Costa Rica Creates Vice-Ministry of Water and Seas

Protecting marine resources and punishing shark finning, are part of the tasks of the new Viceministerio de Agua y Mares, which will form part of the Ministerio de Ambiente Energía y Telecomunicaciones (MINAET) - Ministry of Environment, Energy and Telecommunications.
 

The new appointment was made on Thursday at Casa Presidencial by MINAET minister, Rene Castro.

The new vice-ministry will be headed by José Lino Chaves López, who to date has chaired the Environmental Administrative Tribunal. Chaves will have among his main tasks, the duty to update the country on issues related to rivers, wetlands and seas.

In addition, the new deputy minister says he will pursue the declaration of Nagoya (save endangered species) and increase by 10% marine protected areas.

The vice-ministry will also attempt to create a public registry of the estimated 7.000 illegal wells and a system of real-time monitoring of flow and capacity of major aquifers in the country.

According to the Ministry, this reorganization, arises from the need for the country to meet its marine heritage that exceeds 10 times the size of the land territory, and to this end will now have a centralized resource.

The other change is the renaming of the MINAET to the Ministerio de Ambiente, Energía y Mares (MINAEM), with the viceministerio de Telecomunicaciones del Ministerio de Ambiente y Energía (telecommunications functions) moving to the Ministerio de Ciencia y Tecnología (MCT) in the next six months.