PROTECTED AREAS

In Cuba the System of Protected Areas consists of 286 recognised sites. Some other smaller sites are included into the bigger areas, which brings us to a total of 424.

PRODUCTION, COMMERCE AND USE OF FORESTRY PRODUCTS

The national production is not enough for the demand. Everything harvested in Cuba is sold on the Cuban market and in 1998, in order to cover the unmet needs, the country had to import approximately 45 million of cubic metres of forest products at a cost of US$22.5 Million.

The local plywood is not made with wood but mostly with processed sugarcane bagasse and the production level reaches 17.6 mm³

OTHER PRODUCTS AND FOREST SERVICES (1999)

_ Fuelwood (wood for burning) 1 187,2 Mm³;

_ charcoal 1 361,5 thousands of bags;

_ scaffolding poles and stakes for drying tobacco 74,9 Mm³;

_ electricity and telephone poles 28.2 MU;

_ railwood sleepers 150,1 MU.

Non-forest products (1999)

_ mangrove harvesting 125.9 metric tonnes;

_ forest residues (leaves etc) 25.6 million units;

_ pine resin 1044.2 metric tonnes;

_ tree seeds 292.9Mkg.

Tourism and recreation

Ecotourism

In Cuba, the Ministry of Tourism (MINTUR), the Ministry of Science, Technology and the Environment (CITMA) and the Ministry of Agriculture (MINAG), have approved a Joint Resolution that authorize the exploitation of 116 different tours for ecotourism. All of these must follow strict regulations as described in the Resolution.

The tours offerings are managed by the MINAG, CITMA and other entities mainly through the National Enterprise for the Protection and Conservation of Flora and Fauna and the participation of other specialized entities of the Forestry Division.

During 97-98, the country received approximately US$7 million while in 1999 they received US$11 million. For the year 2000, some 3 500 000 tourists are expected to visit the country and tour the national parks and the natural reserves to practice ecotourism. Seven million tourists are expected by 2010. By this time, the country should offer diversified and combined products and services.

The success of the next ten years will be dependent on the capacity of the Cuban specialists to identify the unique possibilities of each site, what makes them different from other sites and how to incorporate these differences in a creative manner. Cuba possesses sufficient variability in its natural and cultural areas for this to be achieved.

Hunting

This is an activity that has been existing in Cuba since a very long time. We must stress, however, that the current legislation on this matter dates from July 1949, is obsolete and is no longer relevant. These statutes, however are still present on the books, and every year are produced hunting calendars describing the approved periods for the hunting season.

The new responsibilities of each of the concerned Ministries, MINAG and CITMA, relating to the wildlife, as well as the Environment Policy of the Nation (through the adoption of Act N° 81 of 1997 about the Environment and Act N° 85, Forestry Act of 1998, based over modern conceptions of Sustainable Development) have since been defined. These have led to the redaction of a project of Decree regulating the hunting activities in Cuba. This project is now in a process of extended debate, as a step towards its final approbation. This new Decree will allow the strengthening and reorganization of hunting activities in conformity with the economic and environmental situation of the country.

The Hunting Decree includes eight chapters and 53 articles that cover the general principles of the activity, the definition of the terms used in the text, the different types, methods and modalities of hunting, the declaration of the sites and areas where hunting is allowed, the permit licenses needed for the practise of hunting, the calendars describing the days and hunting hours.

The decree also establishes the definition of all violations of the law related to hunting and proposes 15 levels of penalties in accordance with the dispositions of the Decree, including personal fines, the confiscation of any products obtained illegally, as well as the weapons used and the cancellation of the permits in the cases when such punishments are necessary.

The authorities responsible for the application of the Decree are the National Forest Service, the National Office for Agricultural Inspection from the Ministry of Agriculture, the Corps of Forest Rangers and the National Revolutionary Policy that depends of the Ministry of Interior.

Today we are working with the fundamental objective of practising hunting in a sustainable manner while respecting all the agreements signed by the country regarding the protection of the environment.

Watershed protection

In 1997, a Decree of the Council of Ministers created the National Council of Watershed Protection, which is led by the Ministry of Science, Technology and the Environment (CITMA). The Council also includes other national institutions. It has identified eight watersheds of national importance because of either their economic importance, social importance or because of the status of the natural resources in these watersheds. These eight are: Toa, Guaso-Guantánamo, Cauto, Hanabanilla, Almendares, Ariguanabo, Cuyaguateje and Zaza.

