Is Costa Rica as close as it gets to Half Earth?
About 25% of Costa Rica’s territory is constituted as a National Park or Reserve. Two parks are even considered World Heritage sites by UNESCO, the United Nations Educational, Scientific, and Cultural Organization. If you’re planning on going to Costa Rica any time soon, it’s almost impossible to not visit one of these parks.
And by all means, do visit one. This country is considered a world leader in conservation policies and sustainable ecotourism and any fees you might pay to visit the parks go right back to maintaining the parks themselves. El Sistema Nacional de Areas de Conservacion, or the National System of Conservation Areas has been lauded for its progressive policies and stands as a model for all other countries.
They’ve got a good thing going on in Costa Rica, but is it applicable elsewhere? Would it ever be possible to dedicate 25% of the lower 48 to conservation? Emeritus professor at Harvard University and prolific writer E.O. Wilson would say yes to all of the above. In his most recent book, Half Earth, he suggests that humankind set aside half of the Earth as a reserve for the planet’s remaining flora and fauna. This is not to say that humans get one hemisphere and all of life gets the other, but that one half of the surface of the ocean and the land is allocated to preservation.
Is he mad? Is he only furthering the human-nature divide? Are we mad to carry on, business as usual as the planet’s level of biodiversity continually declines?
I suppose we shall see, won’t we.
Sources
Dreifus, Claudia. “In ‘Half Earth,’ E.O. Wilson Calls for a Grand Retreat.” The New York Times. The New York Times, 29 Feb. 2016. Web. 23 May 2016. <http://www.nytimes.com/2016/03/01/science/e-o-wilson-half-earth-biodiversity.html>.
Wikipedia. Wikimedia Foundation, n.d. Web. 23 May 2016. <https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_national_parks_of_Costa_Rica?oldformat=true>.
