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The contribution of environmental fiscal instruments (taxes and fees) used in Costa Rica to finance conversation activities on biodiversity is analyzed. The collection of fiscal income is estimated, as well as its distribution in the different projects in favor of the environment. These tax revenues have contributed to limitations and deficiencies in forest recovery and the protection of bodies of water, mostly located in rural areas, and have incorporated women and indigenous people in these economic and conservation activities. Thus, environmental fiscal policy has contributed moderately to the sustainable development of these rural territories, which makes it urgent for fiscal policy to identify new environmental fiscal instruments that redirect towards a resilient and inclusive development. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Summary: Creating landscapes with connectivity is vital for protecting biodiversity and meeting the environmental targets embedded in the United Nations Sustainable Development Goals, with connectivity specifically mentioned in Target 11 of the Convention on Biological Diversity Aichi Targets. Costa Rica created the National Biological Corridor Program (NBCP) in 2006 to enhance connectivity among protected areas. Targeted investments of payments for environmental services (PES) are the main tools used within the designated biological corridors. We conducted spatially explicit analyses to determine whether Costa Rica's NBCP, using PES, enhanced landscape connectivity within the Paso de las Nubes Biological Corridor. We conducted landscape modelling in order to determine the connectivity held within PES's properties by developing connectivity resistance surfaces and electrical current models. The results indicate that PES properties established after the NBCP contributed more to areas with intermediate values of connectivity and less to areas with high connectivity values as compared to properties before the NBCP. Although overall connectivity within the corridor has decreased since NBCP establishment, our results confirm the importance of PES properties for landscape connectivity, but emphasize the need for spatially targeted PES in order to improve viable paths of landscape connectivity among protected areas. Future targeted PES investments could contribute greatly to meeting connectivity goals. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This article focuses on delineating the conditions under which the governments of poorer countries become active defenders and protectors of the environment. It does so based on field work in two poorer countries, El Salvador and Costa Rica, where the governments have instituted moratoria on financially lucrative but environmentally destructive mining in order to protect the environment. Building on these case studies and prior work, the article posits three conditions—related to civil society, the private sector, and the public sector—under which governments of poorer countries implement policies that favor environmental ends over shorter term economic rewards. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Payments for environmental services (PES) are popular despite little empirical evidence of their effectiveness. We estimate the impact of PES on forest cover in a region known for exemplar, implementation of one of the best-known and longest-lived PES programs. Our evaluation design combines sampling that incorporates prematching, data from remote sensing and household surveys, and empirical methods that include partial identification with weak assumptions, difference-in-differences matching estimators, and tests of sensitivity to unobservable heterogeneity. PES in our study site increased participating farm forest cover by about 11% to 17% of the mean area under PES contract over eight years. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The Master's Tools Will Never Dismantle the Master's HouseAudre Lorde (1983) ABSTRACT Recently, a number of prominent conservationists have declared the last quarter century of global efforts to unite conservation and development through so-called integrated conservation and development projects (ICDPs) an overwhelming failure, asserting that there are likely to be irreconcilable trade-offs between environmental preservation and enhancing human well-being that future policy will have to take into account. I suggest, however, that such trade-offs may be less an inherent feature of the world than an artefact of the neoliberal governance model upon which the global conservation movement increasingly relies, as embodied in the ICDP approach. In eschewing questions of resource redistribution and instead depending on economic growth to address social inequality, neoliberal conservation strategies often paradoxically force into opposition the very conservation and development interests they ostensibly seek to reconcile. This thesis is illustrated through discussion of Costa Rica's Osa Peninsula, a celebrated biodiversity hotspot where conservation interventions increasingly emphasize neoliberal market mechanisms designed to incentivize preservation by demonstrating the economic value of in situ natural resources. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The article focuses on carbon neutral environmental policies in Costa Rica. It considers Costa Rica's commitment to being carbon neutral by the year 2021 and discusses the extent of Costa Rican environmental policies. The author cites international efforts related to controlling climate change and comments on how these proposals have been adopted in Costa Rica since 2007. She also assesses efforts to control industrial and vehicular emissions and reflects on the impact of these policy decisions on Costa Rican public opinion and debate.

The article provides a brief sociological comparison of two processes that occurred recently in Costa Rica that may be studied from the theoretical prism of governance on a local scale. The first one refers to the partial and temporary closing of the Hotel Allegro Papagayo, located in Guanacaste, ordered by the Ministry of Health as a response to the requests placed by the neighbors given the contamination that the Hotel was causing to the estuary and the surroundings. The political decision took into account the general interest and was not even objected by the rest of the hotel owners. The second process refers to the construction and enlargement of the aqueduct of Sardinal, also in Guanacaste, that began to develop a private partnership in order to assure, with priority, the provision of water to some hotel owners, putting at risk the future supply of water to the local neighbors. The combination of private and public agents, is an example of a partial and biased process of governance that was legally objected, thanks to the mobilization of local organizations, who brought down to a hall, although temporarily, the works of the aqueduct. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

