Costa Rica is set to host the next meeting of the International Task Force on Sustainable Tourism Development in February.

In an interview printed in this week's print edition of The Tico Times, Claire Hughes, a British Embassy adviser hired to assess Costa Rica's Peace with Nature initiative, points to tourism's potential for destruction, saying, “People come in, make their money, build their hotels and condos, then they're gone, on to the next place. What is Costa Rica left with?”

Participating countries including Australia, France, Germany, the United States and Great Britain have engaged in an almost two-year-old task force working on ways to prevent further ruin from tourism, whether culturally, economically or environmentally.

“I'm sure that it will be a fruitful meeting,” Costa Rican Tourism Minister Carlos Benavidas told reporters.

He boasted Costa Rica's green practices and efforts toward sustainable development, which have helped lead the country to become a premier destination for ecotourism.

“Tourism policies should foster an equal distribution of resources,” he said.

Benavidas also pointed to the country's goals to slash its greenhouse gas emissions, as President Oscar Arias declared in June, “By 2021, Costa Rica's 200 th birthday, we will be a carbon neutral country.” That implies the tourism sector, too, Benavidas said.

“Costa Rica is a country with one of the highest levels of biodiversity in the world,” said Benavidas, but it also faces the problem of climate change, “a serious challenge for humanity.”

-EFE