Conflicts within Costa Rican Green
Exceptionalism
Candidate number: 639
QUTVGEM- Individual Home Exam Spring 2024
03.05.2024
Question 1
Number of Words: 4046
Abstract
Costa Rica was on a path of destruction, deforesting the country at alarming rates
throughout the mid-twentieth century. Eventually, they realized the importance and
value of the ecological services their tropical forests provided, turning the tide around
and going as far as banning all deforestation and land-use change of existing forests as
well as creating an extensive network of absolute conservation (Matulis & Fletcher,
2020; Breitling, 2020). Together with other socioeconomic factors such as a global meat
crisis, removal of farming subsidies, and increased remittances, Costa Rica became the
first tropical country to overcome deforestation (Breitling, 2020). Gaining its
international image of green exceptionalists, even though they put themselves into the
situation of destruction and deforestation in the first place. Together with these effective
authoritarian ways of conservation, Costa Rica has and is currently still testing out
neoliberal forms of conservation to achieve its carbon neutrality pledge. These strategies
include tearing down absolute protection in favor of the loosely defined term
“ecotourism,” privatization of land, and market-based conservation programs with
development in mind (Hoffman, 2011; Thornburg, 2014), this with minimal
achievements towards conservation or carbon reduction. Instead having vast negative
socioenvironmental effects on the local population (Hoffman, 2020). Throughout their
time as the ecolaberatory, Costa Rica has utilized different solutions to overcome
capital-made climate change, and it is clear that the government needs to take
authoritative action with stricter regulations for conservation and stronger rights for
nature, while market-based solutions have no place in conservation.
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Contents
Introduction ...................................................................................................... 4
Background of Costa Rican Green Exceptionalism ................................................. 5
Payment for Environmental Services ................................................................. 6
National Parks and Ecotourism ......................................................................... 7
Carbon Neutrality Pledge ................................................................................ 8
Forest Conservation Conflicts .............................................................................. 9
Greenwashing Carbon Neutrality ....................................................................... 10
Conclusion ..................................................................................................... 12
Bibliography ................................................................................................... 14
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Introduction
Costa Rica is a country known for its biodiversity, rainforests, and green nature. Often
seen as a flagship country for environmental policies and conservation of nature.
However, Costa Rica's path to becoming this green idol was turbulent. Following the
forties, Costa Rica was on a path of destruction, deforesting the country at alarming
rates throughout the mid-twentieth century. Eventually, they realized the importance and
value of the ecological services their tropical forests provided, completely turning their
forest policies. Costa Rica created an extensive network of absolute conservation areas
and National Parks in the seventies before going as far as banning all deforestation and
land-use change of existing forests in the nineties (Matulis & Fletcher, 2020; Breitling,
2020). The forest cover reached an all-time low in the eighties before slowly starting the
regeneration process towards today's current levels (FONAFIFO, 2001). From this
process came the green exceptionalist image of Costa Rica, by straying away from the
common route of deforestation, Costa Rica was blazing a trail toward a greener future.
Since the abolishment of the army in 1949 Costa Ricans have prided themselves on
being exceptional. It has become part of their identity and has embraced the path of
peace and security being the “Beacon of stability” in an otherwise rampant Latin
America (Bull, 1999, p.962). This wish to stand out and be a good example is seen as
one of the drivers of public support for the green change and carbon neutrality pledge
made in Costa Rica (Flagg, 2020). Costa Ricans want to be part of the solution rather
than the problem, seeing themselves as a laboratory for sustainable development that the
world can take lessons from (Flagg, 2020). Even if the direct environmental actions of
Costa Rica are minimal on the global scale, achieving their goal of becoming a green
lighthouse of the world could have large political effects when a small and poor country
such as Costa Rica is taking charge in the climate debate they send a clear message to
world-leading countries to get their act together and follow in Costa Rican footprints
(Flagg, 2020).
However, despite its image as a world leader in conservation, troubling conflicts behind
Costa Rica’s conservation could water down the significance of their green
exceptionalism. This paper will investigate these conflicts and give a critical
consideration of two of Costa Rica's grounds for calling themselves exceptional: their
forest rejuvenation, which has succeeded in the regeneration of substantial amounts of
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the forest cover, and its more recent climate neutrality pledge. Also tying them together
with their relevant connections to other aspects of Costa Rican exceptionalism. To
create a better understanding of the Costa Rican exceptionalist image, the paper starts
by looking into the environmental history of the past century.
