Costa Rica’s beloved astronaut, scientist, businessman and inventor, Franklin Chang Diaz, has been elected to serve on the Board of Directors of Cummins, Inc., a U.S. company that designs, manufactures, distributes and services engines and related technologies, including fuel systems, controls, air handling, filtration, emission solutions and electrical power generation systems (click for link to press release).  Chang will serve on the Board’s Safety, Environment and Technology Committee, as well as the Audit, Finance and Governance and Nominating Committees.  Chang, 59 years old, graduated from MIT with a doctorate in nuclear engineering and has flown seven missions with the space shuttle.  He founded Ad Astra Rocket Company, which is developing the VASIMAR rocket engine that could cut space travel time for Mars missions in half.  Chang resides part-time in Houston, Texas and partly in Liberia, Costa Rica.  He and his wife, Peggy, have four daughters, ages 14 to 36.  In addition to his participation in the NASA space program for 25 years (he retired in 2005), Chang has been instrumental in improving education opportunities for the youth of Costa Rica.

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Walmart of México, also known as Walmex, has acquired 100% of the stock of Walmart Centroamérica.  The acquisition includes the 51% stake held by Walmart Stores, Inc. (of the U.S.) and the remaining 49% held by partners in Costa Rica (CSU) and Guatemala (La Fragua).  The transaction will take place primarily in 593 million new shares of Walmex stock.  A smaller portion, $110 million, will be paid in cash.  As a result of announcement of the deal, shares of Walmex shot up 3.19% to 58.1 pesos (or, a little over $4.00) on the Bolsa Mexicana.  In addition to the initial compensation, Walmex will issue an additional 55 million shares in an “earnout.” These shares will be kept in treasury and issued to shareholders of Walmart Centroamérica once the merged entity reaches a predetermined level of profitability.  The deal also gave the shareholders of Walmart Centroamérica the opportunity for some participation in corporate governance of the merged entity.  The president of Walmex, Eduardo Solórzano, expressed his pleasure about the growth prospects the deal brings for Walmex, adding that this deal is the first time that Walmart Stores, Inc. has shown sufficient confidence in a foreign company (in the case, Walmex) as to allow it to gain control of Walmart’s operations in other countries.  Walmex operates 1,410 commercial units in México, including supermarkets, clothing stores and restaurants.  Walmart Centroamérica operates 519 units in Central America, plus 11 distribution centers, and employs 30,000 in Costa Rica, Guatemala, Honduras, El Salvador and Nicaragua.  For the fiscal year end of September 2009, Walmart Centroamérica had sales of $3.3 billion.  With this transaction, Walmex expect to reach sales of $25 billion.

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So says the recent report entitled, Estado de la Nación (State of the Nation).  The bottom line according to the report is that Costa Ricans are consuming more resources than the country can provide and generate more waste than it can absorb.  All this seems to fly in the face of Costa Rica’s avowed harmony between development and care for the environment.  The report goes to show that to maintain a proper equilibrium between these two often competing forces is a very delicate balancing act.  The report evaluates Costa Rica’s impact along two measurements, “bio-capacity” and “ecological footprint.”  Bio-capacity has to do with the capacity of an ecosystem to produce biologically useful material and absorb waste generated by humans.  Investigators found that Costa Rica’s bio-capacity per person is 1.66 hectares.  That is, to produce a sufficient amount of material and absorb the resulting waste from consumption each person in Costa Rica needs 1.66 hectares of space.  This measurement takes into account the current actual lifestyle of a typical Costa Rican, in terms of rate of consumption and generation of waste.  As for “ecological footprint” the report found that each tico has a footprint of 1.86 global hectares.  When you subtract Costa Rica’s ecological footprint from its bio-capacity a deficit is produced.  This basically shows, according to the researchers, that Costa Rica would need 12% additional territory to meet the needs of development.  In short, the development is unsustainable and thus dependent on the bio-capacity of other countries.  Costa Rica thus is viewed as an eco-debtor.  Even so, Costa Rica is nevertheless well below the average ecological footprint of other countries of the world, which stands at 2.7 global hectares per inhabitant.  The report cites as the cause for the deficit both patterns of consumption along with population growth.  Also contributing to Costa Rica’s poor showing are high emission of contaminating gases, the consumption of its forests, and inefficient use of its resources. 

Link to Article in La Nación