Tonight’s diary is following up on Pakalolo’s scary diary regarding the vital importance of fighting deforestation to combat climate change. There, he posted one hopeful tweet about Costa Rica’s reforestation. I followed that link and added more helpful sources.
According to CNN, Pedro Garcia is one of several Costa Rican farmer-environmentalists. Over the past 36 years, he has changed his property over “from bare cattle pasture to a densely forested haven for wildlife, where the scent of vanilla wafts through the air and hummingbirds buzz between tropical fruit trees.”
“Garcia has restored the forest -- home to hundreds of species from sloths to strawberry poison-dart frogs -- while also cultivating agricultural products from pepper vines to organic pineapple.” He then charges for ecotourism to make a better living.
His is one of many farms taking advantage of a Costa Rican government program called PES —“payments for ecosystem services”. The government program has stimulated a mass movement toward conservation. This contrasts dramatically with Costa Rica in the 1970s and 1980s, when it “had one of the highest deforestation rates in Latin America”. About half its rainforest had disappeared since the 1940s. Then chopping down forest was made illegal in 1996 (with few exceptions with government approval) and PES was introduced in 1997. Now more than half of the lost rainforest has been restored and ecotourism is now booming — 3 million visitors per year to a country of 5 million! It now accounts for about 8% of GDP.
