When we take a breath of fresh air, pour a cool glass of water or look out over a breathtaking landscape, should we have to pay for it? In Costa Rica, a handful of businesses are saying that we should, if we expect these resources to be there for us in the long term.

Among those promoting this 21st-Century attitude, Costa Rica-based Horizontes Nature Tours this year donated $10,000 to pay for trees that shelter its country’s biodiversity, protect its watersheds, absorb carbon from the atmosphere, and make the country’s landscape a top tourist attraction.

The company’s investment is distributed locally through a vanguard Costa Rican Forestry Fund (FONAFIFO), which initiated an Environmental Services Payment program to encourage the conservation and reforestation of lands found outside of national parks and wildlife reserves. The program provides financial incentives to local landowners for every tree they leave standing or plant on their properties.

Horizontes is directing its payments to those farms located near Corcovado National Park on the southern Pacific Coast, as part of a five-year commitment to the protection of this area.

“We hope this donation will help create a biological corridor between our conservation areas, providing wild animals with more room to move and breed,” said Horizontes General Manger Wilfrid Aiello.

Get Involved:

If you would like to support the Environmental Services Payment Program, Horizontes can provide options on how to do so, making each trip to Costa Rica an investment in nature.

The program also offers a way to calculate how much carbon is absorbed by new forest growth, with a potential to sequester more than 16 tons of carbon from the atmosphere, and provide rural Costa Ricans with $42.8 million for their reforestation and conservation efforts.