In every one of the 14 provinces and the special Municipality of the Island of the Youth, Provincial Councils for Watershed Protection have been created. These Regional Councils have prioritized, at the regional level, the study and the evaluation of the various other watersheds in their areas of action, (at least one for every province).

From the legal side, the problem of the Management and Protection of the Watersheds has also been addressed in different laws such as Act N° 81 about the Environment (1997), Act N° 85, Forestry Act and its Rulings (1998 and 1999) and the Decrees regulating Surface Waters and Soil (both of these dating from 1993).

There is also a programme of reforestation of the protected areas along the rivers, torrents and of dams (big and small). On average, every year, 7-8 thousand hectares of protected watersheds have been created as well as a much bigger area of new forest plantations with the purpose of protecting soil and water.

Recycling of fibres is not done in Cuba.

POLICIES, LEGISLATION AND FORESTRY INSTITUTIONS

Laws and policies relating to forest management

Recently, the three legal acts covering forestry activities in Cuba were approved. These are: Law N° 85, "Forestry Act"; Resolution No. 330-99, "Regulations of the Forestry Act"; and Decree N° 268 of the Executive Committee of the Council of Ministers, "Violations of the Forestry Regulations". These three legal instruments constitute the basic forestry legislation of the Republic of Cuba in order to ensure the conservation and the development of its forestry estate using the most modern concepts of sustainability. They are also the legal support indispensable for the execution of the national programme for forestry development.

All projects of Forestry Management in Cuba are covered by the three legal texts mentioned earlier.

In the fifth Chapter of the Forestry Act, First Section, it is established that the projects of Forestry Management constitute the base of the sustainable forestry development as well as the planning, organization and control of all managing activities to be realized in areas that are part of the forestry estate. The projects are approved by the Minister of Agriculture in consultation, when needed, with the competent organizations and institutions and then become mandatory.

The First Section of the Regulations of the Forestry Act informs that the preparation of the Projects of Forestry Management must follow the Methodology for the execution of the Forestry Estate Planning of the Republic of Cuba, as approved by the National Forestry Directorate. It also specifies that the projects must cover a period of ten years, although, in some cases these can be authorized for a shorter period. Once a project is completed, a new one will be elaborated, in which will include the changes observed in the National Forestry Estate, the results of the economic activity, the different activities realized as well as the new proposals of forestry activity in the country.

In this same section, the responsibilities of the various administrators and managers of the forestry estate are established. They are in charge of preparing the Projects of Forestry Management and must ensure the execution of these Projects once approved.

The Projects of Forestry Management are approved through a resolution taken by the Ministry of Agriculture upon a proposal of the National Forestry Directorate. The Directorate will have previously received the results of the previous evaluation done by the Provincial Forestry Estate Service. The Directorate is responsible for registering every one of the ministerial resolutions that approve these Projects and then becomes responsible for managing these Projects once they are approved.

Also, for smaller areas of the Forestry Estate, where forestry activities do not constitute the primary economic activities of the administrators and managers, smaller Plans for Forestry Management are established, rather than Projects of Forestry Management. The smaller Plans are prepared following the same methodology approved by the National Forestry Directorate, as do the bigger Projects.

The administrators and managers of the forested areas are responsible for the actualization, every year, of the approved Projects of Forestry Management or the Plans for Forestry Management, including in these documents relevant information about activities done during the period covered by these Projects or Plans.

Failure to respect the dispositions of the Forestry Act or its Regulations is considered a violation, sanctioned by Article No. 4, Chapter II of the Decree No. 268 of the Executive Committee of the Council of Ministers.

Investments in silviculture and other forestry products

Since the end of 1996, a Resolution of the Ministry of Finance and Prices established the funding of silviculture This Resolution decrees that the total cost of funding plus 30% of the real value for long-term plantations, either for production forestry or projection forestry may be provided for all the economic systems, no matter the type of land-ownership.. The goal is to ensure a yield of at least 80% or more for people or institutions investing in forestry. The Ministry of Finances and Prices also encourages self-reliance through loans for forestry plantations of short cycle (up to seven years) with 4% interest for the private sectors and 6% interest for the state enterprises. These loans will be paid at the time of commercialization and no taxes will be applied to them.

The state will finance all the costs and the activities related to protection forestry, silviculture treatments or the regeneration of degraded forests. If some economic benefit is derived from the management of these protection forests, no tax will be applied to these revenues. On the other hand, the state has financed and will keep financing the Programme for Forestry Research as a primary objective of the national forestry development.

The annual portion of the national budget of the state for forestry activities is 30 million pesos and 15 million more pesos are supplied to the forestry sector through bank loans for new forest plantations every year on average.

