ENVIRONMENT-CARIBBEAN:
Beaches and Marine Life in Danger
Dalia Acosta* - Tierramérica

HAVANA, (IPS) - 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 the consequences of human activity.

Geographer José Luis Juanes Marti, of the Cuban Institute of Oceanology, has called for "urgency and rigour" in halting the environmental deterioration of Caribbean beaches.

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 metre up to nine metres 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 is penetrating 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 countries around the world have legislation that establishes 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 metres from the point of maximum penetration by the sea, but in others it might be just 10 metres.

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 metres 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 rigour: 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 programme.

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 metres 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 metres 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 being 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 programmes 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. Originally published July 29 by Latin American newspapers that are part of the Tierramérica network. Tierramérica is a specialised news service produced by IPS with the backing of the United Nations Development Programme and the United Nations Environment Programme.)