It was presented on Monday during the inaugural session of the 8th International Convention on Environment and Development gathering representatives of 30 nations at Havana´s Convention Center.

The convention was approved in 1994 in Paris and went into effect two years later after being ratified for the 50th time. For Latin America and the Caribbean it is of upmost importance due to the deforestation threatening the Amazon.

The situation is alarming if you take into account that the jungle alone in that region occupies half of the biological diversity of the planet, according to statistics of the UN Environment Program.

The Director of the Regional Office for Latin America and the Caribbean Ricardo Sanchez Sosa recently confirmed in Mexico City of the existence of an intense deforestation process in the region.

In 2003 alone, 2.5 million hectares were lost in the Amazon. In Mexico, over 700 000 hectares of forests are lost each year; Central America has the largest deforestation rate in the world; and the Andean nations lose 300 000 hectares of forests each year, he said.

The Andean countries produces 4.3 per cent of the total global emissions of carbon dioxide by industrial process but its responsible for 48.3 percent of the expulsions into the atmosphere caused by the change in the use of the soil in the transformation of the forests for agriculture.

However, Sanchez Sosa recognized that forests only grew in Uruguay, Costa Rica and Cuba, “three small countries with important environmental programs; but in the rest the tendency to decrease its forest surface continues”.

It has been demonstrated that environmental contamination increases due to the effects of the financial, food, social and environmental crisis and military aggressions, promoted by the world economic model that damage nature, said Gisela Alonso Dominguez, president of the Cuban Environmental Agency.

However, the Cuban environment began to overcome the irrational use of its resources before 1959, to the adequate use by graduating thousands of scientists and engineers in response to economic and social development plans.

Currently there are over a forth of the national territory covered with forests and its priority is aimed at studying the dangers, vulnerability and risks facing extreme natural events, improving its early alert system and renewable energy sources.

Researchers are centering their attention on the integral management of water and soils, conservation of the biodiversity, including river basins, coastal and mountainous regions, reusing agricultural and industrial residues and projects of technological innovation for the reduction of contamination.