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Carbon Neutrality Offers Opportunity to Guanacaste’s Tourism Industry

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Having a company with a sustainable model and controlling gas emissions is not only friendly to the planet, but also opens opportunities to take advantage of a market that is rarely taken advantage of.

That is how Edmundo Castro, the director of the Carbon Neutral Unit at EARTH University explains it. He says that Costa Rica is a leading country in that enterprise.

“Carbon neutrality is a very new process and the focus is on tourism. Tourists are people with better economic conditions as well as higher levels of education, so there are a lot of them who compare the difference between companies. Being carbon neutral makes [a company] more attractive for clients,” Castro explained.

For the environmental economist, carbon neutrality could help Guanacaste compete with Brazil and Mexico, among other leading countries in Latin America.

Costa Rica made the commitment to be a carbon neutral country by 2021, and though no studies that compare the advances made in different provinces exist, Castro claims that Guanacaste has big advantages.

“Guanacaste is a province that is making progress. In the province there is a lot of unused energy, including solar. There is also a lot of organic waste, like sugarcane, that isn’t used as energy,” he added.

In addition to competitiveness, carbon neutrality yields economic benefits to any company, as the consumption of fuel is limited and electrical use is reduced.

“One of the main changes that Guanacaste should implement is in transport. Guanacaste should build more bicycle paths, so that people use fewer automobiles. Every liter of gasoline used by a vehicle produces 2.26 kilograms of CO2 in the atmosphere,” indicated Castro.

With the goal of enabling companies to fulfill carbon neutrality standards, Castro will visit the facilities of the National University in Liberia and Nicoya on June 19th. The first workshop costs $80 per person and will be in Liberia at 9 a.m. and the other, in Nicoya, will be held at 2 p.m. For more information call 2713 0493

Business people will receive training in the following areas: environmental awareness, greenhouse gas inventories and carbon neutrality, reduction and removal strategies, greenhouse gas information systems, and verification plans.

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