Radio Cadena Agramonte emisiora de Camagüey
Havana, Mar 18th. - Cuban Deputy Prime Minister Eduardo Martínez and the Director General of the Coalition for Disaster Resilient Infrastructure (CDRI), Amit Prothi, agreed to strengthen cooperation between Cuba and that organization.
In a meeting, in which Tania Margarita Cruz, Deputy Prime Minister of Health, Ambassador Juan Carlos Marsán among other members of the Cuban delegation and representatives of various local institutions, also participated, the parties highlighted opportunities to advance in joint collaboration, taking into account the development of the Caribbean nation in the sector, as well as CDRI programs and projects.
Martínez confirmed Cuba's commitment to provide the coalition with accessible and scalable technology for early warning systems, risk management adaptable with resources willing to transfer knowledge, in the recovery and management of coastal ecosystems.
Similarly, she expressed the willingness to provide proven and validated community models, such as its civil defense system, acknowledged by the United Nations, which integrates science, government, communities into evacuation and recovery plans.
In this regard, she proposed the creation of a training network to replicate this approach that maintains citizen participation as a central axis.
The official called, as part of South-South cooperation in applied science, the contribution of Cuba’s technical capacity for joint projects on topics such as epidemiological surveillance, crop adaptation, critical infrastructure design, hospitals and schools with anti-hurricane standards.
"We believe that, as an important result of this cooperation, a knowledge fund should be created, open on resilience with an emphasis on global and ancestral solutions," he suggested.
The Cuban deputy prime minister pointed to the Caribbean nation's willingness to work with CDRI to strengthen regional research networks, as is the case with the Caribbean climate forecasting center, to use resources and data.
Also, in prioritizing climate justice by ensuring that nations most affected by disasters and less responsible for the crisis access technologies and financing without barriers.
He also mentioned that, despite economic difficulties and limitations, the science of the largest of the Antilles has made remarkable progress in this area as an early warning system under the leadership of the Institute of Meteorology of Cuba.
He stressed that the island has methodological development and implements studies of danger, vulnerability and risk as tools for territorial decision-making in the face of the onslaught of severe weather events. It also addressed the positive impact of the development of biotechnology and the formation of epidemiological strategies validated during the Covid-19 pandemic, which enabled local vaccine production.
It meant advances in resilient agriculture such as the creation of varieties of resistant crops by universities and centres such as the Tropical Vessel Research Institute, which have created crop varieties. (Text and Photo: Cubadebate)
