Listed below are excerpts from a captivating opinion piece by The Guardian columnist George Monbiot, “Costa Rica restored its ravaged land to well being. The wealthy UK has no excuse for such full failure.” Inserting Costa Rica’s success story center-stage, he additionally refers back to the 2023 documentary Paved Paradise, directed byKarsten de Vreugd. Learn full article at The Guardian.
One of many world’s biggest environmental heroes doesn’t actually have a Wikipedia web page. Although he has completed extra to guard the residing planet than nearly anybody alive, his title is scarcely recognized. It’s partly as a result of he’s quiet and self-effacing and partly due to a normal ignorance about Central America that so few of us have heard of Alvaro Umaña.
This is perhaps about to vary. He stars in a captivating movie, now launched within the Netherlands and negotiating international gross sales, known as Paved Paradise (disclosure: I used to be additionally interviewed). It’s the primary feature-length documentary I’ve watched that engages intelligently with essentially the most essential environmental subject: land use. Against this with well-liked however misguided movies comparable to Kiss the Floor or The Greatest Little Farm, it recognises that sprawling extractive land makes use of are a deadly risk to the residing world. It makes the case that, until we depend the hectares and resolve collectively how greatest they need to be used, we are going to lose the battle to defend the liveable planet.
Paved Paradise tells the story of essentially the most outstanding ecological turnaround on Earth: the transformation of Costa Rica. From 1986 to 1990, Umaña was atmosphere minister in Óscar Arias’s authorities. Arias acquired the Nobel peace prize for his regional diplomacy. However the equally astonishing environmental shift Umaña catalysed is much less well-known.
Till the Arias authorities took energy, Costa Rica suffered one of many world’s worst deforestation charges: on one scientific evaluation, its forest cowl fell to simply 24.4% of the nation. At the moment, forests occupy 57%, which, Umaña tells me, is near the utmost: some components had been by no means forested, whereas others at the moment are occupied by productive farms and cities. Whereas a small quantity of unlawful timber felling continues, Costa Rica is the one tropical nation to have roughly stopped after which reversed deforestation. It now has one of many world’s highest percentages of protected areas. How did it occur?
Till the Arias authorities took energy, Costa Rica suffered one of many world’s worst deforestation charges: on one scientific evaluation, its forest cowl fell to simply 24.4% of the nation. At the moment, forests occupy 57%, which, Umaña tells me, is near the utmost: some components had been by no means forested, whereas others at the moment are occupied by productive farms and cities. Whereas a small quantity of unlawful timber felling continues, Costa Rica is the one tropical nation to have roughly stopped after which reversed deforestation. It now has one of many world’s highest percentages of protected areas. How did it occur?
Needing more cash, in 1988 Umaña agreed a debt-for-nature swap with the Dutch authorities. It will cancel a part of the overseas debt if the cash Costa Rica would in any other case have spent on servicing it had been used as a substitute for forest conservation. Following a change of presidency, Umaña turned the nation’s local weather ambassador. He helped introduce a particular tax of three.5% on fossil fuels to assist pay for forest conservation.
Quickly the tree protectors started to complement their revenue. Vacationers at the moment are the nation’s second-biggest income: authorities figures present that 65% of them checklist ecotourism as a principal motive for visiting. They arrive to see toucans, inexperienced macaws, howler monkeys, jaguars, caimans, poison dart frogs and different resurgent pure wonders. Landholders may also apply for a licence selectively to fell a small variety of their timber, a few of that are very helpful.
One motive for the programme’s success is its sharing of economic advantages, particularly by its world-leading gender motion plan. One other is cultural change. In constructing a brand new identification round “la pura vida” (the straightforward life), the federal government confirmed that, together with financial incentives, nationwide pleasure will help convey long-established practices comparable to forest clearance for cattle ranching to an finish.
Costa Rica helped to encourage the Bonn Problem, a world programme to revive degraded and deforested land. It launched the worldwide plan to guard 30% of the planet by 2030, and was one of many two founder members, in 2021, of the Past Oil and Fuel Alliance (although it has since stood again, following a change of presidency). These are astonishing achievements for a tiny nation. [. . .]
For full article and extra photographs, see https://www.theguardian.com/commentisfree/2023/apr/21/costa-rica-uk-land
[A tree nursery – part of the work of reforestation – in the Monteverde cloud forest in Costa Rica. Photograph: Christian Sinibaldi/The Guardian.]