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COSTA RICA |
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Costa Rica's Answers To Fight Climate Change
By Yoav Cerralbo
The tiny country of Costa Rica has giant
plans to help change the world for the
better, but for that to happen, serious
issues need to be looked at closely. Next
month, the world will converge in Copenhagen
for the United Nation Climate Change
Conference and Costa Rica is proposing a
similar carbon capture program to the one
that was originally brought up in Kyoto 12
years ago.
"Costa Rica was the first country to propose
a mechanism to capture CO2 produced in
developed nations through forests and
national parks," said Costa Rican Minister
of Economy, Industry and Commerce Eduardo
Sibaja.
The mechanism proposed was not only to
exchange CO2 emissions for cleaner air
produced by trees in other countries, but
also a way to measure those chemicals versus
clean air either filtered or produced by
mother nature.
"The only countries who understood this plan
were Nordic countries," he told The Korea
Herald.
Basically, the idea is similar to a carbon
trading system.
"This works for Costa Rica because we don't
produce much and it helps the industrialized
countries who produce a lot," Sibaja pointed
out.
While the media is talking about the
already-failed Copenhagen summit, Sibaja
believes there are great opportunities to be
had there.
First of all, 12 years is a long time. When
the Kyoto Protocol was agreed upon, the
challenges of climate change were a distant
problem only examined by science fiction or
doomsday movies.
Today the problem is real.
"I expect the conference will have better
results because now people are scared," he
said. "But I don't think we will find a way
to get everyone on the same boat, but at
least, people are coming to Copenhagen with
a different mood and knowing what is going
on in the environment."
Sibaja mentioned that countries that share
their borders with any of the world's oceans
are worried that they might lose territory
because of the rising sea levels. There is
also the increase of violent storms like
hurricanes.
"It's not only the disasters by themselves
that have increased; the production cycles
of food are changing dramatically with the
change of weather," he said. "This will
affect the way we feed our population. There
might be not enough food in the world."
For Costa Rica, those challenges can become
opportunities, especially in the fast
growing green growth sector.
Another area Costa Rica is hoping to change
the world is by changing the current
classification of countries' incomes.
Sibaja said that middle-income countries
have been "punished" because of this
classification.
"The developed countries put their resources
in Africa to stop hunger and diseases, but
by doing so have punished middle-income
countries like Costa Rica because of our
successes," he said.
"That was not good because we were doing
important things to enhance our capability,"
Sibaja said. "So the rich countries, who are
the ones who produce a lot of CO2, are the
bad guys."
Sibaja is not telling the developed world to
stop helping low-income countries; instead
he would like to see a change in the
parameters used to classify countries.
"Let's take for example the middle-income
countries, if some of them don't have
armies, then that means cooperation will
never go to purchase arms so that would be
one category," he said.
Costa Rica abolished their military 50 years
ago and uses that money towards social
development programs such as education and
health services.
Another classification would be how a
country treats the environment.
"We are not emitting CO2, instead we are
absorbing CO2 for others, so instead of
penalizing us we should have benefits for
that," he said.
Sibaja is looking to change the typical
economic measures to add other parameters
like peace and environmental protection.
Under Sibaja's plan, the middle-income
countries like Costa Rica, Uruguay and
Panama, which has also abolished their army
recently, can receive benefits from
international aid.
The problems in Africa Sibaja said is that
the money given by the developed nations
under programs such as the Millennium Plan
only harm those countries.
"Most of the money that goes to Africa goes
to purchase arms for the internal movements
and people are still starving there," he
said. "This idea is not an easy sell because
the big countries are the ones selling the
arms and arms sales is big business, if you
stop that you are hurting the weapons
industry and they have a strong lobby in
Congress."
As for Korea, both countries have recently
signed an interesting cooperation agreement.
The Costa Rican National Institute for
Biodiversity now receives money from Korea
to help expand their research in exchange
for research conducted by Korean scientists
for the purpose of developing new
pharmaceutical medication and materials.
The Institute uses the jungles and forests
of Costa Rica as a giant lab.
"We are conducting research to find new
drugs for the future, new fuels for the
future and also learning the way the animals
in the forest have survived, so learning
from nature is an opportunity."
Wind energy is also another area where both
countries can work together, he said.
In exchange for Costa Rica's experience in
the wind energy sector, they hope that the
Korean government will support their plans
to change the parameters that classify
countries by income.
"Everybody agrees it's a good idea, but
still no one is working on the details," he
said. |
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