Background of Costa Rican Green Exceptionalism
The history of Costa Rican Exceptionalism starts with the abolishment of the army in
1949. It gave Costa Rica a peaceful image, relying on international law to solve
conflicts peacefully rather than a limited military power (Eddy & Dreiling, 2016). This
image of peacefulness has followed the development of the country and turned into a
part of their national identity and pride (Flagg, 2020). In turn, Costa Rica became an
icon of democracy and peace in the region. However, the Costa Rican peaceful
exceptionalism did not translate into today's green exceptionalism right away. It took
decades before peace with nature started (Flag, 2020).
In the time following the civil war, Costa Rican cattle farmers and developers charged at
the untouched tropical forests, viewing it as a frontier for development, quickly turning
the forests into farms and cattle ranches (Edelman, 1999; Evans, 1999). This chase for
development was promoted by the government, incentivizing deforestation through
subsidies for farmers and free land titles to those who cleared the forest (Brown & Bird,
2008). Continuing for decades the forest cover in Costa Rica shrank massively until
hitting bottom in the eighties at a mere 26 percent of land area (FONAFIFO, 2001).
The curbing of deforestation rates started during the seventies after the government
realized the negative environmental and socioeconomic impacts brought on by
deforestation (Breitling 2020). First through the ratification and expansion of the
national parks and absolute protected areas in the seventies, and the Forestry Law 7575
establishing the famous Payment for Environmental Services (PES) together with the
prohibition of land-use change (Matulis and Fletcher, 2020). However, there is more to
the story of the forest regeneration of Costa Rica than just what the media and the
government promote and take credit for. Factors such as increased remittances, the
collapse of meat prices, the change towards a service-based economy, and fewer
subsidies for farmers are downplayed. Together these factors caused farms to become
abandoned and overgrown as farmers went looking for wage work in urban areas,
causing unintentional forest regeneration (Breitling, 2020).
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In recent times Costa Rica has kept up their image as exceptionalist partly by being one
of the first countries to adopt a climate neutrality pledge in 2007, inspiring a string of
other countries such as Norway and the Maldives to follow (Flagg, 2020). Despite its
ambitious goal of becoming carbon neutral by 2021, marked by its 200th anniversary,
Costa Rica is still far from neutral (Flagg, 2020). There are contradictions within Costa
Rican environmental history sowing doubt about their true exceptionalism, continuingly
these cases of contradictions will be investigated starting with the renowned Payment
for Environmental Services, engineered by Costa Rica, praised as a revolutionary
marked-based form of conservation.
Payment for Environmental Services
Institutionalized in 1996 as part of the Forestry Law 7575, Payment for environmental
services was supposed to be a market-based system for environmental protection in 4
aspects: mitigation of Greenhouse gas emissions, hydrological services, biodiversity
conservation, and provision of scenic beauty for recreation and ecotourism
(FONAFIFO, 2024; Matulis & Fletcher, 2020). Companies would buy into the system
through carbon credits to alleviate their ecological footprint and to help conserve the
nature they depend on for business (Breitling 2020). However, the market-oriented
aspect of the PES did not catch on right away, and to boost the startup of the program
the Costa Rican Government placed a temporary fossil-fuel tax that would contribute to
the funding of the PES program (Breitling, 2020; Matulis & Fletcher, 2020).
Heindrichs (1997, p.2) believed the program was an important change away from
subsidies towards profitable land use based on sound business principles. However, the
temporary fuel tax is still going strong today, also expanding to a water tax where
businesses pay based on their water consumption, promoting both efficient usage of the
water and providing additional funds for forest conservation (Breitling, 2020).
FONAFIFO (Fondo Nacional de Financiamiento Forestal), the responsible organ for
Payment for Environmental Services, is developing further non-market ways of funding
the program as markets have only contributed about 3 percent of the total income of
FONAFIFO, highlighting the failure of market-based systems for environmental
(Breitling 2020; Blackman & Woodward, 2010).
Despite the setbacks of market-based solutions for conservation, the Costa Rican
government and FONAFIFO, bound to profit motives and profit maximization, still
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strive towards a market-oriented solution to finance the program in the future (Matulis
& Fletcher, 2020). Through its collaboration with the World Bank, which so
devastatingly changed the economic module of Latin America through its structural
adjustment programs (SAPs) accompanying their loans (Matulis & Fletcher, 2020), the
process of neo-liberalization within Payment for environmental services continues.
Risking
the
harmful
social
and
environmental
consequences
accompanying
neoliberalism’s drive for capital accumulation (Matulis & Fletcher, 2020).
