Costa Rica is known as a green country, but it faces a big challenge offshore.
The nation must save its coral reefs.
AIDA, with funding from Conservation International, is releasing a report in Spanish with a comprehensive plan for protecting Costa Rica’s 970 km2 of coral reefs from climate change, intensive agriculture, unsustainable fishing, irresponsible tourism and poorly treated industrial runoff and sewage.
“Coral Reefs in Costa Rica” is a country-specific report issued by AIDA that we hope will bring repercussions and pressure around the hemisphere to save these fragile ecosystems. Coral reefs cover about 284,000 km2 of the planet’s seabed, and nearly 10% of these are located in the Americas.
The report describes a key reason to protect corals: they are valuable.
Each hectare (2.47 acres) of coral reef is worth an estimated $1 million annually in terms of fishing, tourism and jobs, according to The Economics of Ecosystems and Biodiversity. Reefs also protect communities and other coastal ecosystems from erosion and storms, and provide habitat for more than a quarter of all marine species.
National laws and regulations must be strengthened to ensure reef survival. While Costa Rica is obligated by international treaties like the United Nations Convention on the Law of the Sea to safeguard threatened marine ecosystems, no national legal safeguards exist to specifically do so.
The oversight stems largely from a lack of awareness of the economic importance of coral reefs and the extent of the damage and threats to corals.
Hence, this report intended to help educate the public and policymakers.
But that’s not all.
AIDA is targeting all Latin American nations with coral reefs. We are collaborating with the New York City Bar Association’s Cyrus R. Vance Center for International Justice to promote effective legal protections for coral reefs throughout the region. The project will develop a “Guide to Legislative Approaches for Reef Conservation” based on lessons learned from corals governance worldwide, and build multidisciplinary coalitions and broad-based political support for advancing reef protection.
2013 AIDA