Deforestation in Costa Rica

  While there have been dire and sensational predictions made on the impacts of climate change on Costa Rica, real data indicates that Costa Rica will see far less impact than many other regions. Latin America has a number of rapidly developing tropical forest nations, and as such it has been put under the microscope of the international climate change community. Four countries in this region make the global top 30 list of highest annual CO2 emitters, namely Brazil, Argentina, Mexico, and Venezuela (using 2008 data). In Latin America, Costa Rica stands out with its goal to be carbon neutral by 2021. It is already a global leader in sustainable energy use with 96 percent of its electricity coming from renewable sources and has increased its forested area by 10 percent in the last decade. Extreme forecasts also indicate that in about 10 or 15 years most Southern Caribbean Costa Rica shall be displaced by a rise in sea level, which will also affect the drinking water supply in the are...

  Forests cover 31 percent of earth’s land surface and house a majority of the plants and animals found on earth. It is estimated that these diverse ecosystems house 80 percent of the world’s terrestrial biodiversity . Rainforests have especially high species density, covering 2 percent of earth’s surface, but housing nearly   50 percent of all plant and animal species . These plants and animals are integral to forest ecosystems and provide countless ecosystem services to humans. If forests ceased to exist humans would be unable to survive. As important as forests are both environmentally and economically, many of our global forests are severely affected by deforestation.  Deforestation is one of the leading causes of climate change and species extinction. Deforestation defined as  “the cutting down of trees in a large area, or the destruction of trees by people,”  is a huge problem and it is estimated that between 3 and 7 billion trees are cut down each year. A...

Deforestation has important global consequences. Forests   sequester carbon   in the form of wood and other  biomass   as the trees grow, taking up   carbon dioxide   from the atmosphere . When forests are burned, their carbon is returned to the atmosphere as carbon dioxide, a   greenhouse gas   that has the potential to alter global   climate , and the trees are no longer present to sequester more   carbon . In addition, most of the planet’s valuable biodiversity   is within forests, particularly tropical ones. Moist tropical forests such as the Amazon have the greatest concentrations of animal and plant species of any terrestrial ecosystem; perhaps two-thirds of Earth’s species live only in these forests. As deforestation proceeds, it has the potential to cause the  extinction  of increasing numbers of these species. On a more local scale, the effects of  forest  clearing, selective logging , and fires in...

In 1996, Costa Rica banned cutting down mature forests. After this ban the loss of forest decreased from a 2.2 percent loss per year to a 1.2 percent loss per year. Also, the Ministry of Environment and Energy has a program where they offer monetary incentives to farmers for not cutting down their forests and reforesting their land.   *The graph demonstrates the deforestation rate decrease between 1960 and 2005. Coffee farmers in Costa Rica have also proven that not cutting down the trees can help them save money. When there are trees near agriculture there are more birds. When there are more birds, there are ultimately less pests and therefore less pesticides need to be used. The forests of Costa Rica are undeniably beautiful. They offer an economical opportunity for the country, ecotourism. There has been a large push to reduce deforestation also simply for this purpose. There was actually a report published that stated that ecotourism has increased the living standards of the pe...

  Reasons for Deforestation-Logging Activar el teclado para el contenido multimedia One of the reasons for the deforestation in Costa Rica was the timber industry. It was not only the simple fact that logging companies were extracting the trees they needed, but they would cut a whole forest down even though they were looking for a select species of trees including mahogany and cedar. Also, in order to get to harvest the trees, the logging companies would take down areas of forest to make roads to transport the timber. Reasons for Deforestation-Agriculture Activar el teclado para el contenido multimedia Much of Costa Rica was also deforested as a result of clearing pastures for cattle to graze in. It has been estimated that 35.5 percent of Costa Rica’s land is grazed on by cattle. Many of the trees in Costa Rica were cleared as well in order to create banana and pineapple plantations. Costa Rica produced 13 percent of the world’s bananas between the years 2002 and 2006. Reasons for ...