I discusses the current situation in the conservation of the natural patrimony of Costa Rica, in particular in the national parks and biological preserves, where is remarkable the lack of a bigger number of ranger that take care of the control and protection in the wilderness areas. The case of the Biological Preserve Alberto Ml. Brenes in San Ramón, Costa Rica, is analyzed. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This paper draws on Bourdieu's notion of 'the field', a contested domain of relations of power, as a way to think about the social relations of environmentalism. More specifically, we suggest that talk about the environment and its protection is an increasingly important arena of struggle for social legitimacy and distinction. We illustrate that point through a consideration of two situations in Costa Rica, drawing on our own and others' research. The first is Costa Rican farmers talking about their encounters with environmentalism in the Monte Verde highlands. The second is European migrants in a small coastal village talking about the environment and threats to it. In both, talk about the environment involved comparing and contrasting the ways that different sorts of people were said to relate to nature and the surroundings, and it identifies one set of people as better suited to protect the environment than others. However, that talk took place in a situation where environmentalism is a key form of symbolic capital, interchangeable with and inextricably linked to other forms of social and economic power, deployed in ways that set the rules of the game in favour of some people and not others. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Environmental education is commonly claimed to be at the centre of efforts to achieve sustainable development. Since the 1980s, Costa Rica has been one of the acknowledged leaders in efforts to promote environmental learning, and national policy includes a three-fold national development strategy which simultaneously promotes education, conservation and ecotourism. As of yet, however, what is happening ‘on the ground’ has not been examined in much detail. This article addresses this gap in the literature by providing an overview of the diverse programmes and actors involved in environmental education in Costa Rica, as well as analysing the politics of its implementation. [Copyright &y& Elsevier]

Se discuten la evaluación y el análisis de las políticas y programas de desarrollo rural y ambiental. En particular, se enfoca en el impacto que generan en la calidad de vida y en el manejo de servicios ambientales. Se presentan seis artículos sobre las experiencias de productores y productoras en Venezuela, Costa Rica, Colombia, México y Argentina.

Costa Rica's Biodiversity Law of 1998 is perhaps the most comprehensive legislation implementing the Convention on Biological Diversity. It includes provisions to better protect the intellectual property rights of rural communities regarding uses they have developed for natural resources and plants and animals they have bred. This article addresses how groups representing these peoples-the National Indigenous Board and National Peasant Board-obtained these provisions despite opposition from traditionally more powerful scientific and business communities. Data were collected on the formulation of the Biodiversity Law through qualitative techniques, including intensive interviews and archival research. It was found that fortuitous political conditions, or political opportunity structures, were crucial to the success of organizations representing rural communities. These supports included better-resourced allies, favorable international legal obligations and public opinion, and existing law that could be built on. Indicating broader patterns, it also was found that such political conditions have been salient during indigenous and peasant political activism elsewhere in Latin America and during formulation of similar biodiversity policy in developing countries. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Abstract: This study examined the efficiency of programs supporting the conservation of forest resources and services through direct payments to land owners; or payments for environmental services (PES). The analysis is based on a sample of farms receiving and not receiving PES in the Osa Peninsula, Costa Rica. Results indicate that payments have limited immediate effects on forest conservation in the region. Conservation impacts are indirect and realized with considerable lag because they are mostly achieved through land use decisions affecting non-forest land cover. PES seem to accelerate the abandonment of agricultural land and, through this process, forest regrowth and gains in services. This would be a double gain (current plus future forest services) except that our results also suggest that, in the absence of payments, forest cover would probably be similar in PES and non-PES farms and that forest regrowth would also take place, albeit at a slower rate. These findings have important policy implications. Specifically, they suggest that, locally, payments could be more effective if they are used for restoration purposes. In their current form, PES landholders have no long term obligation to let abandoned lands revert to forest. Payments for restoration would remove this uncertainty. Because of the lag in conservation outcomes, they may also be insufficient at larger geographic scales if there are other forest areas where the immediate risk of habitat and service loss is higher. In the short run, resources would be better used if invested in these higher-risk areas. At a more general level, this study lends support to the growing expectation that project administrators improve their capacity to target payments where they are most needed and not simply where they are most wanted. [Copyright &y& Elsevier]

