With my previous knowledge of Costa Rica consisting of hearing about pretty beaches and the capital of San Jose, hearing that Costa Rica ranks second in the world for environmental sustainability leaves a lasting impression on me. Costa Rica’s ranking makes me view the country as impressive and stable. If the country is able to continually provide its electricity and maintenance through its natural resources or renewable sources then the country itself must be successful in multiple manners. Costa Rica’s strong sustainability also says a lot about its government. Living in the United States, it is admirable to see a country fully focused on its environmental use of resources especially seeing from farther research that Costa Rica used to have a deforestation problem.

With the country’s superior sustainability comes their initiatives that are in place to continue and grow their sustainability. Costa Rica desires to be a carbon neutral country by 2021. To do this task, they have a number of programs in place. For example, Costa Rica hopes to inspire landowners with the PES program where the government will pay  owners who maintain clean, healthy land and practices on their land. This is an aspect of Costa Rica’s initiatives where we can see agriculture appear as companies would have incentives to make sure their crop growing is done in an efficient and environment safe way. Limiting pesticides and preserving trees are some examples of how landowners and farmers can work to improve sustainability. In this list of ways of improvement, I read how the coffee industry sometimes lacks sustainability but these are ways Costa Rica is looking to improve it, but other than this mention the coffee industry did not have a big feature in my quick google search.

Another popular initiative with sustainability in Costa Rica is tourism. Costa Rica brings in many tourists due to their national parks and ecolodges. Because Costa Rica is known globally for being friendly to its environment, many people want to visit and see its renewable, plentiful resources. Costa Rica hopes to get large scale all inclusive hotel industries to begin participating in its sustainability goals. They hope to incentivize businesses in tourism with its CST program where businesses are rated based on how well they comply with sustainability regulations.