With more than a half-billion international travelers a year impacting heavily on the global environment, Luis Manuel Chacon says it's time for tourists to turn over a new leaf. He wants them to "adopt a tree" for planting in countries they visit.
Chacon is the minister of tourism of Costa Rica, one of the lushest countries around, which has been universally cited for its conservation efforts, but is losing its tropical forests at an alarming rate.What Chacon suggests is that travelers, the tourism industry and destination countries all join together in a worldwide reforestation effort.
The Costa Rican official, who took office in May, launched his "Trees for Tourism" campaign at an environmental "summit conference" here sponsored by the American Society of Travel Agents and Smithsonian magazine.
He suggested that the small amounts of local currency tourists always seem to have when leaving a country be left in that country to be contributed toward the planting of seedlings there.
"Certainly, as little as 50 cents is not asking too much from people who have enjoyed the natural resources of a country during their stay. It only costs 16 cents to plant a tree. So from little contributions, large forests can grow."
Chacon's statements came on the heels of a report by the World Resources Institute which showed that tropical forests around the globe are being lost at a much more rapid rate than had been thought.
The group's study, made in collaboration with the United Nations, noted that 40 to 50 million acres of tropical forests are disappearing each year, nearly 50 percent more than previously estimated.
Chacon said that his Central American country was determined to turn the situation around, and in so doing hoped other countries would follow its example.
"In relation to its size, Costa Rica is one of the countries of the world where there is most diversity in flora and fauna. It covers only four one-hundredths of one percent of the earth's surface, yet we have more than 8,000 species of trees, shrubs and herbs, more than 2,000 varieties of orchids, more than 1,200 types of butterflies, more than 200 species of mammals and more than 850 species of birds.
"We have inherited a promised land of ecological riches, which we are determined to preserve. We are sharing our riches with all the friends that visit us. But we also hope to promote the conservationist revolution outside of our borders, using as our model our own reality and experiences."