France to Help Cuba Expand Air Monitoring Capacity

Earlier this month, the governments of Cuba and France arrived at a momentous agreement to expand the former country’s abilities to monitor the quality of air around the island.

Coming off the back of the COP21 climate change talks in Paris, representatives of the Cuban Meteorology Institute of the Ministry of Science, Technology and the Environment met with Environnement S.A., the French construction company that will be responsible for building the monitoring equipment set to bolster Cuba’s ability to keep track of its emissions and its air quality in general.

A Marriage Made in Environmental Heaven

The agreement is beneficial not only to both parties but also spells excellent news for the wider atmosphere as a whole. Cuba’s enhanced abilities to keep tabs on its air pollution will allow it to implement more targeted measures of cutting down emissions, even though it is currently one of the lesser-offending nations in that respect.

The French company have agreed to supply and install all of the relevant apparatus and provide technical support to the Cuban government for the duration of the time that it remains operational in the country. Meanwhile, an objective analysis of the effectiveness of the equipment, and of the possibility of installing further measures around the island state in the future, will be conducted to determine whether the Cuban capacity for air quality measurement can be extended even further.

Celso Pazos, the head of Cuba’s Meteorological Institute, said that the union represented an excellent chance for both countries to show their commitment to curbing climate change. Furthermore, it could also demonstrate how the agreements put in place at the COP21 talks can shape the future of our world from an environmental perspective.

Some sceptics have intimated doubts that while the Paris talks certainly brought global warming to the forefront of international consciousness, too few concrete promises and binding ties were made. Steps like this one between countries such as Cuba and France should go some way to allay such doubts.