S P E E C H

A terrifying Dantesque trap for humanity
SPEECH GIVEN BY DR. FIDEL CASTRO RUZ, PRESIDENT OF THE REPUBLIC OF CUBA, AT THE OPENING OF THE HAVANA CONFERENCE OF THE HIGH-LEVEL SECTION OF THE PARTIES TO THE UNITED NATIONS CONVENTION TO COMBAT DESERTIFICATION AND DROUGHT, HAVANA, SEPTEMBER 1, 2003

Your Excellency Mr. Ibrahim Gambari, United Nations Under-Secretary General;

Your Excellencies Heads of State and Government, Vice Presidents, Parliamentary Presidents

and Heads of Delegations;

Distinguished guests:

Only 30 years ago humanity was not in the least aware of this great tragedy. At that time people believed that the only danger of extinction lay in the colossal number of nuclear weapons waiting to be fired at a moment’s notice. Although threats of that nature have by no means disappeared, an additional terrifying, Dantesque danger is lying in wait for us. I do not hesitate to use this strong, seemingly melodramatic language. The real drama lies in the ignorance of those risks we have lived with for so long.

Twenty-five years after the end of the Second World War nobody capable of thought and able to read and write had ever heard a single word about humanity’s blind, inexorable and accelerated march towards the destruction of the natural bases of its own life. Not one of the thousands of generations that preceded this one knew about such a dire threat nor did such an enormous responsibility fall upon any of them.

These are facts: the fruit of humankind’s little-known history, a result of the evolution of human society over five or six thousand years when that society did not have, nor could have, any clear idea of where it came from nor where it was going. This amazing and distressing fact is now the deeply held conviction of an educated and concerned, growing and forceful minority of humanity.

Today we know what is happening. Everyone here has access to the horrifying data and the irrefutable arguments serenely presented and analyzed in the conferences that preceded this one.

From my point of view there is no more urgent task than that of building a universal awareness, of taking the problem to the billions of men and women of all ages, including children, who inhabit this planet. The objective conditions and the sufferings of the overwhelming majority of them create the subjective conditions for this awareness-raising task.

Everything is connected. Illiteracy, unemployment, poverty, hunger, disease; lack of drinking water, of housing, of electricity; desertification, climatic variations, deforestation, floods, droughts, soil erosion, biodegradation, pests and other well known tragedies are inseparable.

Without education, we cannot achieve the urgent and much needed awareness of which I was speaking. A far-reaching educational revolution is, however, accessible to all the peoples in the world. This is the basic idea that I wish to address here today.

Cuba, whose modest successes in this field are unquestioned, can confirm that with an initial $3- billion investment over a short period of time and $700 million in each of the following nine years directed at educational material and equipment, -this includes one and a half million solar panels for communities and villages without electricity- it is possible, in a period of 12 years, to teach 1.5 billion illiterate and semi-illiterate persons to read and write and keep them at school up to sixth grade. This is a total expenditure of less that $10 billion, the equivalent of less than 0.004 per cent of the GNP of the developed countries that are members of the Organization for Economic Cooperation and Development (OECD).

This presupposes the gradual installation of four million teaching locations with audiovisual equipment of proven efficacy as well as the cooperation of an extensive movement of eight million volunteers with at least a sixth-grade education. At the same time, and using the same methods, these could teach literacy and be progressively trained as educators to a good professional level.

If the decision were made to encourage the jobless by paying them a modest monthly wage while they teach and study, it would be possible to create between 4 and 8 million decent jobs, something that would be highly appreciated by millions of youths in the Third World countries, given that they are the most affected by the scourge of unemployment. The cost to donor countries would be equally infinitesimal: if we estimate the above-mentioned wage at $100 a month and a tentative figure of six million who would be involved in the program on this basis, the cost would be the equivalent of 0.003 of the OECD’s GDP, in this instance, every year.

If we were to take the two programs together, the cost in the first five years would be approximately equivalent to what the United States is spending, at the current rate, on the occupying forces in Iraq in just 15 weeks.

