Costa Rican authorities plan to present their shining example to the world during next weeks World Summit on Climate Change to be held in Copenhagen.  An example of how to achieve economic development along with protecting the environment.  However, such plans may fly in the face of a recent report that Costa Rica is not developing all that sustainable after all.  This according to the country’s own internally developed report entitled Estado de la Nación that was the subject of a recent post in the blog, Strictly Business Costa Rica.  Nevertheless Costa Rica can present some action to back up all the talk, which is more than can be said for many who will be attending, like the U.S. and China for example.  What has Costa Rica done to put some walk into the talk?  Well the creation of multiple areas of environmentally protected territory, which has elevated Costa Rica’s status as a world-class eco-tourism destination.  The Payment for Environmental Services (or PSA) program is another specific measure Costa Rica has taken in which landowners are paid to re-forest instead of de-forest.  A means by which the country has “protected” another 11% of of national territory that is privately owned, or some 626,498 hectares covered by 85 million trees.  All this makes Costa Rica one of the few tropical countries that have been able to reverse the trend of deforestation to the extent that now some 48% of the entire country is covered with forests.  Since 1997 the coverage of territory by forest growth has been increasing at a rate of 0.66% per year.  Finally, the committee that will present at the summit can boast that in Costa Rica 76% of electrical energy is produced with renewable sources (water, wind and geothermal), making the country much less dependent on oil than most others.  Costa Rica has expressed a future commitment to world climate change by vowing to be “carbon neutral” by the year 2021, the so-called program of Paz con la Naturaleza (Peace with Nature). With all that said, I guess Costa Rica does have room to talk.  The President of the Republic, Oscar Arias, is schedule to do just on the 16th of December, the day prior to the summit’s closing.

Link to Article in La Nación