In its 2006 Sustainability Index Report, the World Wildlife Fund, utilizing a combination of the United Nations Human Development Index (a measure of how well a nation is meeting its nutrition, water, health care, and education needs, etc.) and the Ecological Footprint (natural resource use per capita) determined that there is only one nation in the world that is currently living sustainably -- and that nation is CUBA.

How did Cuba, a small island nation of 11,000,000 people, struggling with issues of poverty, the U.S. embargo, and devastating annual hurricanes, achieve this extraordinary distinction? And what can environmentalists in the U.S. learn from Cuba's struggles and successes?

Eco Cuba Exchange, a project of Global Exchange's 20 year old Campaign to End the U.S. Embargo of Cuba, promotes environmental interchange with Cuba and explores these questions.

Our goals are two-fold:

• to create a program of mutual benefit for both our peoples, as we work together to avert economic collapse and environmental catastrophe and to create a more ecological and sustainable hemisphere
  
  
• to motivate the large, growing and influential sector of environmentally-conscious U.S. citizens to lobby Congress and the Obama Administration to end the U.S. embargo of Cuba.

The people of Cuba and of the U.S. share an ecosystem through our common bordering of the Caribbean Sea. Environmentally speaking, we share a common hemisphere and a common world. We share as well, with all humans, a common dream of living peacefully and sustainably with each other on this beautiful planet, which is, ultimately, our only home.

Eco Cuba Exchange, partners with CITMA, the Cuban Ministry of Science, Technology and the Environment and other Cuban environmental associations, organizing delegations to Cuba of environmentalists in every field:

• sustainable agriculture
• renewable energy
• natural health care
• biodiversity/ecosystem protection
• environmental education
• grassroots environmental activism

• U.S. attendance at Cuban environmental conferences
• in depth study of Cuba's environmental policies and practices
• ongoing exchange between Cubans and U.S. participants on our delegations
• the production of video, print and internet materials on Cuba's projects in sustainable development and environmental protection
• the invitation of Cuban environmentalists to attend conferences in the U.S.
• ever widening professional and grassroots participation in ongoing efforts to end the U.S embargo of Cuba

After being buffeted for eight years by the whims of the science-phobic, diplomacy-phobic and Cuba-phobic Bush Administration, we are heartened by the vision of President Obama in four key areas that are profoundly congruent with the work of Eco Cuba Exchange, Global Exchange and the policies, practices and vision of Cuban environmentalists. We see these four areas of congruence as:

• diplomacy at governmental, institutional and grassroots levels
• healthy respect for science-based policy
• understanding of the primacy of the environmental crisis we face
• the importance of grassroots participation, as well as professional interchange, in the realization of policies and practices related to the environment and all dimensions of human society

We are living in the Era of Ecology, an era in which the personal, the social, the political, the economic and the environmental are understood to be ONE. The Obama Administration understands that, Cuba understands that and Eco Cuba Exchange understands that.

Now that we may finally be able, due to the (hopefully) imminent relaxation of the Cuba travel restrictions, to proceed with the realization of our mission, we at Eco Cuba Exchange are ready to say, "Can we end the U.S. embargo of Cuba? Yes, we CAN!" And environmentalists will lead the way!

For more information, contact:
Pam Montanaro, Eco Cuba Exchange, Global Exchange 510-649-1052 (home office) pamela@barglow.com (home office email)