From the emissions of the airplanes used by international delegations, to the electricity that their hotel rooms and the 200 official vehicles that will be used on inauguration day, the environmental impact of greenhouse gases will be compensated. At least that is the plan by the commission organizing the ceremony of the transfer of powers on May 8.
The commission is headed by Gina Guillén, general director of Protocol and Ceremonial of the State, who proposed the idea to Carlos Alvarado shortly after he knew he would be the next president.
“The rooms, how many kilowatts of energy are consumed in each hotel, how many rooms are there, what’s the size of the rooms, how much greenhouse gas is produced by lodging in the rooms?” asks rhetorically Gina Guillén.
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“The first time I was able to talk to him, I said: ‘President-elect, would you authorize us to do something crazy? How about, since you have talked so much about carbon neutrality, if we make this the first transfer of powers of the world that is carbon neutral? ‘ And he said to me: ‘Is that possible?’ And I told him I thought it could, and then he said yes, of course,” Guillén said.
If possible may be questioned, the important to many is the attempt. The participation of non-governmental entities is key in the task: the Costa Rica Neutral organization is calculating the total carbon footprint that will produce the logistics of the act, and another organization, whose name Guillen did not specify, will donate the necessary money to compensate the impact to through the figure of payment for environmental services, of which the country is a pioneer.
The money will be invested in trees on a farm in indigenous territory.
The transfer of powers ceremony will take place on Tuesday, May 8, in the Plaza de la Democracia, starting at 9:00 a.m.
Some 3,000 people will be on hand for the event in the open public square in downtown San Jose.
Source (in Spanish): La Nacion