National Parks and Ecotourism
The neoliberal way of combining conservation with profitmaking is something Costa
Rica started with in the 1990s, becoming a leader in shifting away from absolute
conservation for conservation's sake, in favor of preservation for development and
profits (Hoffman, 2011). To promote this change they pioneered ecotourism as a way of
reconciling economic growth and environmental conservation through “non-harmful” or
so-called sustainable tourism (Thornburg, 2014). The successful National Park system
was put into effect in the seventies to protect especially vulnerable and valuable natural
areas (Matulis and Fletcher, 2020), but as early as the eighties National parks have been
utilized for development and marketed as a sustainable economic strategy (Hoffman,
2011). By now Costa Rica and their national parks have become a symbol of
“ecotourism,” where tourists pay entrance fees into the park to experience nature and/or
Biodiversity, and in turn, helps protect the area (Honey 2008). Sadly, however, the
“sustainable” tourism industry is causing a flood of other effects outside of its
“protection” of nature.
The boom in Costa Rican tourism and ecotourism has led to massive increases in
population and development surrounding National parks and areas with natural
amenities, causing significant alterations within the rural socioenvironmental landscape
(Hoffman 2020). Despite the goal of conservation within ecotourism, the ripple effects
of tourism, even the tourism for environmental conservation, are massive: Hotels,
resorts, and gated communities are being built directly outside national parks and
protected areas to accommodate coming and returning tourists, causing overuse of fresh
water, waste, and pollution. (Ruttenberg & Brosius, 2017; Thornburg, 2014; Braun et
al., 2015).
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The environmental consequences of building these massive resorts and hotels are vast,
not only in the area being developed for tourism but also where the material extraction
happens, causing nature and biodiversity loss just outside valuable protected areas
(Ruttenberg & Brosius, 2017; Thornburg, 2014; Braun et al., 2015). Just one resort can
consume the same amount of water as the entire communities, and during drought, it is
the locals that need to ration and use their water responsibly, not the resorts causing the
water shortage (Ruttenberg and Brosius, 2020).
For the local population, development can be good if wanted, but tourism-driven
development is not for the locals. It is solely for accompanying the demand from
tourists, pushing Eurocentric development with international companies leading to
massive amounts of revenue leakage and economic inequalities (Ruttenberg & Brosius,
2017; Thornburg, 2014; Braun et al., 2015). This privatization of land, together with
pressure from the World Bank for the privatization of Costa Rican Nature is extensive to
the point of excluding Costa Rican locals from their nature, as well as the outdriving of
local
landownerships
(Noorloos,
2011).
Making
investments
in
ecotourism
environmentally hostile and with negative socioenvironmental impacts (Thornburg
2014).
Carbon Neutrality Pledge
In addition to the land change prohibition, Payment for Environmental Services, and
national parks utilized for ecotourism, Costa Rica's image of environmental
exceptionalism was continued through its 2007 climate neutrality pledge (Flagg, 2020).
In their pledge carbon neutrality was to be accomplished by the 200th anniversary of
Costa Rica's independence in 2021 (Flagg, 2020). Despite Costa Rica’s carbon
emissions being negligible on a global scale, making such strong public commitments
sparks international tension and interest in carbon neutrality by setting an example for
others to follow (Flagg, 2020). Making the point: if poor and developing Costa Rica can
go carbon neutral, then why cannot China and the US with their riches do the same
(Flagg, 2020)? Drawing attention to the failures of the polluters by setting a positive
example, reflecting the rhetoric style of Costa Rica (Flagg, 2020).
However, while a pledge is easy to agree to, implementing it will be a different story as
some believe the pledge only has meaning if there are political changes that follow
(Kythreotis, 2015). Although there have been plans and actions to the pledge, Flagg
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(2020) sees it as mostly symbolic. The initial plans were narrow, not considering
international flights and freight as Costa Rican emissions, leaving out key carbon
emission factors (MINAE, 2009; Flagg, 2020). As time went by, the symbolic nature of
the pledge became clearer as any reduction in emissions was minimal. The Costa Rican
government therefore needed to update their goal and deadlines of carbon neutrality,
moving it up to 2050, almost thirty years later than their optimistic starting point
(Government of Costa Rica, 2019).
Forest Conservation Conflicts
Despite what the media wants you to believe, it was not the Payment for Environmental
Services that engineered the resurgence of forest cover in Costa Rica. It was merely a
Band-Aid to avoid an uprising of landowners affected by the new prohibition of landuse change in the Forestry Law 7575 (Galt, 2020; Breitling, 2020). Initially, the
Payment for Environmental Services paid amounts comparable to what farmers would
make per hectare from cattle ranching (Cameron, 2015), but there have been few
inflation adjustments. Depending on what purpose the protected area serves, per 2015,
recipients would usually not receive more than sixty dollars per hectare each year, much
less than what active land use would make now (Cameron, 2015; Breitling, 2020). The
program has had partial success in the restoration of degraded land but mostly works as
an equalizer for the 7575 prohibition.
