CHAPTER FOUR
THE NATIONAL CONTEXT
Introduction
Costa Rica is a small country of 51,100 km2 located in the culturally and ecologically diverse, but poverty-stricken, and often war-torn Central American isthmus. Although Costa Rica in many aspects has been the exception in Central America, enjoying a relatively high standard of living, a large middle class, and a stable democratic system in the last 50 years, it is nevertheless subject to worsening social and economic conditions (Barry 1989). Costa Rica concentrates almost five percent of the world's entire biodiversity (Vaughan 1988), and it has an internationally recognized national park system that covers over 25 percent of the national territory. Yet the country has also been subject to continual environmental degradation (Ramírez and Maldonado 1988).
With a population of over 3.5 million, growing at a rate of 2.25 percent per year, a low infant mortality and a life expectancy of over 74 years, coupled with the socioeconomic and environmental trends, Costa Rica faces a questionable future in terms of life quality for the majority of its people. The concept of sustainable development was appropriated early on in Costa Rica as a paradigm that could address the country's uncertain future (Quesada and Solís 1988). However, this study shows how the concept has been employed in contradictory ways. A brief overview of Costa Rica's history can better situate the context in which this paradigm of development and conservation was widely adopted.
The concept of sustainable development had scarcely been formulated in the mid 1980s, when it was adopted in Costa Rica as the dominant development paradigm. The transformation of Costa Rica's landscape from mostly forest, to various forms of agricultural exploitation demanded by global markets, made reconciling economic growth with environmental protection a necessity. Costa Rica's political history during the last fifty years dominated by co-optive strategies of inclusion over coercive strategies of domination was also an ideal context for the adoption of sustainable development's tendencies of reconciliation. Subject to the same general problems of other Third World countries, Costa Rica's plantation economy did not bring it the "development" it sought, nor did post-World War II development aid defray the social, economic and environmental costs brought on by World Bank and IMF impositions. The 1980s were also a "lost decade" for Costa Rica, during which time NGOs and new social movements emerged as important actors seeking social transformation. Sustainable development offered these new social actors a conceptual "space" in which to maneuver and try to improve the life conditions of the people. In this chapter I review in some detail the history that allowed sustainable development to become the hegemonic development paradigm in Costa Rica, providing the context for my case study of an NGO seeking sustainable development for a local community.
Early Period: Transforming the Landscape
Before the European invasion of this land, what today is Costa Rican territory had a population of approximately 27,000 people and forests covered all but scarcely one percent of the land. The primary means of subsistence was slash and burn agriculture, supplemented by fishing, hunting, and the gathering of wild fruits (Sánchez Pereira 1992:23). When the Spanish colonizers introduced cattle, goats and pigs, as well as wheat and sugar cane cultivation, they not only transformed the native systems of production, but the native landscape as well.
Subsistence crops and pastures for grazing predominated. Attempts at monocrop production of cacao and tobacco as exports during the 18th century failed to have any major impact on the economy and society, or on the land. It was not until the introduction of coffee and its quick expansion hardly a decade after the country's independence from Spain in 1821, that export monocrops began dramatically to transform the country. Subsistence crops fell by the wayside, giving precedence to coffee plantations, large and small, that expanded, replacing "nonproductive" forest lands. What had been the most backward country of Central America at the moment of Independence, became the first nation to link its capital city to both oceans by railroad and the first to illuminate its cities with electricity (Hall 1991).
During the 19th century coffee production expanded in the Central Valley, totally eliminating the original forests of the area. Land prices in the Central Valley began to rise quickly, increasing twenty-fold in less than fifty years (Cardoso and Pérez Brignoli 1986:214). During this period, the commons belonging to towns and cities, as well as to Indian communities were also dissolved, distributed into private hands. Due in part to the relatively large land base for the meager population of approximately 243,000 by 1890, land concentration was maintained at a minimum. However, the larger coffee traders and producers began extending credit under conditions of usury to the smaller coffee farmers, who often unable to pay their debts, mortgaged their farms which often went to increase the landholdings of the coffee exporting elite (Acuña and Molina 1991:83).
A second crop that became a major force in the national economy and which also transfigured the land was the banana plantation. An expanding North American consumer market encouraged the development of plantations in the tropical regions closest to "home". This meant Central America and the Caribbean. By 1890 banana plantations were firmly established in all of the region, which by the turn of the century were acquired by the United Fruit Company, and greatly expanded hence forward becoming the absolute monarch of banana production (Rodríguez and Vargas 1988).
