Saving the Planet tree by tree - Naturewalk leads the way

NATUREWALK, Costa Rica announces a new program to plant 750 new trees for each ecological teak subdivision lot sold at NATUREWALK.

Nature walk is a teak plantation of 100ha, close to the developed tourist resort of Jaco. With 300 building and development lots at NATUREWALK this new program will lead to the planting if up to 225,000 new trees for Costa Rica.

If each tree sequesters approximately 50 lbs of carbon per year this adds up to 11,250,000 lbs/5625 tons of carbon per yr.


Sustainable Forests benefits include
• carbon sequestration
• Helps to deter the illegal cutting of the Tropical Rain Forests.
• Socio-economic benefits including local employment in a "green" activity,

James Cahill from Costa Rica Invest said that “this is a part of a NATUREWALK’s sustainable commitment to replant unused pasture land with sustainable forests in a repeating and expanding cycle to replant Costa Rica in forest and achieve Costa Rica's goal of Carbon Neutral status by 2021”

Tim Alexander, commented, “we hope that this new idea will become the sustainable model for responsible development in Costa Rica and other Tropical Countries.”


Tropical trees account for 95% of all tree-based CO2 sequestration on the planet. Generally, the tropics are the areas between 23 degrees North and South of the equator. The average tropical tree sequesters a minimum of 50 lbs or 22.6 kg of carbon per annum. The woody biomass of a tropical tree is significantly denser than its boreal softwood counterparts, which is why tropical trees are usually hardwoods. In excess of 50% of a tropical trees woody biomass is sequestered carbon, which is why tropical trees are so important in the fight against global warming and climate change. Tropical trees also deposit or sequester carbon in the soil, though the amount trapped in the soil depends on local soil conditions and altitude. Consider this: tropical trees work 12 months of the year sequestering carbon, while boreal trees only work 3 months of the year. Most tropical hardwoods grow to maturity quickly (10 to 20 years), while their boreal counterparts take 80 to 120 years to achieve the same diameter as a softwood

Carbon Sequestration

CO2 is one of the primary greenhouse gases contributing to global warming. Trees not only remove CO2 from the atmosphere, but they also act as "global air conditioners" and help to combat this unwelcome effect.


In 2002, the Home Depot Foundation partnered with Reforest The Tropics to sponsor a demonstration forest to explore the possibilities of balancing US greenhouse gas emissions while producing wood on farms in the tropics.


The forest was planted in the Atlantic Zone of Costa Rica on the Las Delicias Farm, which is owned by the Rojas family.















The graph shown here details the carbon sequestration and growth rate in the Home Depot forest. It provides the total sequestration (upper lines) and current annual sequestration (last 12 months; lower lines) in tonnes of carbon dioxide and cubic meters of wood production.


Long-term management and profitability for the farmer are the keys to sustainability and long-term carbon storage in farm forests. This project is managed by Reforest The Tropics under a 25-year agreement between RTT and the farm owners. The forest belongs to the farmer while the rights to the CO2 sequestered belong to the Home Depot during the agreement.


Projects like this are win/win/win with the farmers profiting from the timber production and the world benefiting from CO2 reduction whilst Home Depot complies with their ethical and legal obligations.


To read more about trees removing CO2 and reducing your Carbon Footprint, click here.


To read about "synthetic trees" currently under development to combat global warming, click here


But trees not only remove CO2 from the atmosphere but also reduce global warming by acting as "global air conditioners". To read more about this remarkable finding by the University of Leeds, just click here.