Word: ricas
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From the ubiquitous T-shirts sporting a red-eyed tree frog clinging to an Imperial beer bottle, to the best-selling postcards featuring the flamboyant poison-dart frog holding court in the rainforest, Costa Ricans today identify with frogs the way Russians relate to bears. That's because Costa Rica over the past generation has built a reputation as one of the world's greenest countries. It so jealously guards its environment that 26% of its territory is under national park protection, its eco-tourism sector is a $2 billion-a-year cash cow and its forest cover has actually...
Lately, Costa Rica has further ratcheted up its green ambitions, pledging to become one of the only developing nations to make itself "carbon neutral" - a zero net-emitter of carbon - by 2021. (Maldives is the only other developing country to set that goal.) Costa Ricans, or Ticos as they call themselves, believe it's attainable largely because 95% of their country's energy production already comes from renewable, non-polluting sources. As a result, Costa Rican President Oscar Arias is jockeying for a global leadership role on climate change. Arias was one of five keynote speakers to address...
...open-pit mining. The move is likely to result in the largest such gold mine in Central America, Las Crucitas, to be operated by a Canadian-owned firm, Infinito, and will require clearing 125 acres (50 hectares) of forest land. It also has environmentalists in Costa Rica and Nicaragua warning of a cross-border eco-catastrophe in the event of cyanide leaks into the San Juan River. (Cyanide is used in recovering gold...
Infinito insists there is no such danger. But critics say Arias' decision betrays his international rhetoric and reflects a worrisome trend. His environment minister had to resign earlier this year over a mining-related scandal. Luis Diego Marin, regional coordinator for the Costa Rica-based conservation group Preserve Planet, calls Arias a "hypocrite," insisting that behind Costa Rica's green facade today is "tremendous disorder." Carlos Manuel Rodriguez, a political rival and environment minister under Arias' predecessor, Abel Pacheco, and vice president of the Washington, D.C.-based Conservation International, says Arias "has been neither serious nor coherent on the issue...
...heard concern is that Arias seems to believe Costa Rica can "plant its way out of the carbon-emissions problem," as environmentalists frequently complain. Rather than attack emissions more aggressively at its industrial and automotive sources, eco-advocates fear Arias simply wants to plant more trees in order to create what they call a deceptive net-zero emissions balance...