By Amanda Roberson
Tico Times Staff | aroberson@ticotimes.net

The loud and strong words of Broad Front legislator José Merino rang out yesterday in San José's Parque Central, shortly after bongo drums and juggling drew attention to this central square. Bloque Verde, an environmental group that opposes the Central American Free-Trade Agreement with the United States (CAFTA), provided this entertainment to accompany Merino's message.

“There's no environment for CAFTA, and there's no environment for pirates and thieves who want to steal our resources,” said Merino, one of the featured speakers at a rally organized by the Citizen Action Party (PAC), Merino and the Costa Rican Federation for Environmental Conservation (FECON), an umbrella group for more than 30 environmental groups around the country.

PAC legislator Grettel Ortiz echoed Merino, expressing concern over how President Oscar Arias' government has handled environmental matters since he took office in May 2006. PAC yesterday submitted a letter to Arias and Environment and Energy Minister Roberto Dobles urging them to declare a “National Environmental Emergency,” Ortiz explained.

The letter spells out several actions PAC is asking the government to take, including creating a national board to coordinate environmental matters, prioritizing bills including the Forestry Law and the Water Law and placing a moratorium on concessions for development mega-projects in the northwestern Guanacaste province.

“Construction is being started on many of these projects without the proper environmental permits,” Ortiz told The Tico Times.

A group of residents from the Caribbean-slope town of Guácimo also joined the rally, calling for no further expansion of pineapple farming, which they say hurts smaller scale crops such as plantains and casava as pineapple farms strain water supplies, she said.

Across the Central Valley in Heredia, Presidency Minister Rodrigo Arias and Dobles held a ceremony during which Dobles announced a national tree-planting campaign.

The focus of this event sparked criticism from Merino, who said “planting trees is not enough.”