Costa Rica has cultivated a reputation for natural beauty, and chances are its name calls to mind lush mountains, beautiful beaches, and sustainably grown coffee.
That image is partially the result of an environmental protection program the country implemented to ensure its natural resources are sustainably developed; protection efforts that have borne fruit. After years of work to reverse decades of deforestation, more than half the country is covered in forest and over 98 percent of its energy is renewable.
According to Martec – one of Costa Rica’s largest exporters of wild-caught fish, selling 3,500 metric tons (MT) a year – the time has come to leverage that environmental legacy on the seas.
“We need to improve the fishery component in Latin America. Costa Rica did a good job in conserving land, thanks to the efforts of our forefathers. The oceans now need help, and we want to be the trailblazers in how to set up a restorative model, and how to become net positive in our business,” Martec Sustainability and Innovation Manager Alvaro Teran told SeafoodSource.
Lessons, Teran said, can be learned from the country’s coffee industry, which helped differentiate itself from other producers by leveraging the country’s sustainability efforts.
“We’re learning from the coffee sector, where we have close contacts,” Teran said. “In a program begun about 20 years ago, Costa Rica did really well in differentiating their coffee, and that’s one of the approaches – not just traceability and sustainability but also in improving social conditions.”
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https://www.seafoodsource.com/news/environment-sustainability/costa-rica-seafood-exporter-taking-cues-from-coffee-industry-in-leveraging-nation-s-ecology