International experts analyze payment of environmental services of Costa Rica

Members of ' E-Parlamient', a virtual world-wide parliament, and experts of 18 countries analyzed the system of payments of environmental services of Costa Rica and the possibility of adapting it in their respective nations, informed the participants today.

The E-Parliament, that reunites parliamentarians worldwide to debate on globalization and its consequences, met in San Jose from last Friday throughout the weekend, discussing the consequences of deforestation and climatic change.

The members of that body, created in 2001 and who regularly performs their sessions through the Internet, learned about the system payment of environmental services implanted by Costa Rica in 1996, with the intention to reforest the wooded area of the country, that surpassed the 29 percent in 1989 to a 51 percent at present.

The deputy of the Party Citizen Action of Costa Rica Grettel Ortiz explained today in a press conference that the payment of environmental services " is money that the Costa Rican Government gives the people who live in the wooded zones in exchange for which they preserve the environment".

Ortiz detailed that, in the majority of the cases, the people who live in these zones are dedicated to agriculture, a reason they are intenting to " combine the two activities, their own land, and the conservation of forests".

The Brazilian parliamentarian Duarte Nogueira explained that the meeting in Costa Rica " has been enriching", but now he himself has to see if a system of payments of environmental services in Brazil can be implanted, " in each country the situation is different".

Nogueira detailed that in their country the main environmental problem is the deforestation of the Amazon as a result of wood sales.

In the same manner, he added that " they had to look for a solution in accordance" with the economic needs of the 20 million people who inhabit themselves in the Amazon and at the same time avoid the deforestation.

On the other hand, the Argentine parliamentarian Julia Argentina affirmed that the society has " a commitment with the conservation to avoid deforestation" and added that they can’t “solve the climatic change without preserving forests".