1900-1949: The Politics of Reconciliation
By the beginning of the 20th century Costa Rica was immersed in a global economy, subject to the instability of world market prices. In order to mitigate this vulnerability, the country continued to expand production of world market commodities. Food crops became relegated to capital-poor subsistence farmers forced to search out cheaper marginal lands and to clear forests on the agricultural frontier. By 1906 the rate of deforestation was such that it caused concern among members of the Congress, who passed a bill requiring the Executive Branch to create a Forest Law. This bill, however was summarily filed, left to collect dust. Nevertheless, the first 25 years of this century revealed a preoccupation for environmental issues among members of the State leadership. This was reflected in the proclamation of numerous laws and decrees in this area. But like the Forest Law of 1906, most of these endeavors went no further than merely good intentions. Social, financial and political problems such as low coffee prices, the First World War, coups d'état, dictatorships, the Great Depression, labor mobilizations and general strikes relegated action on environmental concerns to the filing cabinet (Fournier 1991).
The same conditions which provoked an acceleration of the devastation of the land, also elicited disquiet among the campesino sectors, the rural proletariat, and the small mercantile producers. Small coffee farmers struggled against the pricing practices by the owners of the coffee processing plants. They called for the intervention of the State in fixing the price of coffee beans, the extension of credit to small farmers, and the formation of cooperatives to process the coffee themselves (Carcanholo 1981). Other sectors responded in less reformist ways. In 1931 the Communist Party was founded in Costa Rica. Workers created Labor Unions and the general strike became a means of pressuring the government. In this context of greater participation and popular mobilization, the Communist Party played a decisive role in inscribing the Social Guarantees into the Constitution, in declaring the Work Code and establishing Social Security (Acuña y Molina 1991:162).
The Costa Rican Civil War of 1948, sparked by an attempted electoral fraud, resulted in the victory of reformist social democrats led by insurgent José Figueres Ferrer against the unlikely coalition of then president Calderón Guardia's Social Christian Party with the Communist Party and the coffee elite. The victory of the National Liberation insurgents marked the beginning of a new era in the nation. The Communist Party and labor unions, as defeated sectors in the Civil War, and as posterior targets of repression, saw their influence decline after 1948. However, at the same time, the National Liberation Party (PLN) enacted a number of progressive reforms including a major tax levy on the wealthy, abolishing the army, giving full political rights to women and blacks, as well as many reforms previously promoted by the Communist Party. The PLN also began a process for greatly increased governmental participation in the economy, nationalizing all of the banks, insurance companies, the railroads, and utilities companies, among others.
The PLN openly praised political plurality and guaranteed the space for oppositional views to be aired, promoting, however, compromise and consensus as the ideal end point of these encounters. This laid the tracks for the subsequent evolution of the political culture in Costa Rica. The discourse of plurality, democracy and participation, often resulted in a practice that maintained the status quo. Also, after 1948 the State became legitimized as the mediator among classes, allowing the airing of critical discourse, as long as it was channeled through the State to find its resolution. Thus, the different social sectors began to seek political favors and State clout as a means to achieve group interests. In turn, the State sought the co-optation of disgruntled sectors into the system over their defeat and exclusion from it, maintaining in this way the status quo. While some conflicts exploded in strikes, land invasions and police repression, usually these differences were addressed in the pronouncement of new legislation, in the establishment of official branches to deal with the problems, and in the creation of public commissions to resolve the contradictions.
1950s-1970s: The Contradictions of Becoming "Modern"
By 1950 only 66.5 percent of the country remained under forest cover (Fournier 1993:98). One year earlier, the Forestry Council, under the jurisdiction of the Ministry of Agriculture and Livestock (MAG) was created, to care for the rational use of forestry resources. The Council, however, never was able to get off the ground. In 1953 the Law of Soil and Water Conservation was established, for a more rational use of the natural resources. In 1956 the first Law for the Conservation of Wild Fauna was decreed, making the conservation of wildlife a matter of public interest. In 1969, a badly needed Forestry Law was finally established as Law No. 4465. Among other things, this law called for the establishment of Protection Zones, Biological and Forest Reserves, and National Parks. This system of protected areas was soon to grow into Costa Rica's prime jewel of its worldwide environmental reputation.
This period, marked by a growing awareness of the need to protect our natural resources, coincided with the expansion of livestock farming, which began the most accelerated process of deforestation experienced by the country. Between 1950 and 1970 land dedicated to cattle in Costa Rica increased dramatically from 18% to 41% of the national territory. This "pasturization" of Costa Rica was carried out in detriment to the nation's forests, whose cover went from 67% to 41% during the same period (Fournier 1993:98). Despite the Forestry Law of 1969, deforestation continued to mount at an accelerated rate, resulting from its non-enforceability, as well as an ill-conceived land reform that required small farmers to establish their possession by carrying out "improvements" such as clearing the forest on the marginal lands that the Institute of Agrarian Development (IDA) distributed.
