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Objective: this paper aims to discuss development practices through the presentation of two case studies from Latin-American contexts. This reflection was done during the first months of the COVID-19 pandemic. Post-development perspectives were mobilized to explore new analytical dimensions in the epistemological and socio-political critique of the capitalist mode of appropriation of nature in América Latina and their potential implications amid the Covid-19 pandemic. Methodology: two study cases from Brazil and Costa Rica were elaborated. The qualitative methodological framework used to identify actors and their complex interactions became a useful tool in reconstructing different socio-political expressions, symbolic narratives, and survival/resistance strategies emerging from local groups. Results: social-environmental crisis emerging in the Anthropocene context suggest the need for different points of view and ontological turns to gain a better understanding of social change occurred in the margins of in the Western world. Latin-American societies are multiple and diverse. Both, Brazilian and Costa Rican experiences discussed in this paper, represent situated realities which cannot be generalized, but this is a rather important and critical issue. These case studies help illustrate how the non-critical adoption of hegemonic categories of sociotechnical control and securitization is inadequate to understand and explain the contingency emerging from these situated realities. Conclusions: we suggest in the final part of the paper that these reflections contribute to bring a different perspective on how science, political and nature converge in knowledge systems and how these systems are contested for different people, groups, and communities around the world. This reflection is crucial to the study of processes concerned with political legitimacy, democracy, and territorial political identities. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This paper is a review of the last two National Development Plans, implemented by the Central Government of Costa Rica. We study the political and institutional evolution of Solís Rivera's (2014-2018) and Alvarado Quesada's (2018-2022) administrations. The objective of the research is to analyze the territorial perspective into public policies for rural development design, and their evolution as part of the instruments aimed at promoting the sustainable development of rural territories. Some specific questions are: how these policies gave rise to specific instruments to address the complexity and intersectoriality of rural problems? What are the effects of these policies and instruments on the sustainable development of rural territories in Costa Rica? What are the challenges of a complementary rural development agenda with a territorial approach. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]