Government To Launch Carbon-Neutral Tourism

By Leland Baxter-Neal

Airlines, Car Rentals, Hotels, Tour Operators All Go Green

As part of its high-profile efforts to reduce global climate change, the national government will announce a new program later this month to bring “carbon neutrality” to the tourism sector.

The program, which is already in effect, allows businesses, citizens and tourists to offset the greenhouse-gas emissions they produce by conserving or reforesting Costa Rican forests.

Airlines, car rental companies, hotels and tour operators are among the different businesses in the tourism sector already involved with the program, called Clean Trip, and reflect a growing international trend toward “green,” carbon-neutral tourism.

“There are estimates that an airbus that uses 7000 gallons of fuel generates 70 metric tons of carbon dioxide that goes into the atmosphere,” said Alberto García, of the Fondo Nacional De Financimiento Forestal, (National Fund for Forest Financing, or FONAFIFO).

“Of the 1.675 million tourists that arrived here last year, we know that 1.380 million come by plane.”

Later this month, FONAFIFO is planning to officially launch Clean Trip, the tourism-oriented flank of its Payment for Environmental Services program, where a percentage tax from gasoline sales is used to pay private individuals and businesses to protect existing forests or to plant new ones on the land they own.

Under Clean Trip, FONAFIFO is now setting its sights largely on foreign tourists coming to Costa Rica, whose numbers are expected to exceed last year’s record 1.6 million.

“Through Clean Trip, if I come from the United States or Canada or whatever part of the world, I can compensate my emissions,” Mr García said.

Greenhouse gasses – particularly carbon dioxide – are released when fossil fuels, such as oil or gasoline, are burned. Those gasses get trapped in the atmosphere and keep heat from escaping the planet, therefore increasing global temperatures. Forests, however, act like large filters, capturing and storing carbon dioxide.

As part of the Clean Trip program, FONAFIFO calculates the amount of greenhouse gasses released during a tourist’s air flight to Costa Rica, and the tourist then makes a corresponding donation to conserve or reforest a chunk of rainforest large enough to counteract the emissions.

The logic follows an international system of carbon trading developed under the anti-global warming Kyoto Protocol, and has been heralded by President Oscar Arias in his Peace with Nature environmental plan, which looks to position Costa Rica as the first carbon-neutral nation by 2021.

© Zoraida Diaz

BOLT FROM ABOVE: A bolt of lightning lights up the sea off Playa Penca during a fierce electrical storm in Guanacaste this week. A golfer was killed by lightning in Santa Ana, south-west of San Jose Saturday, making the death toll four in eight weeks.

According to a special calculator on FONAFIFO’s Web site, www.fonafifo.com, a trip from the western United States, for example, produces two tons of carbon dioxide and can be countered with a $10 donation. A trip from the United Kingdom produces five metric tons, countered by a $25 donation, while an Australian would need to pay $45 for his or her nine metric tons of carbon dioxide.

While the site is up and operating in Spanish, an English version with a system to allow payments by any Mastercard or Visa credit card is expected to be ready some time this month.

But tourists are not the only ones involved in the program. Environment Minister Roberto Dobles and Tourism Minister Carlos Ricardo Benavides are two top officials that are already using the system for every trip they make, Mr García said.

“The tourism minister has given instruction so all officials in different ministries access the pages and make donations when they travel,” Mr García said, pointing to a section of the site where these trips are publicly registered. “So, you can see the importance of this.”

Tourism businesses in Costa Rica have also gotten involved.

Nature Air, a locally founded airline with regular flights in Costa Rica and to Panama, and charters throughout Central America, is considered by many to have led the way toward carbon-neutral tourism in Costa Rica, and claims to be the first airline in the world to be completely carbon neutral.

For every flight made, be it regularly scheduled or charter, FONAFIFO calculates the company’s total emissions with a mathematical equation developed under the Kyoto Protocol, and Nature Air donates an equivalent amount of money for forest protection.

Since the program began in 2004, the airline has donated more than $40,000 to conserve for five years 124 hectares, or 307 acres, of forest in the Osa Peninsula.

“We chose this area and are trying collaborate with the protection of a biological corridor between the Corcovado National Park and the Piedras Blancas National Park,” said Lisette Acosta, Nature Air’s marketing director.

The program has won Nature Air international accolades, as well as customer praise, particularly from Europeans, Ms Acosta said.

“In Europe, airlines give them the option of compensating for their travel when they pay. When they get to Costa Rica and see an airline that is already doing that, without a surcharge, they are very interested,” Ms Acosta added.

© Photo Courtesy

CLEANER CARBON: Nature Air compensates for the greenhouse gases produced by its flights by paying to preserve forests on the Osa Peninsula. For its 2004 operations, the company paid $12,800 to protect 38 hectares (94 acres) of primary forest, pictured above. (Photo Courtesy of Nature Air)

Mapache Rent a Car, with offices across Costa Rica, has followed Nature Air’s lead and claims to be the first carbon-neutral car rental agency in Costa Rica. Following the same program for its car rentals, Mapache paid to reforest 17 hectares, or 42 acres, in the Osa Peninsuala for its total emissions in 2006.

The Rainmaker Conservation Project, a 1500-acre private rainforest preserve located between Parrita and Quépos on the Central Pacific coast, and a beneficiary of FONAFIFO’s program. The project is paid to protect almost half its preserve and also markets itself as a “carbon-neutral” tourism destination.

“All of the visitors that come, all of the pollution set off by our pickup guys, all our fuel in the minibuses, any pollution caused in the kitchen, that is all offset,” said Alessandra Gutiérrez, who founded the project along with her mother Anne Gutiérrez. “They come to Rainmaker and they have kind of a carbon-neutral tour.”

The preserve has a capacity for storing nearly 250,000 tons of carbon dioxide, Ms Gutiérrez said, more than enough to offset the emissions produced by the company’s operations.

Ms Gutiérrez says that marketing Rainmaker as carbon-neutral hasn’t seeked more tourists, nor was it intended to.

“It just brings awareness to the problems we’re having with the environment and it brings awareness to what rainforests actually do,” Ms Gutiérrez said.

Michael Defields, who runs a tour company, E4 Initiatives (www.e4costarica.com) out of Jacó, met last week with FONAFIFO, looking to make his tours carbon neutral.

“We want to include air travel, ground transportation and domestic flights, as well as hotels,” Mr Defields said, adding that the hotel component would be based on the average amount of electricity used per guest, and how much fossil fuel that translates into. “FONAFIFO said they could help calculate all that for us.”

Mr Defields said the carbon offsetting will be one of several options he offers to tourists to make their trips to Costa Rica more sustainable.

“I feel there is a specific group of travelers or tourists that are looking for something that is a little more,” he said. “When they’re taking out the trash, or traveling, they’re looking for ways that they can be individually responsible for their impact.”