As the rate of environmental degradation in Costa Rica climbed precipitously in the 1970s, it was accompanied by an expansion of environmentalist institutional development. The National University and the Technological Institute of Costa Rica both opened Departments in Forestry Science. The newly created General Forestry Directorate, under Forestry Law No. 4465, was given an administrative structure, one of whose administrative entities was the Department of National Parks in charge of dealing with all the issues regarding National Parks, Biological Reserves and Protection Zones. The areas under protection in the National Park System grew from under 2 percent to over 12 percent of the national territory in just ten years, creating a growing mystique beyond the national borders, of Costa Rica as a model protector of its environment.
Interest in environmental issues during this decade emerged not only in State institutions, but among informed sectors of the general public, as well. While Costa Rica's international reputation as an environmentalist State was on the rise, internally the most intense protests against environmental degradation took place. The greatest student struggle during this period was against the environmental threats of the concessions for bauxite exploitation in the Valley of El General that the State Congress gave to the Aluminum Company of America (ALCOA). During these protests, there were serious confrontations between students and State police forces. The outcome of this confrontation was a denial of these concessions to ALCOA, representing a victory for the environmental concerns of the student sector of civil society, against the capitalist interests of a foreign corporation, as well as against the economic interests of an apparently schizophrenic State unable to reconcile its concern over the environment with its desire to maximize its income.
The dilemma of reconciling protection with production, or conservation with development, began to emerge during this decade in the face of ever greater contradictions between the two under the prevalent modes of production. The endless horizons of inexhaustible God-given natural resources, were in effect coming to an end. Between 1963 and 1973 the number of small farms less than a hectare in size went from 50,211 to 10,505, representing the disappearance of 80 percent of subsistence landholdings in just 10 years (Rodríguez 1993:31). During this same period large landholdings greater than 100 hectares, representing 6.5 percent of the farms, controlled 82.4 percent of all farm land (Cartín y Román 1991:13). By 1973, the end of the agricultural frontier had been reached, beyond which any land taken for agriculture, being unsuited for this purpose, suffered rapid degradation. This process of land concentration, together with a growing population resulted in a landless peasantry swelling the ranks of an itinerant rural proletariat, and increased demands for land. With the dominant model of development favoring large scale production of export crops, both the environment and the quality of life among the more modest social sectors suffered.
1980s: The "Lost Decade"
The decade of the 1980s was denominated "the lost decade" for Latin America because of the inability of most of these nations to emerge from conditions of "underdevelopment". Costa Rica was no exception, suffering a severe crisis during this time. In the late 1970s world market prices of coffee and bananas fell, resulting in a catastrophic decline in export revenues. Foreign purchases of ever more expensive oil and mass consumer goods became unpayable, so the government borrowed heavily to finance imports, but onerous interest payments and capital flight due to regional turmoil caused dollar reserves to run out in 1980. This provoked a precipitous devaluation of the national currency the Colón, causing the government to default on numerous loans, and impeding the private sector from importing raw materials and replacement parts. This caused a severe recession with ensuing layoffs and growing unemployment. In the early eighties living standards of the majority of Costa Ricans plummeted. Along with the deterioration of economic and social factors, environmental destruction continued full force. By 1985 forests declined to only one third of the country (Fournier 1993:98).
Like the majority of Third World States, during the "lost decade" the Costa Rican government found itself caught in the straitjacket of unpayable foreign debt, severe austerity programs imposed by the IMF, the World Bank and the United States government, and the clamor of its citizenry against deteriorating economic, social and environmental conditions. Dissatisfaction with the government mounted. Social unrest manifested itself in numerous demonstrations, protests, strikes, threats of strikes, and land invasions. Bloody civil wars in the Central American isthmus, further created tensions in Costa Rica. Human rights abuses by an increasingly militarized police force began to surface after 1980. However, the government generally responded to mobilization of demands by accommodating pressure group initiatives, offering study and compromise to defuse conflict. Compromise and co-optation of organized civil society continued to characterize government practice.
During the 1980s NGOs proliferated in Costa Rica mostly in response to the government's failure to address the deteriorating social and economic conditions, as well as its inability to respond to the nation's growing environmental deterioration. The proliferation of NGOs was further aided by the new attention paid to the NGO sector by foreign cooperation agencies. This new found attention was in great measure prompted by an international change in development theory, fueled by the neoliberal policies of the First World of reducing the size and reach of government, and strengthening the private sector. Additionally, Costa Rica's international reputation as a nation dedicated to protecting its natural environment, along with its political stability, attracted international NGOs such as the International Union for the Conservation of Nature (UICN) and the United Nations Environmental Program (UNEP), to locate their regional headquarters in the country.
