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Caribbean Beaches and Marine Ecosystems in Danger |
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By Dalia Acosta*
Stricter
laws are needed to protect beaches and prevent the degradation process.
There is an imbalance in investment in the tourism industry and
the national programs for sustainable tourism.
HAVANA - Geographer José Luis Juanes Marti,
of the Cuban Institute of Oceanology, has called for "urgency and
rigor" in halting the environmental deterioration of Caribbean beaches.
The image of beach paradise, which for more than two decades has
been the economic mainstay of many Caribbean countries, could disappear
as a result of the increasingly frequent hurricanes and rising sea
levels, but also from the impacts of human activity.
Rocks instead of sand, fallen trees, buildings destroyed, and the
incursion of seawater inland are some of the most visible symptoms
of the erosion that threatens beaches from Mexico to Colombia, as
well as the small islands of the Caribbean basin.
Tierramérica spoke with Juanes, co-author of a regional report on
the erosion processes of the Caribbean's sandy beaches, at the headquarters
of the Institute of Oceanology, in the Cuban capital, where he has
worked since 1979.
TIERRAMÉRICA: The erosion of the Caribbean beaches ranges from
one meter up to nine meters per year. How can that be explained?
JOSÉ LUIS JUANES MARTÍ: The waves attack the beach, suspending the
sand in the water and generating currents that carry it far from
the coast. With moderate wave action, the marine organisms die and
their calcified remains become new sand for the beach.
There is an imbalance between that production and the quantity that
is lost during a storm. We see rocky surfaces now where there has
always been only sand, escarpments on the beaches, fallen trees
and destroyed buildings. The sea penetrates further inland.
- What role does construction on sand dunes play?
- The dunes accumulate sand in one moment, and supply it in another.
If we build in dune areas, we eliminate that part of the beach.
In encountering the sand dunes closer to the sea than they should
be, the waves carry the sand farther away, to a depth from which
it does not return. Construction does not provide or take away the
sand, but it accelerates erosion.
- Can the erosion of a beach have other impacts apart from the
loss of landscape and recreational and economic values?
- Beaches are part of a very diverse coastal system, where everything
interacts. Beach erosion can generate accumulations of sand in underwater
inclines and hurt coral reefs and all of their biological riches.
A great accumulation of sand over a reef will kill it.
- But construction on sandy beaches continues.
- Most of the legislation around the world establish a distance
from the water for construction. The laws don't take into account
the natural processes or the differences between coastlines. In
some countries, it is 100 meters from the point of maximum penetration
by the sea, but in others it might be just 10 meters.
In Cuba, a truly revolutionary law was passed: it establishes rules
for each type of coastline and prohibits construction on any part
of the beach, including the dunes, regardless of how wide they are.
The limit is defined as 40 meters from the dunes.
- Is the problem of special concern to small islands?
- In the continental areas of the Caribbean there are magnificent
beaches. There is Cancún, for example, but Mexico does not rely
only on that tourism. It has other natural resources, like water,
minerals and petroleum. On the small islands, beaches are the main
natural and economic resource, so more attention is needed.
However, that is not what happens. Many countries lack any real
strategy for sustainable tourism. It is evident in the location
of buildings, in the widespread extractions of sand for construction,
and in the insufficient and often inappropriate management plans.
- What is the best way to recover the Caribbean beaches?
- The measures for confronting erosion are not always carried out
with scientific rigor: the usual solutions are copied -- like the
construction of jetties --, which are successful in continental
zones, but not always ideal in our situation. Sometimes the measures
respond to interests of isolated landowners and not to an environmental
program.
Among the most-used alternatives is artificial supply, returning
to the beach in a short time the sand that it lost over years. But
beforehand, studies must be conducted to locate the appropriate
site for extraction, often in the same sandbank that was formed
with the lost sand.
That is what was done in the south of the U.S. state of Florida,
where beaches received around 100 million cubic meters of sand in
the 1970s and 1980s. And also in the Cuban resort of Varadero (east
of Havana), where since 1998 more than one million cubic meters
of sand has been dumped.
- What is the outlook for the Caribbean?
- If the Caribbean beaches are not protected and fall into a process
of degradation -- in contrast to those of the United States, where
they are recuperated and maintained -- we will face a shift in the
flow of tourists who come to our countries, which is mostly from
North America.
Competition is very strong. Tourists come here because we have good
beaches, an excellent climate and first-rate environmental conditions.
But if we don't know how to protect all of this, we lose.
Unfortunately, there is no relation between the magnitude of investment
in tourism and the steps for promoting national programs of coastal
management or development of sustainable tourism. When it comes
to the small islands of the Caribbean that survive based on beach
tourism, we are compromising everything.
* Dalia Acosta is an IPS correspondent.
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