By the time of implementation of the Payment for Environmental Services program, the
deforestation rates were already low due to other global socioeconomic aspects such as
the collapse of international meat prices making cattle farming, the main cause of
deforestation, to become unattractive (Breitling, 2020). This, together with the removal
of subsidies from agriculture, made farmers sell or abandon their lands in favor of
moving to urban areas in search of wage labor, leaving their old land to grow over
(Breitling, 2020). When these areas overgrow, they become protected areas by the
deforestation ban and can no longer be altered for commercial use, hence
unintentionally reforestation previous cattle farms.
Furthermore, increased remittances were being sent back to Costa Rica, lessening the
reliance on farming for income and helping to change the economy towards more
service-orientated areas such as tourism (Sanchez-Azofeifa, 2015). However, the
Payment for Environmental Services usually gets the credit as the country tries to
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promote the neoliberal origin and goals of the PES program as the solution, despite it
still being funded by the government-controlled fuel tax, while the deforestation ban is
barely mentioned in a bisentence.
Despite the destruction and conflicts, Costa Rica has done something very few others
have, they saw where the destruction was going and acted. Even if parts of the
reforestation came from flukes or coincidences Costa Rica went from subsidizing
deforestation to outlawing such activities. Marking a clear change in Costa Rican
political policy toward the green exceptionalism they are known for today. Sadly, with
its neoliberal paths, Costa Rica is heading out into an uncertain future concerning their
green exceptionalism.
Greenwashing Carbon Neutrality
As Flagg (2020) highlights, the symbolic effects of Costa Rica’s carbon neutrality
pledge play right into its green exceptionalism image, standing out by being a good
example. With the success of a carbon neutrality pledge, Costa Rica would have made a
full circle from the start of its subsidized deforestation program to becoming carbon
neutral again. Eventually, with the help of its large forests, it could even become carbonnegative like its neighbor Panama, proving to the world that redemption from
destructive activities is possible.
However, its 2021 deadline might have been more internationally inspirational than
emission-reduction effective, as they now move it up to 2050 (Government of Costa
Rica, 2019). But even in the current plans, there are some hiccups to the program, for
example, international aviation is excluded from any plan of carbon reduction, neatly
fitting into its greenwashed form of tourism, and there is little to no mention of
agrochemical or artificial fertilizer usage neither in the carbon neutral plan nor the
climate adaptation plan (Government of Costa Rica, 2018; Government of Costa Rica,
2019).
There is a short mention of sustainable agriculture that includes the reduction of
pesticide use. However, no concrete goals or plans are presented in the publication to
accomplish sustainable agriculture. There is a vague mention of the incorporation of
low-carbon technologies (Government of Costa Rica, 2018; Government of Costa Rica,
2019), but without any direct timelines or details. This execution of proper plans for
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improving agriculture is not exemplary nor unifiable with a green image, especially
with the way Costa Rican agriculture is.
Costa Rica used to have a small-scale, eco-friendly agriculture system of mostly rice,
beans, and maize for domestic purposes (Edelmann, 1999). However, thanks to the neoliberal policies pushed by the IMF, World Bank, and right-winged government at the
time (Matulis & Fletcher, 2020), mindsets of capital accumulation by large-scale
corporations outdrove the small-scale farmers by causing the prices to drop below the
cost of local production, then buying up their land (Galt, 2014).
Crops went from being low-emission produce for domestic markets to becoming highpolluting, pesticide-intensive crops like Pineapple and oil palm for export markets (Galt,
2020). Taking over the country's agriculture production for export also meant that the
previous staple crops of beans and maize were outcompeted, shifting the whole market
to rely on imports rather than autonomous food production (Galt, 2020; Edelman,
1999). Maize, which used to be a Costa Rica grown crop is now the number one import
in the country (Galt, 2020).
