Hi, my name is Gracie Turk and I am immensely excited to be traveling soon to Costa Rica to study Supply Chain Management in the banana and coffee industries! After just finishing my freshman year, I have decided to major in Accounting and Business Information Systems with a Certificate in International Business. I wanted to travel to Costa Rica ever since I heard about the Plus3 program because I am an avid coffee drinker and I wanted this opportunity to learn more about the coffee industry. In order to prepare for this amazing adventure, I decided to do a little research on Costa Rica’s sustainability initiatives.

               I believe that this focus on sustainability makes the country seem very progressive at a time when many leading countries fail to recognize the importance of sustainability. Costa Rica, which is only about the size of West Virginia, is doing more to ensure environmental sustainability than countries many times their size. One of the most impressive initiatives is that Costa Rica is working to become the first carbon-neutral country by 2020. This means that for every unit of carbon dioxide being released into the atmosphere, an equal amount is going to be removed. Often, countries try to offset emissions by planting a certain number of trees. This ties into another one of Costa Rica’s initiatives which is the replenishment of their rainforests. Around 1987, Costa Rica was covered in only 21 percent of forests whereas in the 1940s, the country was covered in over 75 percent of forests. Rapid deforestation caused so many adverse effects to the environment as well as the economy that Costa Rica realized the need for change. In addition to planting more trees and plants to encourage more biodiversity, Costa Rica has a program called “The Payments for Environmental Services” which gives monetary compensation to landowners that maintain healthy land and adopt good forest management practices.

               A third impressive initiative is Costa Rica’s Certification for Sustainable Tourism which helps businesses think about sustaining the environment and culture of the country in the long term. Through this program, businesses get certified once it is shown that they have implemented and utilized different sustainable practices. Costa Rica’s impressive initiatives make me even more excited to travel there and learn more about the important work they are doing for our environment. All of these initiatives seem to center around important parts of their economy, such as agriculture and tourism, but they also focus on their citizens because change cannot happen if people aren’t involved in doing the work. Environmental sustainability can be very hard to implement effectively but Costa Rica shows the numerous rewards of doing so. I am looking forward to taking every opportunity available to me during this trip to learn more about sustainability all throughout Costa Rica!