An almost equal number of the world’s population could be taught at a much lower cost by using medium- or short-wave radios, which cost no more than $15 and are powered by small photovoltaic cells attached to them, and accompanied by small primers.

Our country has donated this method of radio-based teaching, developed by Cuban educators, to several countries that are already using it and we would be happy to do the same for any other country requesting it.

Our country has used television to teach English, a language used all over the world, to more than 1 million Cubans at a cost of only $50,000 to the Cuban state.

Wealthy group of countries were to donate only 0.01 per cent of the OECD’s GDP, a small portion of the 0.7 percent so often promised but never given -except in a few isolated cases- in 10 years it would be possible to use solar panels to supply 30 kilowatts of electricity a month to 250 million Third World families. This would mean that about 1.5 billion more people, the poorest sector of the world population, would be able to enjoy several hours of electric light and entertaining, news and educational TV or radio broadcasts every day without using a single liter of fossil fuel.

After the demise of the Socialist bloc, when our country - blockaded for more than four decades - was obliged to deal with a highly difficult situation, we began to grow crops on idle land in the cities, and are now producing more than 3 million tons of vegetables per year. This is done in hydroponics using straw and agricultural waste as organic matter, and micro-jet irrigation, which requires a minimum amount of water. Additionally, it has provided employment to almost 300,000 people while avoiding the emission of a single kilogram of carbon dioxide into the atmosphere.

I can say here that in a week’s time, all of the 505,000 Cuban teenagers attending junior high school -grades seven, eight and nine- will start the school year with new educational methods that will triple the knowledge usually provided, with one teacher for every 15 students.

I ask you to forgive me for citing examples demonstrating that, despite huge obstacles, it is still possible to do a great deal to ensure that the environment is preserved and that humanity survives.

However, everything that I have said so far is incompatible with the atrocious economic system of a ruthless neoliberal globalization imposed on the world, and IMF demands and conditions that involve the sacrifice of health, education and social security systems for billions of people. It is incompatible with the cruel way in which, through uncontrolled buying and selling of hard currency between the strong currencies and the weak currencies of the Third World, vast sums of money are stolen from the latter every year. To sum up, it is incompatible with the policies of the WTO that seem to be designed to allow the rich countries to flood the world with their products with no restrictions whatsoever and to wipe out the industrial and agricultural development of the poor countries, leaving them no other future but to supply raw materials and cheap labor. It is incompatible with the FTAA and other free trade agreements between sharks and sardines. It is incompatible with the monstrous foreign debt, which is, in the current situation, completely unpayable. It is incompatible with brain drain, with the almost total monopoly over intellectual property and the abusive and disproportionate consumption of the planet’s natural and energy resources.

The list of injustices is interminable. The gap is growing wider and the plunder is increasing.

Under the precepts and ideology of a diabolical and chaotic economic order, within five or six decades the consumer societies will have depleted the proven and unconfirmed fossil fuel reserves and in a mere 150 years will have used up what it took the planet 300 million years to create.

There is not even any clear and coherent idea about what energy will power the billions of motorized vehicles that are clogging up the cities and highways of rich countries and even those of many Third World countries. This is the ultimate expression of a completely irrational way of life and consumption that will never be useful as a model for the 10 billion people who will supposedly inhabit the Earth when the fateful petroleum era is over.

That economic order and those models of consumption are incompatible with the planet’s limited and non-renewable essential resources and with the laws that rule nature and life. They are also in conflict with the most basic ethical principles, with culture and with the moral values created by humankind.

We shall continue our battle without losing heart, without wavering, with the profound conviction that although human society has made colossal errors and is still making them, human beings are capable of conceiving the noblest of ideas, of housing the most generous sentiments and, by overcoming the powerful instincts that nature has imposed on us, can give up their lives for what they feel and believe in. This has been proven on many occasions throughout history.

If we can cultivate those exceptional qualities any obstacle can be overcome and anything can be changed!

Thank you very much. (Ovation)