Together with the neo-liberal movement was also the change toward meat-based diets,
directly increasing its environmental impacts, hallmarking how a shift towards
neoliberalism impacts the environment (Galt, 2020). Creating rifts in the carbon
neutrality pledge as these emissions from agrifood systems are not recognized in the
original 2007 plans for carbon neutrality (Galt, 2020). Furthermore, even if it is not
directly carbon emissions, the use of Agrochemicals in monoculture production, and the
agroindustry of Costa Rica is detrimental to the surrounding environment and
biodiversity. Costa Rica has one of the highest uses of agrochemicals in the world (Galt,
2014), with cases such as Chlorothalonil which is so harmful that it is banned in many
other countries due to environmental concerns but was still used in Costa Rica until
recently. Chemical overuse is causing massive water pollution and sickness or even
death in the workforce (Galt, 2020). The agriculture sector is one of Costa Rica’s main
environmental concerns, yet it is being ignored in government plans, undermining any
positive exceptionality from the carbon pledge.
Furthermore, green energy is something that Costa Rica prides itself on. However,
hydropower energy in Costa Rica has large environmental effects when it comes to
construction, reservoir flooding, biodiversity, and watershed efficiency (See Fletcher &
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Frece, 2020), yet often lacks proper emission calculations (Fletcher & Frece, 2020).
There are even cases of large government dam projects refusing to release their
environmental impact assessments to the public (Quesada, 2013) causing concerns
surrounding their “green” energy (Fletcher and Frece, 2020). Without these assessments
being part of their emission calculations, Costa Rica’s pledge can come across as just
greenwashing carbon neutrality for fame (Flecher & Frece, 2020), continuing the
dilution of Costa Rica's credibility as being exceptional (Aistara et. al., 2020).
The same goes for their effects of creating sustainable tourism in the form of
ecotourism. What they have created instead is a greenwashed form of mass tourism
almost indistinguishable from traditional tourism (Thornburg, 2014). Ecotourism was
embraced by the private tourism industry, not because they necessarily wanted to make
an environmentally friendly option, rather to profit from gullible tourists believing they
are making a positive impact, embracing the terminology without holding up the ethos
of what eco and ecotourism stand for (Boo, 1999, as cited in Hite, 2020). And when
important emissions such as international flights are being left out of their carbon
calculations, Costa Rica’s new image might be the first tropical country to greenwash
carbon neutrality. Although, that is certainly not an uncommon thing around the world.
This is not to say there are no sustainable ways to see a country, but rather that the form
of mass tourism that is common in Costa Rica often commercialized as ecotourism is
not part of that category.
Conclusion
Costa Rica has a complex backstory for their environmental policy and image starting
back at the abandonment of the army in 1949, before becoming the first tropical country
to overcome deforestation. However, they did not achieve this merit because they as a
country have always cared for and nurtured its vulnerable nature, rather the exact
opposite. Only through governmental subsidies for destruction, deforestation, and
development, causing an environmental crisis, could Costa Rica become reborn and
forge its image as an environmental protector and lighthouse.
There are two major wins for environmental protection pushed through by the
government that allowed for the creation of Costa Rican green exceptionalism: when
they first acted to create an absolute protection program of the most essential nature in
the seventies and banning land-use change away from forests in the nineties. (Matulis
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and Fletcher, 2020; Breitling, 2020). Both came from the government intervening in
marked-based destruction for profit, but as shifts toward more neoliberal policies
happened, suddenly Costa Rica became a leader in moving away from absolute
protection in favor of profiting from the lands in ways that had vast negative
socioenvironmental effects on local people (Hoffman, 2020). Together with the shift
from small-scale farming covering the needs of the locals to importing staple foods and
destructive large-scale agriculture exporting for profit (Galt, 2020), Costa Rica has little
to brag about when it comes to contemporary environmentalism.
Costa Rica may have been the first tropical country to overcome deforestation, but they
surely did not learn from the initial destruction for development. Instead, they are
falling into the same trap over again. This time they can become the first country to
overcome industrial and environmentally hostile agrifood systems that they themselves
allowed the implementation of. Looking to Panama, tropical countries do not have to do
much to be carbon neutral as their unique geographical position and landscape do most
of the work for them, yet still, Costa Rica has gotten to the point where they need to
fight to become carbon neutral, and it will take another twenty-six years.
Throughout their time as the ecolaberatory, Costa Rica has tried different solutions to
overcome capital-made climate change, even trying to use capital accumulation to
overcome the destructive nature of capital accumulation, paradoxically as it may seem.
Throughout their experiments in the laboratory, some clear solutions have worked to
fight the degradation of nature, and many have not. The authoritarian approaches of
government-led programs and stricter legislations concerning the conservation of nature
have worked when the contradictory neo-liberal, capital accumulation approaches have
shown to be a failure often resorting back to non-market ways of conservation as shown
in the case of PES. Clearly showing what model for environmental protection needs to
be put into action to a further extent throughout the world for any environmental change
to happen, and it is not neoliberalism.
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