Cuba strengthens links between national and community levels in disaster risk management
The effectiveness of a disaster risk management system depends not only on the quality of its forecasts, but on its ability to turn that information into decisions at every level, all the way down to communities. In Cuba, this chain brings together scientific institutions, Civil Defence, and provincial and municipal governments, and its alignment was one of the aspects most highlighted by Kamal Kishore, Special Representative of the United Nations Secretary-General for Disaster Risk Reduction, at the conclusion of his visit to the country.
This alignment across levels is complemented by sustained coordination across sectors. Civil Defence, meteorological and hydrological services, communications, and urban planning have operated for decades as an integrated system, with clearly defined roles and joint working mechanisms consolidated through practice.
Within this system, multi-hazard early warning is where the Institute of Meteorology, the National Institute of Water Resources, and Civil Defence converge. Its strength depends on scientific information being translated into timely operational decisions, and the drought scenario forecast for the coming months brings that connection to the fore.
"The alignment between the national, provincial, and local levels is one of the main strengths of the Cuban system. Communities know the risks they face and have their own mechanisms to respond to them, and that capacity is the foundation on which further progress can be built," said Kishore.
One of the main challenges, in this regard, is to move from disaster preparedness towards risk reduction across all sectors, so that planning for housing, water, energy, education, and essential services systematically takes risk into account. The country has its own instruments to do so. Tarea Vida (Life Task), the State Plan for Confronting Climate Change approved in 2017, sets out the country's adaptation pathway through 2100 and links it to disaster risk reduction. Cuba has also made progress in areas such as school safety, where it has expressed interest in taking on a leadership role in the Caribbean.
Communities offer a solid starting point for moving in this direction, thanks in large part to the leadership of women. In several flood-prone neighbourhoods of Havana, women play a central role in local organization. They identify people who need support, disseminate warnings, and coordinate the measures planned for each Civil Defence phase.
As part of the United Nations system's cooperation in Cuba, in which UNDRR participates as one of the 23 signatory agencies of the United Nations Sustainable Development Cooperation Framework, several lines of work are moving forward with national institutions. These include collaboration with Copernicus, the European Earth observation programme, a proposal to the Climate Risk and Early Warning Systems (CREWS) initiative to strengthen early warning, and follow-up to the seismic risk workshop held in Havana in January 2026.
"UNDRR's inclusion among the 23 signatory agencies of the Cooperation Framework opens new opportunities for disaster risk management and will certainly help strengthen the work of the United Nations in a small island developing State that is all too often exposed to extreme events and is now facing the impacts of El Niño," said Etienne Labande, United Nations Resident Coordinator a.i. in Cuba and World Food Programme Representative.
Cuba's experience in preparedness, early warning, and community organization also holds regional value. Caribbean small island developing States face similar hazards, and one space to share these lessons will be the Ninth Regional Platform for Disaster Risk Reduction, to be held in Nassau, the Bahamas, in March 2027.