The article presents a historical pursuit of how environmental education has suffered and of how this has moved from the 1980s to the 20th century including tendencies related to sustainable development. The transformation is analyzed focusing on the suffering of nature and the notion of "object," modeled from the XVIII century Emilio of Rousseau, and how it ends up becoming the modern conception of ecosystems. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This study aims to identify how institutional forces, such as regulatory and stakeholder pressures, are related to proactive environmental behavior by hotel facilities participating in Certification for Sustainable Tourism, a voluntary environmental program established by the Costa Rican government. This program is among the first third-party performance-based environmental certification initiatives implemented in the developing world. Findings suggest that voluntary environmental programs that include performance-based standards and third-party monitoring may be effective in promoting beyond-compliance environmental behavior when they are complemented by isomorphic institutional pressures exerted by government environmental monitoring and trade association membership. These results are consistent with neo-institutional theory from the organizational sociology literature. Surprisingly, findings also indicate that compared to locally owned hotels, foreign-owned and multinational subsidiary facilities do not seem to be significantly correlated with higher participation and superior environmental performance in Certification for Sustainable Tourism. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This paper provides an overview of the potential environmental benefits in Costa Rica of increasing the relative tax rate on imported used cars. Analysis of this policy instrument has been chosen because Costa Rican fiscal policy has traditionally favoured the import of used cars. Moreover, a tax which differentiates between new and used cars can be a good proxy for taxes based directly upon emission levels. The results of the simulation reveal considerable environmental benefits in terms of nitrogen oxides, hydrocarbons and carbon monoxide emissions. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Two decades of developing relevant legal and institutional regimes for the sustainable and nondestructive use of natural resources have framed Costa Rica's pioneer approach to mitigate climate change and conserve its rich biological diversity. This policy framework provides an appropriate context for the actual and proposed development of market instruments designed to attract capital investments for carbon sequestration and biodiversity conservation, and allows the establishment of mechanisms to use those funds to compensate owners for the environmental services provided by their land. As a developing economy. Costa Rica is striving to internalize the benefits from the environmental services it offers, as a cornerstone of its sustainable development strategy. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Assesses Costa Rica's plans for innovative tropical conservation. Vacuum in deciding what constitutes diversity; Chemical prospecting; Progress; Enlisting parataxonomists; A boon to systematics; Worldwide acclaim for new approaches.

The article analyzes and compares pesticide-related policies and programs in Costa Rica and Nicaragua. It provides insights into the causes of policy ineffectiveness as well as the roots of pesticide problems in both countries. It presents case studies that reveal issues that are important in forming effective strategies and approaches needed to reduce chemical dependency to optimize pesticide use and improve pest control. The article concludes that policy effectiveness can only be achieved if there is strong support, apparatus and organization not only for law enforcement but for reforms and new projects related to pesticide use.

At the end of my undergraduate studies in economics I was ready to go into graduate studies in finance, monetary policy or macroeconomics. At that time in my country, the choices were not much broader than that. In order to complete my studies I needed 30 days of community work, so I went to Ostional National Wildlife Refuge (ONWR), one of a few places in the world where sea turtles come to nest in massive numbers. My task was to craft a set of rules and incentives for the local community to organize better around the unique resources of this protected area. [ABSTRACT FROM PUBLISHER]

Over the last decades, Costa Rica became established as a world-leading ecotourism destination due to its environmental policies and environmental awareness. The country is located in a dynamic region where the combination of tectonics and volcanism, and tropical climate and vegetation have molded its landscapes. Our aim is to carry out a review of the geodiversity, geoconservation, and geotourism status in Costa Rica. We analyzed different geomorphic environments (volcanic, coastal, karstic, glacial, and fluvial), prospecting the importance of environmental policies and the Conservation Areas National System for the promotion of national geoheritage through geotourism. Our results are critical for the promotion of geosciences to the wider public throughout geotourism and conservation decision-makers. In dynamic, geomorphic, tropical, and developing countries with strong anthropic pressures over their geo- and biodiversity, geoheritage studies might be a priority for increasing their revenues through geotourism and reducing the pressure on their natural resources. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Reports on the first assembly of the International Union for Conservation of Nature and Natural Resources in Central America. 1,000 delegates and observers from 93 countries who attended the Costa Rica event; Quality of the assembly; Workshops, seminars and other forums for exchanges of ideas; Background on the IUCN; Events; Re-election of the president of the union.

Choices among environmental management alternatives involve tradeoffs where, for example, the benefits of environmental protection may be offset by economic costs or welfare losses to individual agents. Understanding individual or household-level preferences regarding these tradeoffs is not always straightforward, and it often requires an analysis of choices under alternative scenarios. A household survey was used to gather data for a choice experiment, where respondents were asked to choose among pairs of alternative management scenarios about pineapple production in Costa Rica. The experimental design consisted of six attributes that varied on between two and five attribute levels, and the experiment and accompanying survey were administered orally in Spanish. The results show that respondents are willing to make tradeoffs with respect to the management attributes in order to see an overall improvement in environmental quality. Respondents were willing to accept a moderate level of pesticide application, presumably in exchange for paying a lower cost or seeing a gain in another area, such as monitoring or soil conservation. Buffer zones were significant only in the case of large farms. The results have implications for policy decisions that aim to reflect public attitudes, particularly the aspects of pineapple production that matter most to people living near pineapple plantations. The study also highlights the effectiveness of the choice experiment approach in examining household preferences about environmental management in a rural development context., (Copyright © 2013 Elsevier Ltd. All rights reserved.)