More and more Italians are buying forests to fight global warming, a new study says.
In 2005, just 500 Italians bought pieces of forest in Costa Rica and northern Italy, in areas an environmental organisation has acquired to keep up the battle against greenhouse gases.
This surged to 2,000 in 2006, said LifeGate, an international organisation aiming to preserve the Earth's lung-power.
LifeGate's Zero Impact project enables potential buyers to calculate the amount of CO2 emissions they are responsible for by driving cars, buying products made by non-green industries, and other eco-unfriendly activities.
They can then acquire a chunk of forest that wipes out their debt to the planet.
Most of the Italian buyers have come from northern Italy so far, said LifeGate's Simone Molteni.
"The north weighed in with 65% of buyers last year, followed by 30% from central Italy and 5% from the south.
"However, that doesn't necessarily mean that people in the north are far more eco-conscious than southerners.
"A lot of it has to do with our Milan-based radio station, LifeGate Radio, which has been drumming home the message for five years now".
The radio has been on Roman airwaves for just a year. It is currently planning to move farther south.
More women than men are signing up for Zero Impact, Moleni went on.
"Six out of ten buyers are female," he said, adding that they tend to come from high-income households and big cities like Milan, Rome and Turin.
For the moment, Zero Impact's customers have been opting for Costa Rican forests over the Italian ones on offer in the green belt between Milan and Switzerland.
Moleni said this was due to a number of factors - and not only because Central American greenery is cheaper.
"As well as offering exotic appeal, Costa Rican packages also tend to attract more buyers because they are linked to programmes aimed at preserving wildlife and promoting eco-tourism".
