HAVANA, Cuba, Jun 9 (ACN) A European Union expert in training on actions to tackle climate change pondered in this city what Cuba does to this end and for the benefit of the most vulnerable populations.
The project on the resilience to meteorological drought events was successful, according to Nicolas Lois (France), Coordinator of the Regional Office for Latin America and the Caribbean of the Directorate-General for European Civil Protection and Humanitarian
Aid Operations (DG ECHO) and member of a delegation of professionals from the DG-ECHO and the European Union’s Emergency Response Coordination Center
Lois referred to the implementation of this program in areas of southeastern Cuba seriously affected by water shortages in recent years and its contribution to mitigate their effects. He has stressed the need to improve the coordination of training in rescue techniques and technologies and to assess the impact of good practices of civil protection in Europe and Cuba, particularly in urban areas.
In this respect, Lois mentioned a new project of Urban Resilience to extreme phenomena in Havana with the support of UNDP and the World Food Program (WFP) that includes training in the said techniques and technologies, as well as in civil protection, risk management in disaster situations and surveillance of hydrometeorological events.
Every year since 1986, the Cuban Civil Defense authority has organized the popular exercise Meteoro for risk-reducing purposes in cases of tropical cyclones and other hazards of natural, technological and sanitary origin.
