Cuba: A Brief Introduction

The Cuban archipelago is very vulnerable to the climate crisis, given its status as a small island state. Cuba has over 11.3 million people (2021),1 and 23 percent live in rural areas.2 The country’s humid tropical climate is shifting toward a subhumid climate, in which the patterns of rain, availability of water, soil conditions, and temperatures differ.3 Cuba faces impacts of the climate crisis, including increasing temperatures, declining rainfall patterns during wet seasons which threaten the country’s water security, rising sea levels, and increasing occurrences of coastal flooding.4 These changes in climate will severely impact its agriculture, forestry, and tourism sectors which are vital to the country’s economy. In addition, the U.S. blockade of Cuba is a crucial hurdle to development for the country. The embargo negatively impacts its policies and programs aimed at confronting the impacts of the climate crisis.5 Even with limited access to international finance for climate action due to the blockade, the country, led by the Cuban Community party, is taking concrete steps to fight against the climate crisis with low-cost domestic solutions. 

Mapping Major Climate Events and Climate-Induced Displacement

Cuba experiences an average of two hurricanes per year, as well as periods of severe and prolonged drought. IDMC figures indicate that more than 2.7 million Cubans moved internally due to disasters in 2008 when three hurricanes and one tropical storm occurred in a three-week period.6 Mandatory evacuation processes in Cuba are systematic and extensive, so while rates of disaster-related mobility are typically very high, mortality rates connected to disasters are remarkably low.7 For instance, Hurricane Ike in 2008 displaced millions of Cubans, more than 300,000 homes were destroyed, and seven people were killed. The same hurricane led to more deaths in nearby countries.8 During the 2016 and 2017 Atlantic hurricane seasons, 2.8 million new displacements were recorded, and in 2020 disasters displaced 639,400 people.9

Mapping the Costs of the Climate Crisis

The latest GDP data shows that Cuba’s GDP is $107.35 billion.10 The COVID-19 pandemic devastated the Cuban economy as tourism reached a standstill and remittances declined. As a result, GDP fell by 11 percent in 2020,11 though tourism began to recover in 2021, although much more modestly than a complete market rebound. In addition to costs from the pandemic and the ongoing adverse effects of the U.S. embargo, the climate crisis is ravaging Cuba’s infrastructure and food insecurity. As a result of 2022’s Hurricane Ian, in Pinar del Río, the country’s hardest-hit province, nearly 76,000 houses have been damaged, including more than 8,400 that have been destroyed, while in the neighboring province of Artemisa, over 9,000 homes have been damaged. Additionally, Hurricane Ian affected more than 21,200 hectares of crops in affected areas, especially staple crops like plantain and cassava.12 In response, the UN System in Cuba launched a $42 million Plan of Action to address the most urgent multisectoral needs of nearly 798,000 people across the worst-affected provinces, Pinar del Río and Artemisa.13 In 2017, Hurricane Irma battered an already struggling Cuban economy; damages caused by the hurricane cost 13.6 billion Cuban pesos (approximately $566.9 million).14

Mapping Resilience and Mitigation Pathways

Cuba’s 2020 Nationally Determined Contribution (NDC) lacks a binding GHG emission reduction target, an economy-wide target, and a carbon budget aligned with a 1.5-degree trajectory. Instead, Cuba’s NDC affirms the importance of adaptation for the country by focusing on priority actions, including the prevention of new building construction in areas threatened by severe coastal flooding, primarily in low-lying coastal areas under the State Plan to Confront Climate Change, Tarea Vida (2017),15 adapting food-security critical crops to the consequences of sea-level rise and drought, and improving hydrological infrastructure.16 While Cuba focuses primarily on adaptation and despite its low contribution to GHG emissions, Cuba aims to mitigate GHG emissions, which emergy primarily from the energy sector through the increased use of renewable energy sources, energy efficiency, and reforestation.17

Necessary Changes

Cuba’s current main gaps in climate action do not lie in policies but in their implementation. Namely, to execute the Tarea Vida and other climate policies, significant gaps must be filled, including insufficient technical capacity, lack of measurement, reporting, and verification system for climate finance flows, and limited involvement of non-state actors to access climate finance. It is important to note that Cuba’s access to international finance is more limited than other countries due to the U.S. blockade, which prevents it from accessing multilateral development banks and precludes new investments, supplies of spare parts, and raw materials, access to state-of-the-art technologies;  all of which have a detrimental effect on the Cuban economy and climate action.18 As called for by the UN General Assembly for the last 29 years,19 it is critical that the U.S. government lift the embargo on Cuba to enable a resilient future for Cuba’s people and bolster climate action.