:: Environmental Program: The Last Noah's Ark ::

ECOLOGICAL SANCTUARIES

Costa Rica
(On Quetzal’s dominions)

Introduction

    Besides being located in Central America, where are the smallest poverty levels of the American continent and having a little more than 52.000 Km2, Costa Rica is considered worldwide example of environmental preservation.
    It is also one of the four countries in that world that have abolished the army (1948), maintaining a neutrality politics that has provided to its population a social-economical development, besides being between two countries that had civil war problems, Nicaragua in the north and Guatemala in the south.
    In environmental terms, it is famous by having highly innovative and modern environment protective legislation, and so the reason for being called as “environmentalists Mecca” and one of the most searched places by people whom are interested in Environmental law.
    Even in this advantaged situation, Costa Rica has suffered in the last decades big environmental pressures that have been destroying its natural reserves in big scale, as it can be noticed by the statistics:
    - 1950: 75% of its territory had natural vegetal cover;
    - 1973: this percent has decreased to 49%;
    - 1978: 34%
    - 1996: there were only 26%.
    (Font: Áreas Naturales Protegidas de Costa Rica. Tobias Meza, Alexandre Bonilla. Ed. Tecnologica de Costa Rica. 1995)
    Besides this data, it is still known as one of the most preserved countries of the world, having one of the biggest biodiversities.

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