Costa Rica restored its ravaged land to health. The rich UK has no excuse for such complete failure
Posted: Tue Apr 25, 2023 9:34 am
https://www.theguardian.com/commentisfr ... ca-uk-land
Worth reading....
Paved Paradise tells the story of the most remarkable ecological turnaround on Earth: the transformation of Costa Rica. From 1986 to 1990, Umaña was environment minister in Óscar Arias’s government. Arias received the Nobel peace prize for his regional diplomacy. But the equally astonishing environmental shift Umaña catalysed is less well known.
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Until the Arias government took power, Costa Rica suffered one of the world’s worst deforestation rates: on one scientific assessment, its forest cover fell to just 24.4% of the country. Today, forests occupy 57%, which, Umaña tells me, is close to the maximum: some parts were never forested, while others are now occupied by productive farms and cities. While a small amount of illegal timber felling continues, Costa Rica is the only tropical country to have more or less stopped and then reversed deforestation. It now has one of the world’s highest percentages of protected areas. How did it happen?...