Curridabat, a suburb of San José, Costa Rica, has extended citizenship to trees, native plants and pollinators, including bees, hummingbirds, bats and butterflies.
The move comes as part of Curridabat’s “Sweet City” project, which aims to reintroduce nature to urban neighborhoods and improve biodiversity through an investment in green infrastructure.
“The idea came from a narrative that people in cities are prone to defending nature when it is far away, when it is a distant concept, but they are negligent when it comes to protecting nature in their immediate environment,” Curridabat Mayor Edgar Mora told the Guardian. “Urban development should be, at least to some extent, aligned with the landscape instead of the other way round.”
The stark contrast between Costa Rica’s urban and natural landscapes inspired the array of innovations Sweet City promotes, including green spaces, reforestation, the creation of biocorridors, and other mixed-use development. This help pollinators thrive, a crucial component to the project’s success.
“Pollinators are the consultants of the natural world, supreme reproducers and they don’t charge for it,” Mora explained. “The plan to convert every street into a biocorridor and every neighborhood into an ecosystem required a relationship with them.”
By accommodating wildlife, cities can reduce biodiversity loss and facilitate genetic spread, helping species maintain their population numbers. As cities become increasingly popular places to live — Since 1992, urban area increased two fold, and a projected 68 percent of people will become city-dwellers by mid-century, according to the United Nations — urban planners are increasingly integrating nature in their designs and recognizing its fundamental role in preventing the destruction of our ecosystems.
The Sweet City project has been well-received in Costa Rica, which hosts six percent of the world’s biodiversity and has an intimate relationship with nature. For some Costa Rican officials — including diplomat Christiana Figueres, who helped draft the UN’s worldwide Paris climate agreement — the focus should now be on encouraging other countries to deepen their commitment to environmentalism and wildlife conservation.
Thank you, good news.
I like this very much ,, We need Bees very bad ..
This is so Good ,, Bees we need so very badly and I like this ..
great effort!
WELL THIS IS GOOD TO KNOW. NATURE WOULD NOT EXIST WITHOUT IT’S CITIZENS !!!
Fabulous news.
I can’t wait to see this
film. My friends and family are also excited to see it. Thank you for making this documentary.
Wonderful — great news
moche
i like bees keep alive make honey
What a great example of citizens coming together to save their environment and their “citizens” for a brand new future. To me, all animals of the world are citizens and should be protected at all cost.
What a wonderful idea. We all need to follow this.
If only we could ALL take note of what these wonderful citizens are doing….
It would be nice if everyone saw how important the Bees are to our environment and wellbeing. We will starve eventually without them. I am pleased that at least 1 city sees the importance. Hopefully the rest of the world will catch on.
Although this is a positive step in protecting the natural world (in a limited way) in Costa Rica, it demonstrates the insanity of humanity, and particularly of what passes for civilization.
From a Native American perspective, all life is sacred and part of the whole of creation. All life forms are interconnected and interdependent, and all are important and have a role to play. This is a sane, very realistic worldview.
The civilized worldview is, by contrast, absurd and pathological. A bee or a tree cannot be respected by civilization unless it is granted “citizenship”? This is ridiculous beyond words…Are humans so obtuse that they will not respect other forms of life unless a law gives these life forms equal “citizenship rights”? Wow…
I agree with everything you said but at least it’s a start. Hopefully we’re all moving in the right direction where all life, human and animal and everything in this life trees, plants, mountains, water, etc. will be viewed as scared and blessed. I think all of us will not only be much safer but much happier and peaceful. Hopefully we’ll get there sooner, not later
Hopefully, before humanity destroys everything!