Earlier this week in Havana’s Gran Teatro, President Obama urged Cubans in this new century to keep their eyes on the prize of “sustainable prosperity.” His remarks focused on the foundational role of political freedom, but not before underlining the importance of environmental protection too. That’s no surprise. Economic growth in Cuba will depend heavily on the natural systems that keep the island’s 11 million people fed, sheltered, and buffered from storms. Indeed, the U.S. State Department’s negotiations with Cuba stressed this very point: two of four agreements reached since the re-opening of diplomatic relations involved resource protection and preparing for the impacts of climate change. The expected influx of U.S. tourists, businesses, and developers—another key to economic success—promises to add a corresponding layer of environmental stress.
Last spring I traveled to Cuba as part of a New Orleans delegation and saw the challenges first hand. Cuba, long called the “Jewel of the Caribbean,” offers a brilliant landscape, with some of the best preserved shorelines and reefs in the region. But look further and you will find great vistas of urban dilapidation, leaking sewer systems, and frayed carpets of contaminated marsh. Among Cuba’s environmental problems, soil degradation—caused by poor farming techniques and intensified by drought—tops the list, affecting an estimated 60 percent of the land surface. Water shortages are also on the rise, a result of overuse, pollution, saline intrusion, and drought. The loss of biodiversity and forest cover have also drawn national and international attention.
The good news is that Cuba has a highly educated population and a deep bench of scientific and engineering expertise, although even that may someday be at risk. (My tour guide, for instance, more than doubled his pay when he traded his civil engineer’s desk for seat and a microphone on a Chinese-built luxury bus. He said he also much prefers the work!) Environmental policy has also enjoyed enthusiastic support from the Castro brothers, who see sustainability as intrinsic to socialist principles.
And then there is Cuba’s framework of environmental law, which is bolder and more ambitious than what might be expected. The nation has protected a quarter of its marine habitat from development. Shoreline is also vigorously defended from encroachment. Cuba’s program for environmental assessment of large projects is arguably more demanding than that in the United States. But, as in the United States, the laws as written do not always take the same form in real life. Monitoring and enforcement present huge problems in the Cuban system. My bet is that they will get worse as economic relations with the United States open up more. There is simply too much money at stake. Further it is hard to see how government officials can be held accountable in the face of such economic pressures without more transparency and vigorous public involvement. Which brings us back to President Obama’s point about political freedom. A green Cuba requires a free Cuba.
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Robert Verchick | March 23, 2016
Earlier this week in Havana’s Gran Teatro, President Obama urged Cubans in this new century to keep their eyes on the prize of “sustainable prosperity.” His remarks focused on the foundational role of political freedom, but not before underlining the importance of environmental protection too. That’s no surprise. Economic growth in Cuba will depend heavily […]
Matt Shudtz | March 22, 2016
Partisan efforts in Congress to roll back health and safety rules are common fodder on this blog. But last week, we saw a new twist, with a high-level Obama Administration official giving cover to a right-wing attempt to weaken protections for hundreds of thousands of workers in the poultry industry. The workers in question are […]
Daniel Farber | March 21, 2016
There was a surprise question about climate change at the last Republican debate. What was surprising wasn’t the question itself. Instead, it was the source of the question: Tomás Regalado, the Republican mayor of Miami. It turns out that this wasn’t a fluke. Regalado and the Republican mayor of Miami Beach have spoken out in […]
Evan Isaacson | March 18, 2016
Recently, I have been noticing a number of connections between the environmental policies or issues that I’ve been studying and modern economic doctrine. I’m not sure if the number or strength of these connections are enough to claim that we’re seeing a rise in “laissez faire environmentalism” in the Chesapeake Bay region, but the implications […]
Evan Isaacson | March 17, 2016
Maryland’s high court ruled last week in favor of the Maryland Department of the Environment (MDE) in a challenge by several advocacy groups against five municipal stormwater (“MS4”) permits issued by MDE. While reading the lengthy opinion on my computer, I felt at times like a raving sports fan yelling at the TV in frustration. […]
Matthew Freeman | March 15, 2016
Later today, not one but two CPR Member Scholars will testify today before the House Judiciary Committee’s Subcommittee on Regulatory Reform, Commercial and Antitrust Law. Emily Hammond and Richard J. Pierce both offer some perspective on the limits and scope of judicial deference to federal regulatory agencies. Pierce sketches out the long history of jurisprudence […]
James Goodwin | March 15, 2016
Over the weekend, the White House Office of Management and Budget (OMB) released the final draft of its annual report on the costs and benefits of federal regulation, which purports to provide a reasonably complete picture of the total impact that federal regulations have on the U.S. economy. This year’s final report finds that federal […]
Sidney A. Shapiro | March 14, 2016
I was recently a panelist at a Senate workshop on regulatory capture sponsored by the Administrative Conference of the United States (ACUS). In an earlier post about this event, I wrote about the potential of enhanced transparency to reduce regulatory capture, which I discussed at the workshop. Conservative commentators at the workshop argued that agencies […]
Sidney A. Shapiro | March 11, 2016
The subject of regulatory capture was back on Capital Hill last week as the result of a briefing sponsored by Administrative Conference of the United States (ACUS). In 2010, I testified concerning regulatory capture in a Senate hearing chaired by Senator Sheldon Whitehouse (D-RI), but in the midst of the broad-scale conservative assault on regulation, […]