yet another reason to locate veganville in costa rica...

[Guest guest]

Elliott Negin

Washington Communications Director

Natural Resources Defense Council

 

NRDC Applauds Costa Rican Rejection of Offshore Oil Drilling

Costa Rica Says No to U.S. Oil Company

 

WASHINGTON (May 13, 2002) - Late last week Costa Rican environmentalists

celebrated a major victory when their government killed plans to open the

country's coast to oil exploration. In an eleventh-hour decision, Minister of

Environment Elizabeth Odio rejected an appeal by a Harken Energy subsidiary to

allow drilling along the southern Caribbean coast of Talamanca because the

project would harm fragile coral reef systems and protected marine areas. The

decision, made a day before the newly elected government of President Abel

Pacheco took office, upheld an earlier unanimous ruling by a government

technical committee rejecting the project. (For more background on this story,

see attached April 2001 NRDC report.)

 

The ruling was the culmination of a two-year campaign by a coalition of

indigenous villages, nature-based tour operators, clergy and community groups.

Coalition lawsuits delayed plans for the project, while marches, protests and

public hearings in the coastal city of Limon and the capital San José kept

pressure on the government and attracted international support. The company

lobbying for the right to drill, Harken Costa Rica Holdings, is co-owned by

MKJ-Xplorations and Harken Energy, a Houston-based oil and gas company with ties

to President George W. Bush.

 

" The people of Costa Rica have won an important victory today, " said Jacob

Scherr, director of the International Program at NRDC (Natural Resources Defense

Council). " Costa Ricans are asserting their right to decide their own future,

despite what large multinational companies may want. " NRDC attracted

international attention to the campaign as part of its BioGems project.

Activists from across the Americas sent tens of thousands of messages from

NRDC's BioGems Web site (www.savebiogems.org ) to Harken Energy and Costa Rican

officials over the last 12 months to voice their opposition to the offshore

project.

 

The drilling proposal was a central issue in Costa Rica's recent presidential

campaign. The winner, Abel Pachecho, came out squarely against the project. In

his inauguration speech, he declared a new era of " peace with the environment, "

vowing to draft an environmental section for the country's constitution, and

specifically rejected oil exploration and mining as a major component of the

country's economy. " We will compete without destroying nature, " he said, "

because ... our rich biodiversity will always be a great wealth and we will

preserve it. "

 

In declaring " peace with nature, " Pachecho is continuing a Costa Rican tradition

of making unconventional decisions. Costa Ricans take pride in being the only

Central American nation without an army, and has been one of the most peaceful

and economically successful countries in the region. NRDC's Scherr compared the

Costa Rican decision to the recent vote in the U.S. Senate to reject drilling in

Alaska's Arctic National Wildlife Refuge. " It's the right choice, and if a small

country like Costa Rica can do it and prosper, so can we, " he said. " At some

point we have to decide to protect nature over the interests of the big oil

companies. "