Skip to main content Accessibility help

We use cookies to distinguish you from other users and to provide you with a better experience on our websites. Close this message to accept cookies or find out how to manage your cookie settings.

Close cookie message
×
Hostname: page-component-7479d7b7d-q6k6v Total loading time: 0 Render date: 2024-07-13T22:42:44.424Z Has data issue: false hasContentIssue false

1 - Costa Rica’s dry north-west

A region in transition

from Part 1 - Cases

Published online by Cambridge University Press:  05 February 2013

By
Blythe McLennan
Edited by
Helena Bender
Helena Bender
Affiliation:
University of Melbourne
Get access

Summary

Introduction

When cattle farmers in Costa Rica’s dry north-west are asked how things have changed over the last 30 years, their reply is: ‘Todo es diferente: Todo, todo, todo.’ ‘Everything is different: Everything, everything, everything’. This chapter reports on the work of a PhD student who went to this region in 2007 to find out why forests were growing back there and what it meant for sustainability. However, a lot more was changing than just the forest cover. Important aspects of the region’s society, economy and culture were rapidly transforming in ways that both challenged and supported its sustainability at the same time. Pursuing sustainability in this place would involve much, much more than just growing back forests.

The dominant land use in Costa Rica’s dry north-west has traditionally been cattle-farming on large ranches (called haciendas in Spanish). However, just as the cattle farmers had said: today ‘everything is different’. Very few large haciendas remain, replaced mostly by smaller farms and in some cases national parks. The government now has a scheme that pays farmers to conserve forest and to reforest old cattle pastures. Tourism has replaced cattle as the main economic activity.

Type
Chapter
Information
Reshaping Environments
An Interdisciplinary Approach to Sustainability in a Complex World
 , pp. 17 - 44
Publisher: Cambridge University Press
Print publication year: 2012

Access options

Get access to the full version of this content by using one of the access options below. (Log in options will check for institutional or personal access. Content may require purchase if you do not have access.)

