two other endeavors of this type: Microseguro and Dipecho II. The first one contemplates prevention and financial protection mechanisms for the continuity of production and food security in credit and service cooperatives affected by this hazard.
González Mejías explains that they surveyed the vulnerabilities of five producers of the 13 de Marzo unit basic of cooperative production (UBPC) and eight of the Gonzalo Falcón credit and service cooperative (CCS). They have already started a training program to achieve better management.
The second aims to strengthen disaster risk management capacities to reduce the impact of extreme events on food and nutritional security and public water supply. The directive adds that work was carried out with the 19 productive forms of this territory, to which a matrix with five variables and 30 indicators was applied to determine the weaknesses that each one presented in terms of water, soil, crops, animals, and processing industries.
"A set of tools were built in a participatory manner to help strengthen the capacities of municipal authorities, farmers, and other local stakeholders to manage drought more appropriately, to lessen its impact," he concluded.
