Socio-hydrological analysis of the province of Havana, Cuba

Abstract

The main objective of this paper is to analyze the relationship that currently exists between the available water resources and the needs of man, understood as a social being, in the province of Havana. A very peculiar relationship due to the characteristics of both components, which currently presents a conflicting socio-hydrological sign in terms of water supply. A very unfavorable scenario of water resources due to Havana's own hydrological conditions, and a capital city of more than 2.2 million inhabitants in an area of ​​just 728 km2, with a demand for water well above its hydrological possibilities and with a rate of socioeconomic development of great intensity. The methodology used combines, on the one hand, the quantitative variables of the water resource, and on the other, the qualitative socioeconomic characteristics of the capital's population, where in the first case to be able to establish the supply-demand balance of water, and in the second case, the socio-hydrological conflict that generates the scarcity of the resource in the face of a growing demand and that has become hydro-dependent on the water resources of the provinces of Artemisa and Mayabeque. The work concludes with the reaffirmation that the socio-hydrological conflict created for many years is endemic, and that only the intelligence of the capital inhabitants and Cubans in general can make it possible to coexist with the natural limitations of the water resource.