References

Allen, W. (2001) Green phoenix: restoring the tropical forests of Guanacaste, Costa Rica. Oxford University Press, New York, NY, USA.
Arroyo-Mora, J. P., Sanchez-Azofeifa, G. A., Rivard, B., Calvo-Alvarado, J. C. and Janzen, D. H. (2005) Dynamics in landscape structure and composition for the Chorotega region, Costa Rica from 1960 to 2000. Agriculture, Ecosystems and Environment 106(1): 27–39.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Augelli, J. P. (1987) Costa Rica’s frontier legacy. Geographical Review 77(1): 1–15.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Bebbington, A. and Batterbury, S. (2001) Transnational livelihoods and landscapes: Political ecologies of globalization. Cultural Geographies 8(4): 369–80.Google Scholar
Bray, D. B. and Klepeis, P. (2005) Deforestation, forest transitions, and institutions for sustainability in southeastern Mexico, 1900–2000. Environment and History 11(2): 195–223.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Calvo-Alvarado, J. C., McLennan, B. J., Sánchez-Azofeifa, A. G. and Garvin, T. (2009) Deforestation and forest restoration in Guanacaste, Costa Rica: Putting conservation policies in context. Forest Ecology and Management 258(6): 931–40.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Chazdon, R. L. (2003) Tropical forest recovery: Legacies of human impact and natural disturbances. Perspectives in Plant Ecology, Evolution and Systematics 6(1–2): 51–71.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Clark, W. C. (2007) Sustainability science: A room of its own. Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences 104(6): 1737–8.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Edelman, M. (1992) The logic of the latifundio: The large estates of northwestern Costa Rica since the late nineteenth century. Stanford University Press, Stanford, California, USA.
Griscom, H. P. and Ashton, M. S. (2011) Restoration of dry tropical forests in Central America: A review of pattern and process. Forest Ecology and Management 261(10): 1564–79.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Gwynne, R. N. and Kay, C. (2004) Latin America transformed: globalization and neoliberalism. In Gwynne, R. N. and Kay, C. (eds). Latin America transformed: globalization and modernity (2nd edn). Oxford University Press, New York, NY, USA, pp. 3–21.
Harvey, C. A., Komar, O., Chazdon, R., Ferguson, B. G., Finegan, B., Griffith, D. M., Martínez-Ramos, M., Morales, H., Nigh, R., Soto-Pinto, L., van Breugel, M. and Wishnie, M. (2008) Integrating agricultural landscapes with biodiversity conservation in the Mesoamerican hotspot. Conservation Biology 22(1): 8–15.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Hecht, S. B. and Saatchi, S. S. (2007) Globalization and forest resurgence: Changes in forest cover in El Salvador. BioScience 57(8): 663–72.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Janzen, D. H. (1998) How to grow a wildland: The gardenification of nature. Insect Science and its Applications 17(3/4): 269–76.Google Scholar
Kaimowitz, D. (1996) Livestock and deforestation – Central America in the 1980s and 1990s: A policy perspective. Center for International Forestry Research, Jakarta, Indonesia.
Kates, R. W., Clark, W. C., Corell, R., Hall, J. M., Jaeger, C. C., Lowe, I., McCarthy, J. J., Schellnhuber, H. J., Bolin, B., Dickson, N. M., Faucheux, S., Gallopin, G. C., Grubler, A., Huntley, B., Jager, J., Jodha, N. S., Kasperson, R. E., Mabogunje, A., Matson, P., Mooney, H., MooreIII, B., O’Riordan, T. and Svedin, U. (2001) Sustainability science. Science 292(5517): 641–2.Google Scholar
Kleinn, C., Corrales, L. and Morales, D. (2002) Forest area in Costa Rica: A comparative study of tropical forest cover estimates over time. Environmental Monitoring and Assessment 73(1): 17–40.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Kull, C. A., Ibrahim, C. K. and Meredith, T. C. (2007) Tropical forest transitions and globalization: Neo-liberalism, migration, tourism, and international conservation agendas. Society and Natural Resources 20(8): 723–37.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Lamb, D., Erskine, P. D. and Parrotta, J. A. (2005) Restoration of degraded tropical forest landscapes. Science 310(5754): 1628–32.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Liverman, D. M. and Vilas, S. (2006) Neoliberalism and the environment in Latin America. Annual Review of Environment and Resources 31(1): 327–63.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
McLennan, B. J. and Garvin, T. (2012) Intra-regional variation in land use and livelihood change during a forest transition in Costa Rica’s dry North West. Land Use Policy 29(1):119–30.CrossRef
Myers, N. (1981) The hamburger connection: How Central America’s forests became North America’s hamburgers. Ambio 10(1): 3–8.Google Scholar
Pagiola, S. (2008) Payments for environmental services in Costa Rica. Ecological Economics 65(4): 712–24.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Sanchez-Azofeifa, A. G., Kalacska, M., Quesada, M., Calvo-Alvarado, J. C., Nassar, J. M. and Rodriguez, J. P. (2005) Need for integrated research for a sustainable future in tropical dry forests. Conservation Biology 19(2): 285–6.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Sanchez-Azofeifa, A. G., Quesada, M., Rodriguez, J. P., Nassar, J. M., Stoner, K. E., Castillo, A., Garvin, T., Zent, E. L., Calvo-Alvarado, J. C., Kalacska, M. E. R., Fajardo, L., Gamon, J. A. and Cuevas-Reyes, P. (2005) Research priorities for neotropical dry forests. Biotropica 37(4): 477–85.Google Scholar
Scoones, I. (2009) Livelihood perspectives and rural development. Journal of Peasant Studies 36(1): 26.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Wolf, M. (2001) Will the nation-state survive globalization? Foreign Affairs 80(1): 178–90.Google Scholar
Young, O. R., Berkhout, F., Gallopin, G. C., Janssen, M. A., Ostrom, E. and van der Leeuw, S. (2006) The globalization of socio-ecological systems: An agenda for scientific research. Global Environmental Change 16(3): 304–16.CrossRefGoogle Scholar

Save book to Kindle

To save this book to your Kindle, first ensure coreplatform@cambridge.org is added to your Approved Personal Document E-mail List under your Personal Document Settings on the Manage Your Content and Devices page of your Amazon account. Then enter the ‘name’ part of your Kindle email address below. Find out more about saving to your Kindle.

Note you can select to save to either the @free.kindle.com or @kindle.com variations. ‘@free.kindle.com’ emails are free but can only be saved to your device when it is connected to wi-fi. ‘@kindle.com’ emails can be delivered even when you are not connected to wi-fi, but note that service fees apply.

Find out more about the Kindle Personal Document Service.

Available formats
×

Save book to Dropbox

To save content items to your account, please confirm that you agree to abide by our usage policies. If this is the first time you use this feature, you will be asked to authorise Cambridge Core to connect with your account. Find out more about saving content to Dropbox.

Available formats
×

Save book to Google Drive

To save content items to your account, please confirm that you agree to abide by our usage policies. If this is the first time you use this feature, you will be asked to authorise Cambridge Core to connect with your account. Find out more about saving content to Google Drive.

Available formats
×