‘Greenwashing’ Costa Rica

Photo by mikesten via Flickr (Creative Commons)

Eco tourism is a Costa Rican brand. This lush Central American country has long topped green and sustainable travel lists, marketing many of its accommodations as eco-lodges and eco-resorts. It promotes itself as a tropical paradise with stunning biodiversity and “no artificial ingredients.” While that may be true in the country’s forests and national preserves, the scene at the beach town of Tamarindo is not exactly one for the eco-travel brochures.

My friend Chris Welsch recently traveled to the once-quiet fishing village on Costa Rica’s Pacific Coast and discovered a town overrun by malls, fast-food franchises, over-development, traffic, drug dealers and water tainted with fecal matter. His moving and troubling story in the Minneapolis-St. Paul Star Tribune juxtaposed the plight of besieged locals with that of the leatherback turtle, a species which has lived on this planet for more than 100 million years but is now listed as critically endangered due in part to habitat loss and light pollution along Tamarindo’s shore.

You can also check out Chris’s excellent photographs from his Costa Rica travels.

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