This budget is distributed at the provincial level and inside the provinces to enterprises, cooperatives and even private individuals or farms according to the Projects of Forestry Management and the activities that are scheduled based on evaluations, which are presented by these entities and approved by the National Forestry Service.

Capacity building

The forestry sector is part of the Ministry of Agriculture and has both regulating structures and investment structures. The Ministry of Interior (MININT) also includes a structure related to forestry activities, the Corps of Forest Rangers (CGB). In the Ministry of Education (MINED) and the Ministry of Higher Education (MES) also exist institutions that supply forestry training at intermediate and higher levels.

The structure of the forestry sector is as follows:

_ The National Forestry Directorate that functions as the representative of the state and develops its activities in order to execute the activities mandated by the Forestry Act. It controls the State Forestry Services in every one of the 14 provinces and 169 municipalities of the country.

_ Recently an investment group called Agro-Industrial Forestry Group of Cuba was created that includes the 31 state-owned companies that realize production activities whether in the field of silviculture or the fields of processing and supplying wood and other forestry products. Inside of this group exists an entity called the Group of Forestry Managing, responsible for conducting inventories, executing evaluations and projects all over the Cuban territory. Right now, however, the Group of Forestry Managing is suffering from a lack of equipment and resources that has prevented it from correctly executing its activities, and these have suffered, specially over the last ten years.

_ The Institute of Forestry Research, which has been conducting forestry research for 30 years already.

_ Other scientific institutions from the Ministry of Science, Technology and Environment and the Ministry of Higher Education also conduct research on forestry-related fields.

_ The National Institute for the Protection of the Flora and the Fauna includes 24 units that manage the system of protected areas that extend over 635 000 hectares

_ The Corps of the Forest Rangers whose specific functions are to apply the law, prosecute violations of the law as well as doing prevention and control of forest fires.

_ Teaching and training in forestry science are executed by the Western Polytechnic Institute and the Forestry Faculty of the University of Pinar del Río, The Polytechnic Institute is responsible for training middle-level technicians while the Forestry Faculty is responsible for training university graduates and degree holding professionals.

_ There also exist three University Faculties for Mountain Agriculture that also train professional and other scientific people with an interest in forestry management.

_ The Consultative Council for a Sustainable Forestry Development whose mandate is to act as a consultative organization and provide evaluations and assessment of the forestry sector.

_ The Reforestation Commissions created at the provincial and municipal levels and functioning under the authority of the National Commission for the Turquino-Manatí Plan. They are responsible, among other things, for executing the activities of the National Reforestation Programme in every area.

The Programme for the Integral Development of the Mountain areas, Turquino-Manatí Plan, is active in the four mountain ranges of Cuba. It also covers the wetlands known as Ciénaga de Zapata. These areas represent approximately 20% of the national territory. The Programme for the Integral Development of the Mountain areas, Turquino-Manatí Plan, also participate in the development of management techniques for production forests, as well as the development of protection and conservation forests in the mountain areas.

The State Forest Service (SFS) is the entity that executes the activities for the control and tax collection in the different production activities, which are conducted in the Cuban Forestry Estate. It was organized at the central level, (National Forestry Directorate), provincial and municipal levels in 1997 and is executing, among other activities, one of the recommendations adopted in the Rio de Janeiro Summit in 1992.

However, this new organization was created at a moment when Cuba was undergoing an extremely difficult economic situation that is still not completely over. Because of that, the SFS would have been severely affected, if not for the support of the project CUB/97/G81.

The SFS has helped to equip 80 municipalities of the existing 169 in Cuba with motorcycles and has helped all the provinces and 15 more municipalities to benefit from modern computing equipment.

At the central level the Forestry Directorate has been strengthened with the acquisition of three automobiles, various computing equipment as well as training material and other equipment.

On the technical part, the SFS has made possible the following, among others:

_ a computerized system for managing statistical information related to the forestry has been designed and is now ready to operate;

_ nine training sessions have been conducted in Cuba (three of them were led by foreign specialists under contract of the SFS). During the course of the training, more than 1 500 specialists and civil servants of every level of the SFS were trained;

_ more than 50 Cuban forestry specialists were trained in foreign countries.

Biodiversity and sustainable eco-systems

Cuba possesses an extensive network of Protected Areas that include various types of forests and also include non-forested areas such as lagoons, swamps, as well as the habitat zones of various endemic wildlife species either from the vegetal and the animal kingdom where Cuban biological diversity is preserved.

