Hardly Working

While Costa Rica is known for it's famous beaches and eco-tourism, there is a dirtier side that has no one to tend to it.  Last week we took the students to Rio Tarcoles (excuse the lack of accents as I am unsure of how to achieve them with this keyboard) to  have class in a mangrove and to view the effects of a lack of governmental intervention in the protection of water basins, streams, and oceans in a developing country.

The mangrove is an important habitat that has evolved to withstand the high tides and salty conditions of the brackish waters along the river mouths and oceans. We got to sit in one and have a class for the students which was an amazing hands-on experience.

We then shifted to Playa Azul to have a class on the beach and see what happens when decades of littering and pollution in local water ways goes unchecked. The water is polluted nearly at it's source in the main city's water basin and then tracks all the trash out to rural beach towns to live with the pollution.

We learned that a council was once again coming together to discuss alternatives for the huge issue at hand, but it looks like currently, their ambitions are hardly working. The trouble is that although Costa Rica has many great laws in place to help aid and protect its environment and water ways, it often lacks specificity and enforcement of those. As they move closer to their carbon-neutral goal (now projected to be 2100), we are really hoping to see these issues change.