Havana, Feb 8 (ACN) The number of identified protected areas or enlisted Cuban zones rises to 211, including those on the insular marine platform up to 200 meters deep.
In general, there are 119 officially approved by agreements of the Executive Committee of the Council of Ministers, exclusively informed the Cuban News Agency Omar Cantillo Ferreiro, Master in science and innovation management and Nuclear Engineer and director of the National Center for Areas Protected (CNAP).
He confirmed that they represent more than 20% of the total area of the national territory and attributed their preservation to the existence and operation of the National System of Protected Areas (SNAP), which dates from 1976, and that “is coherently articulated to the main Plans and Programs of economic and social development of the country ”.
He explained that it is made up of a National Coordinating Board, which presides over the Ministry of Science, Technology and Environment, with the participation of the Ministries of Agriculture, the Interior and the Revolutionary Armed Forces, as well as the Food Industry, the Institute of Physical Planning and provincial representations of its board.
In addition, a group of universities and Science, Technology and Innovation entities, which consolidate the results of scientific research with stable funding from the State and an important contribution from international organizations and organizations, he added.
From the international point of view, he said, the effectiveness of Cuba in the management of Protected Areas is recognized, which is evidenced in the following distinctions:
Two Natural World Heritage Sites, the Desembarco del Granma and Alejandro de Humboldt national parks. The Sierra del Rosario (Artemisa) constituted in 1985 the first Biosphere Reserve (BR) of the Island, followed by the Guanahacabibes Peninsula (Pinar del Río; Cuchillas del Toa (Guantánamo-Holguín); Baconao (Santiago de Cuba); Buenavista (Villa Clara, Sancti Spíritus and Ciego de Ávila); and Ciénaga de Zapata (Matanzas).
By UNESCO’s Man and the Biosphere program BRs are distinguished as demonstrative sites of the planet’s biodiversity and that can be inhabited in a sustainable way.
There are six Ramsar Sites nationally, an international convention related to wetlands and in particular waterfowl habitats.
This category is owned by Buenavista, also a Biosphere Reserve, in the north of the province of Sancti Spiritus; Ciénaga de Zapata, Biosphere Reserve and largest wetland in the insular Caribbean in the south of the province of Matanzas; South of the Isle of Youth; Río Máximo, in the north of the province of Camagüey, Humedales del Norte de Ciego de Ávila; and Delta del Cauto in the Granma province.
The Ramsar Convention was signed in the Iranian city of its own name on February 2, 1971, it entered into force four years later and Cuba became a State party to it since 2001, as it is the only of the modern conventions on the environment that focuses on a specific ecosystem.
Although at first this was its essential objective, today it recognizes its importance in the global conservation and sustainable use of biodiversity, with functions in regulating the continental phase of the hydrological cycle.
More than 60 Protected Areas are part of the 11 Watersheds of National Interest, and spatially, in 13 of the 15 areas prioritized by the State Plan to confront Climate Change (Life Task) are located 53 of the 211 Areas identified, he said. the director of CNAP, one of the institutions of the Environment Agency.
Source: CAN
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