The Costa Rican Congress today aims to establish an annual day dedicated to the purity of the country’s physical and spiritual environment, through a bill proposed by ruling party representative Ada Acuña Castro.
The Legislative Assembly accepted the initiative of the Social Democratic Progress Party legislator to declare the first seven days of March annually as “National Healthy Environment Week and Promotion of Co-responsibility in Comprehensive Well-being,” reported the press.
The country already has, the newspaper reflects, a Wellness Week scheduled for September, but the new proposal would have a different focus, creating a space for institutional, educational, and community action to highlight and address unhealthy environments that harm mental health, productivity, and social cohesion.
Psychosocial health and human flourishing in all spheres
The difference between Wellness Week (already embraced by the Ministries of Health and Labor and Social Security) and the new initiative is that the latter highlights “the active and conscious construction of environments that nurture psychosocial health and human flourishing in all spheres,” the source states.
The current project will promote collective reflection and concrete actions in the areas of work, education, family, and healthcare, and will bring together state institutions, civil society, and the private sector around the principle of co-responsibility for building spaces that nurture comprehensive well-being.
The proposal establishes that during the week, activities such as mass communication campaigns; workshops and forums on positive leadership, emotional management, and effective communication; and seminars on tools for managing psychosocial risk factors, as well as promoting protective factors for mental health, may be held.
World’s biodiversity
The project to establish the aforementioned National Healthy Environment Week plays into the profile and policies of the Costa Rican state and society to defend nature in all its facets, in a country that is home to 5 percent of the world’s biodiversity.
