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Catching the wave

Life gave Víctor a second chance. He’s devoting it to surfing and environmental protection.

October 6^th, 2017

His face tanned by the Costa Rican sun makes him look tired, even though he isn’t. His deeply furrowed skin and bleached hair are faithful witnesses to the hustle and bustle of his daily life.

But neither the sun, nor the wrinkles, nor the long days can take away his smile or his commitment.

Victor is devoted to caring for the environment.

Since his daughter was born, Victor has become more committed to making the world a better place.

Victor preparing breakfast in his family home.

Victor and a friend wax their surfboards before heading out to the waves.

Today, he’s on the beach at dawn, but then he’s off to town hall for an important meeting with the mayor. His agenda is always full, between the high tides when the surf is up, his crusade for the environment and his responsibilities as a new father.

Víctor Arce is President of the Asociación Costas de Surf (ACOS), one of the most important surfing organizations in Costa Rica. But before catching the wave of environmentalism, he had to navigate though some choppy seas.

Victor says surfing connects him to the sea.

When he was only 12 years old, Víctor ran away from home and headed for the sea. He slept on the beach, in a park or wherever nightfall would find him. For a long time, he lived a life of conflict, mixed up with street gangs and drugs.

After observing the waves, Victor and a friend head into the Pacific.

Victor and a friend head into the ocean with their surfboards.

The love of surfing and the environment are connected.

“But life gives second chances,” he says without taking his eyes off his baby daughter asleep in his arms. “I left that behind and for almost a decade I’ve devoted myself to surfing as the driving force to promote sports and create opportunities for kids living on the coast to keep them away from crime, and to help them to see surfing as an instrument for protecting the environment and raising environmental awareness.”

Victor works to preserve the environment for his daughter and future generations.

The three pillars

As he tells it, there are three pillars that inspire his life: surfing, taking care of nature and his family. For Victor, these three things are interconnected almost to the point of being one in the same. There are times when he has to go to meetings with local business owners to seek help for some environmental initiative, and his wife and their baby go along with him.

Recycling is important for Victor, in his own house and in the community.

Victor on his land where he plants fruits and vegetables for his family.

For Victor, consuming organic food that he has grown himself is a way of life.

In addition to organizing surfing tournaments, Víctor is an activist: he gets people and businesses out to clean the beaches, he meets with local authorities in the coastal township of Garabito (90 km south of the capital, San José) and visits public and private schools, always looking for new opportunities to teach young people about environmental problems and get them involved in the solutions.

“We have seven official surfing tournaments, and all of them include environmental protection activities. We clean up the beaches, we visit schools for educational activities. We have a recycling centre, we make organic compost,” he explains with pride.

Victor’s love of nature is everywhere visible his home. He raises animals and grows fruit trees and vegetables, in addition to composting the resulting waste.

Re-using materials is a good way to take care of the environment.

Victor and his family grow vegetables in their home garden.

Victor shovels the compost that he uses as fertilizer for his garden.

Victor and his family raise rabbits, hens and other small animals at home.

The fight against plastic

Over a year ago, still not satisfied with what he was already doing for the environment, Víctor turned to the United Nations Development Programme (UNDP). He was seeking a partner, and

backing to gain more support and expand activities that promote surfing and environmental protection.

This was how he learned about the initiative to eliminate single-use plastics. Not only did he like the idea, he made it his own. ACOS is now the leading organization that, together with the local government, has turned the village of Garabito into the first township in Costa Rica to create a network to monitor contamination from microplastics along the coastline.

Plastic bottles need six times the amount of water that it contains for production.

Since June 2017, ACOS and Garabito’s town hall have been taking monthly samples of sand from Jacó, Hermosa, Herradura, Tárcoles and Guacalillo beaches to measure the presence of microplastics, which are particles smaller than five millimetres.

This initiative is part of a national strategy by the Government of Costa Rica, with UNDP support, to replace single-use plastics with renewable and compostable alternatives.

Single-use plastics — such as bags, drinking straws, coffee stirrers and food containers — are used for a very short time, but take hundreds of years to break down. The strategy promotes replacing these items with renewable — not derived from oil — and marine compostable materials; that is, they must biodegrade in no more than six months, even in the ocean.

Often after a storm our coasts show a desolate scene, beaches full of plastic and waste.

Plastic bottles take 450 years or more to decompose.

“It is an honour to work with UNDP and the government to free ourselves from the plastic that is so polluting,” Victor says. “It is painful to see so much trash in the streams and know that it is going to end up in the rivers and the sea. We need everyone and every sector to make an effort to ensure a healthy environment for ourselves, my daughter, our children.”

The mantra and the mission

Costa Rica has been an example to the world in reversing deforestation and doubling its forest cover from 26 percent in 1984 to over 52 percent in 2017. But at present, 20 percent of the 4,000 tonnes of solid waste produced every day is not collected and ends as part of the landscape on Costa Rica’s rivers and beaches.

To be a country free of single-use plastics is the mantra and the mission. Success will not be easy, nor will it be done by one person, or even one government, alone. UNDP Resident Representative in Costa Rica, Alice Shackelford, emphasizes that Víctor’s work is an example of how to build partnerships between civil society and local authorities to protect the environment.

The traces of human consumerism and use of plastic are frequently part of the coastal landscape around the world.

“We need more social actors like Víctor, who create partnerships and take action to protect the environment. The monitoring work is crucial to making beach pollution visible and measuring the impact of the strategy we are using. This is a clear example of how we can all work together as individuals and institutions to make Costa Rica a plastic-free zone,” she says.

Victor wishes for his daughter to grow up with a healthy & clean environment.

By 2050, it is estimated that there could be more plastic in the ocean than fish, as measured by weight. But as Víctor demonstrates every day, we all have the ability to take action, to mobilize others and to commit to keeping the beaches clean.

“My motivation is to leave a legacy and raise one voice to the world to tell people to stop polluting our oceans and rivers, so we can have a clean ocean for our children and grandchildren to enjoy.”