By 1985 Costa Rica had 55 areas under protection covering 17.4 percent of the national territory (Fournier 1993:151). The expansion of its protected lands and the international reputation of its parks, contributed to converting Costa Rica into a "Mecca" for researchers of tropical biology, naturalists and ecotourists. This trend quickly converted Costa Rica's natural areas into a commodity from which to extract profits. There was a virulent privatization of Nature, acquired mostly by foreigners who catered to the growing business of ecotourism. Entrance fees to numerous private parks, as well as the cost of eco-adventures such as white water rafting were out of reach for most Costa Ricans. The country's beaches, constitutionally protected as inalienable, in many places were fenced off by foreign private ownership. The privatization of Nature was only one of the many environmental issues of concern during the 1980s which fostered in Costa Rica the birth of many local NGOs with environmental agendas. Other NGOs, whose principal efforts were directed at addressing the problems of social sectors such as small farmers, native communities, and the urban poor, also incorporated environmental issues in their agendas. However, despite avid organizing by civil society, environmental degradation persisted in the country.
While international pressures were for the downsizing of government, the problems of environmental degradation could not be ignored by the Costa Rican State. In 1983 the Tropical Science Center, one of Costa Rica's earliest research NGOs, produced an Environmental Profile of Costa Rica, in which it recommended the creation of constitutional or legal measures to advance the nation's efforts of conservation. It also recommended the establishment of an Agency for the Protection of the Environment to protect the environment "for the future generations" (Hartshorn et al 1983:126). Three years later, in 1986 the Arias administration expanded State involvement, creating the Ministry of Natural Resources, Energy and Mines (MIRENEM). Its tasks were first, "to foment the development of natural resources", and second, "to promote and administer legislation regarding conservation and the rational use of natural resources in order to achieve a sustainable development of these resources" (MIRENEM 1986-87).
By the late-eighties the term of "sustainable development" was solidly in use in Costa Rica. Early in his term, President Arias had the MIRENEM direct a great deal of effort in developing a National Conservation Strategy for Sustainable Development (ECODES), which came to be known by its acronym. In the inaugural address of the presentation of ECODES, President Arias expressed the official perspective on the meaning of this new type of development.
"We are intent on searching for new models of development which will allow us to satisfy the needs of the population. As a principal condition, the new model of development must not impede future generations the opportunity to resolve their own problems and satisfy their own needs... Our goal is for the model of development of Costa Rica to be compatible with the conservation of life in all its forms, a model of true peace with Nature. This desire is compatible with our values and our pacifist tradition" (Arias 1988:22).
In the same document, the Minister of Natural Resources, Energy and Mines, Alvaro Umaña called for a coming together of previously opposed interests.
"Obsolete visions of the conservation of natural resources predominated in the past, where only the absolute preservation of areas unaltered by human hands was sought. Others saw economic development as a process unrelated to society's physical resources, determined fundamentally by economic and monetary variables. With this effort we intend to overcome both positions and focus our sights on a profound social and economic development, based on the sustainable utilization of our basic natural resources....
"It is clear that an effort of this nature cannot be the government's alone, but rather, is truly a national crusade... All sectors of society are called upon to contribute their part in this great national dialogue. The most valuable possible outcome of this effort is a process of democratic strengthening with the active participation of the communities, of the private sector, and of each and every one of us Costa Ricans" (Umaña 1988:30).
During the 1980s the number of areas placed under protection went from 38 to 65, covering 20.31% of the national territory by 1990 (Fournier 1993:151), further adding to Costa Rica's international reputation for its conservation efforts. Internally, however, the creation of these protected areas met with strong pressures from a landless rural population who invaded some of these areas, and from capitalist interests, as well, strongly opposed to the conservationist actions taken by the State, arguing that they imposed unfair limits on the possibility of obtaining profits from the natural resources under State jurisdiction (Rodríguez y Vargas 1988:166). On the other hand, local NGOs criticized the State for the ongoing environmental degradation, and for the blind eye it lent business interests at the expense of the environment (Jiménez 1989:24-25).
1990s: The Hegemony of Sustainable Development
In the early nineties, ecotourism was hailed as the great hope in Costa Rica for sustainable development. Official statistics revealed that in 1992 tourism became the main source of employment in the country, and that in 1993 the tourism industry became the largest earner of foreign currency (Chacón 1994:5). In the National Development Plan of 1990-94, among the salient aspects expressed there was that "Ecotourism should be given high priority due to its proved capability to generate foreign currency and employment, based on natural resources" (cited in MIRENEM 1991:20). In the words of the Minister of Tourism:
"In spite of the multiple economic challenges we are faced with, the country is assuming the responsibility of protecting the natural resources for the future generations.
"Conscious of our responsibilities, in 19