Speech given by Dr. Fidel Castro Ruz, President of the Republic
of Cuba,
at the opening of the High-level Segment of the Sixth Session of the
Conference of the
Parties to the United Nations Convention to Combat Desertification
and Drought.
Havana, Cuba, 1st September 2003.
His Excellency Mr. Hama Arba Diallo, Executive Secretary;
His Excellency Mr. Ibrahim Gambari, United Nations Sub-Secretary General;
Your Excellencies Heads of State and Government, Vice-Presidents,
Presidents of Parliaments and Chiefs of delegations;
Distinguished guests:
Hardly 30 years ago humanity was not in the least
aware of this huge tragedy. Back
then people thought 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 lies
in wait for us. I do not hesitate to use this strong, seemingly melodramatic
language.
The real drama lies in ignoring the kind of risks we have lived with
for so long.
Twenty-five years after the end of the Second World War
nobody capable of
thought, nobody who knew how 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 it 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 flourishing 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.
My point of view is that 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, diseases; the
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 building of public
awareness of which I spoke. 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 success in this field go unquestioned,
can assure you that with
an initial $3 billion investment in a short period of time and $700
million in each of the
following nine years in educational material and equipment, -this includes
one and a
half million solar panels for communities and villages which have no
electricity- it is
possible, in a period of twelve years, to teach 1.5 billion illiterate
and semi-illiterate
people 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 one
year's Gross Domestic Product of the developed countries members of
the OECD.
Teaching these people presupposes gradually setting up
four million teaching
locations with audiovisual equipment of proven efficacy as well as
the cooperation of
an extensive movement of 8 million volunteers with at least a six-grade-level
education.
At the same time, and with the same methods, these could teach and
be progressively
trained as educators of a good professional level.
If the decision were made to encourage those who have no jobs by paying
them a
modest monthly salary while they teach and learn, 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, as they are the most
affected by the
scourge of unemployment. The cost to donor countries would be equally
infinitesimal: if
we estimate the aforementioned salary at $100 a month and a tentative
figure of 6
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 spends, 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, using medium or short wave radios, which cost no more than $15
and are
powered by small photovoltaic cells attached to them. A primer
would go with the
radio.
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
happily do the
same for any other country that would request 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 for the Cuban
state.
If the rich 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 for a few
isolated cases- it would be possible in ten years to use solar panels
to supply 30
kilowatts of electricity a month to 250 million families in the Third
World. This would
mean that about 1.5 billion more people, the poorest segment 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 camp, when our country
blockaded for more than
four decades found itself obliged to deal with a highly difficult situation,
it began to
produce and it continues to do so, on sites available in the cities,
more than 3 million
tons of vegetables a year. This is done in hydroponics using straw
and agricultural
waste as organic matter, and dripping 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 amount of knowledge usually
provided and there
will be one teacher for every 15 students.
I beg you to forgive me for citing examples showing that,
in spite of huge obstacles,
it is still possible to do a great deal to ensure that the environment
is preserved and
that humanity survives.
However, all that I have said so far is incompatible with
the atrocious economic
system imposed on the world, the ruthless neoliberal globalization,
the demands and
conditions to which the IMF sacrifices health, education and social
security for billions
of people. It is incompatible with the cruel way in which, through
uncontrolled buying
and selling of hard currency between strong currencies and the weak
currencies of the
Third World, enormous 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 unrestricted
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 on
intellectual property
and the abusive and disproportionate consumption of the planet's natural
and energy
resources.
The list of injustices would be endless. The gap is growing
wider and looting is
getting worse.
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 unproven
fossil fuel reserves and in a mere 150 years will have used what it
took the planet 300
million years to create.
There is not even a clear and coherent idea about what
energy will power the billions
of motorized vehicles, which inundate the cities and highways of rich
countries and
even 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.
Such an economic order and such 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 combat without losing heart, without
wavering, profoundly
convinced that if human society has made colossal mistakes and even
if it is still
making them, human beings are capable of conceiving the noblest of
ideas, of holding
the most generous feelings and, convinced that by overcoming the powerful
instincts
with which nature has imbued them, they can give their lives for what
they feel and
believe in. This has been proven often times throughout history.
Let us cultivate these exceptional qualities and there
will be no insurmountable
obstacles and nothing that cannot be changed!
Thank you, very much. (Ovation)
New York, September 2, 2003
~~~~
To read the Proclamation of an Adversary of the US Government, May 14,
2004
https://www.goodworksonearth.org/fidel_castro_ruz_havana_cuba_20040514.html
To see the Name Art of Fidel Castro, and to see the
doctor's speech in Argentina on May 26, 2003 - Press the link :
https://www.goodworksonearth.org/fidelcastro.html
To see the Name Art of GEORGE WALKER BUSH
https://www.goodworksonearth.org/georgewalkerbush.html
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You can read see further sharings of Dr. Ruz at :
https://www.goodworksonearth.org/fidel-castro-ruz-santa-clara-cuba-20040726.html
^ See Mr. Bush from the eyes and words of American
doctors. ^
https://www.goodworksonearth.org/fidel_castro_ruz_havana_cuba_20040621.html
https://www.goodworksonearth.org/fidel_castro_ruz_havana_cuba_20040514.html
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