Friday, May 9th, 2008
Sights of Costa Rica will be enjoyed by people traveling on buses in New York and San Francisco, California, as part of the strategy developed by the Costa Rican Board of Tourism (ICT in Spanish) to attract more visitors. Also, via their cell phones, New Yorkers will be able to “visit” the rainforest for a few seconds. ICT marketing director Maria Revelo said that even though the Costa Rican tourist sector has kept on expanding, it must act as if it were amidst a crisis, in order to keep promotion up. This year’s first quarter, arrivals recorded at international airports were 17 percent more than in the same period in 2007. Also, the promotion of Costa Rica will be reinforced this year in Europe, Latin America, and emerging markets such as Portugal, Russia, Ireland, China, and Japan.
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Friday, May 9th, 2008
The Government of Costa Rica is enforcing the regulations on casinos, which until now have been operating around the clock and will have to limit themselves to a 6 p.m.-2 a.m. schedule. Casinos were first conceived as entertainment for guests of 3-or-more star hotels, but have proliferated in such a way that they operate by themselves, observe no time limitations, serve liquors, and can be accessed directly from public streets, among other irregularities. A spokesperson for the casino association said that they need to operate for at least 18 hours every day, from 12 noon through 6 a.m., and that the new schedule means the loss of at least 3,000 jobs.
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Friday, May 9th, 2008
Dole Food Co., Inc. announced that its operating division in Costa Rica, Standard Fruit Co. de Costa Rica S.A., will purchase carbon offsets from the Costa Rican government’s program in amounts equal to the carbon dioxide emissions generated by the inland transport of Dole-produced bananas and pineapples.
The announcement is part of a broader agreement Dole signed last August with the Costa Rica’s Ministry of the Environment and Energy and the National Strategy for Climate Change to produce a carbon neutral supply chain for bananas and pineapples. Costa Rica is seeking to become carbon neutral by 2021.
“Dole is determined to take the lead in environmentally friendly production and distribution methods,” said David A. DeLorenzo, president and chief executive officer of Dole Food Co., Inc. “We are committed to helping the government of Costa Rica achieve their sustainability ambitions.”
Under the accord, the National Forestry Financing Fund will offer Dole carbon credits from government-certified forestry projects that will annually sequester an equivalent amount of carbon from the atmosphere as that emitted by fossil fuel use in road and rail transportation. In essence, the Dole products will be “carbon neutral” with regards to transportation from company-owned packing plants to the ports of export in Costa Rica.
The carbon credit approach is one of many strategies that Dole is employing to neutralize the carbon footprint resulting from the growing, harvesting, packaging and distribution of the company’s bananas and pineapples in Costa Rica. Reforestation programs are occurring and thousands of trees are being planted on Dole plantations in Costa Rica, including local farms and neighboring communities.
Danilo Roman, general manager of Dole Standard Fruit de Costa Rica S.A., commented: “Among the many steps we have taken to reduce emissions at source is optimization of fertilizers to deliver nutrients more effectively. In this way, we can directly reduce the emission of nitrous-oxide, a potent greenhouse gas. We expect that this program will decrease emissions by over 12 percent or nearly 9,000 tons of CO2 equivalents per year.”
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