A Small Donation Can Make You A Carbon-Neutral Traveler

A growing number of businesses in Costa Rica's tourism sector are offering carbon-neutral services, allowing you to visit this eco-tourism haven without leaving "environmental footprints." Now the local government has launched a new program called "Clean Trip," which allows visitors to make their flights to Costa Rica carbon neutral.

Through an existing government program called "Payments for Environmental Services," Costa Rica's National Forestry Financing Fund (FONAFIFO) pays private landowners to plant trees, reforest or conserve existing forest. That program has now been expanded to the tourism sector.

If you're planning a trip to Costa Rica from any country in the world, visit FONAFIFO's website, where an online calculator tells you how many tons of carbon dioxide (CO2) are produced by your roundtrip travel and how much forest is needed to process it. You can then pay to conserve enough forest to offset your travel-related greenhouse-gas contributions. At an estimated conservation cost of $5 per hectare (a hectare is about 2.5 acres), you can donate directly to FONAFIFO from the website using a Visa or MasterCard.

Carbon dioxide-a greenhouse gas that causes global warming-is absorbed by healthy forests, and forest conservation can therefore help counteract greenhouse gas emissions and global warming.

"There are estimates that an airbus (plane) that uses 7,000 gallons of fuel generates 70 metric tons of carbon dioxide that goes into the atmosphere," says Alberto Garcia, of FONAFIFO. "Of the 1.675 million tourists that arrived here last year, we know that 1.380 million came by plane. Through Clean Trip, if I come from the United States, or Canada or whatever part of the world, I can compensate for my emissions."

For example, a trip from the western U.S. to Costa Rica produces two metric tons of CO2 and can be made carbon neutral with a $10 donation. Flying from Switzerland, on the other hand, produces five tons of CO2, which can be countered with a $25 donation.

Once in Costa Rica, eco-minded visitors can choose from a growing number of companies offering carbon-neutral services. Domestic airline Nature Air compensates for all its flights yearly by conserving forests in the bountiful Osa Peninsula, as does the car rental agency Mapache. Even Dole, the fruit exporter whose company in Costa Rica is called Standard Fruit, has signed an agreement with FONAFIFO to make its entire product supply chain-from producing and packing to transporting and distributing-carbon neutral.

Costa Rica President Oscar Arias aims to make Costa Rica the first carbon-neutral country in the world by 2021.

Your Latin America Insider,

Suzan Haskins
for International Living

P.S. Caretakers of the world unite…if you're attending IL's mega-event of the year, take the opportunity to have some fun and contribute to a worthy cause two days before the big event.