The investigations related to the management of the natural forests and realized by the Institute for Forestry Research have a direct impact over biological diversity. The following topics have been studied:

_ floral composition;

_ annual increases per species;

_ changes in availability;

_ posterior reforestation.

The country harvests the highest production of precious wood or high-quality woods from these natural forests. Inadequate management in the past resulted in that 112 forestry species were declared under various levels of danger over the past ten years and 35 of these were palm trees.

The Cuban mangroves have not been sufficiently studied in terms of adequate management and have shown serious levels of damage in the northern coast as well as the southern coast of the main island of Cuba. As of now, the causes of these damages have not been identified, and this creates problems for the associated fauna.

As for new tree plantations, the most beneficiary impact is felt on the employment level, especially during the nursery stage and the period of application of chemical products like fertilizers, pesticides and herbicides.

The Institute for Forestry Research also studies areas of extreme ecological conditions in Cuba such as the degraded drywood forest, the areas which have been damaged following open mining operations, the swamps and the semi-arid area called Guantánamo - Maisí. A negative impact of this degradation is the partial or total substitution of the native forest by other species recommended by the local technicians. In other cases, the necessity of using foreign introduced species because of their demonstrated superiority and adaptive qualities (needed for surviving in these difficult ecological conditions) can also result in the loss of the autochthon genetic resources.

Taxation structure

The Ministry of Finance and Prices through Resolution 50/96 has established the taxation structure for the utilisation or exploitation of forestry resources whether natural or artificial as well as the use of wildlife. From this Resolution are derived regulations concerning the utilisation, the exploitation of forestry resources, whether natural or artificial, wildlife use, the harvesting, marketing of wood and non-wood products such as resins, small cuttings, seeds, foliage, vines, thatches as well as the utilisation of specific areas for hunting and ecotourism purposes as long as these are lucrative.

The tax base to which the Resolution refers differs according to the product: it may be the quantity of cubic metres of wood per species or the metric tonnes, kilograms, thousands of posts, linear metres or the estimated production of non-wood products as well as the number of hectares used or under exploitation.

In the case of the natural forests, a 10% tax increase is applied to species harvested there, as opposed to species harvested on plantation forests.

In the case of areas used for hunting and ecotourism, the specific tax rate corresponding to the activity that generate the most revenues will be applied.

The State Forestry Service is also responsible for delivering authorizations for each and every activity that is subject to taxation. It will send to the local offices of the Tax Administration corresponding to the legal residence of the taxpayer all relevant taxation documents.

However, the Ministry of Agriculture, in order to stimulate a sustainable forestry development, and based upon established policies and dispositions may propose to the Ministry of Finance and Prices:

_ the reduction or exemption of tariffs to the importation of technologies, equipment, their parts, which are necessary to the forestry development in Cuba;

_ the reduction or exemption of taxes for forestry products harvested on plantations;

_ granting financial incentives to persons or to individual organizations that are actually planting or managing forests;

_ granting exceptional tax exemptions or other financial benefits to enterprises, cooperatives, small landowners, and other users of lands or communities in order to stimulate new forest plantations forestation and reforestation activities.

THE OUTLOOK FOR THE FORESTRY SECTOR

The Forestry Development Programme is a prognostic of forest production with, basically, an economic aspect even though, in Cuba, the forests play a highly important function of protection, mainly in all the watersheds of the mountainous and coast areas. This protection function should be preserved and even increased.

This Programme is based on an estimation of the current consumption of forestry products as well as on short and long-term needs with an expected rate of increase of 6% every year in the consumption of forestry products. This is also the same rate of increase that is estimated for the whole Cuban economy. In the case of forestry products of immediate use, a stabilization of consumption is expected thanks to a higher efficiency in the use of forestry products.

The Programme has been conceived so that the national needs are covered while some excess productions are generated that can be sold over the international market in order to generate the needed foreign exchange to support the development and the investments required by the whole forestry sector.

This Programme has been prepared according to the principles of sustainable development adopted at the Rio de Janeiro Summit in 1992 as well as the declarations of the President, Commander Fidel Castro to this forum.

CHANGES IN THE FORESTED AREA AND THE FOREST COVER

The Development Programme requires 404.8 Mha of plantations and 355.5 Mha of natural forests. The Development Programme intends to use 50% of the natural pine forest and 25% of the natural hardwood forest because at the present moment we do not dispose of an actualized forestry inventory and so the evaluations have been made with a large margin of error.

With this Programme, as well as the protection forest programme, the area under forestry cover of Cuba will reach 27% by 2015.