The Green Republic: A Conservation History of Costa Rica

by Sterling Evans

With over 25 percent of its land set aside in national parks and other protected areas, Costa Rica is renowned worldwide as "the green republic." In this very readable history of conservation in Costa Rica, Sterling Evans explores the establishment of the country's national park system as a response to the rapid destruction of its tropical ecosystems due to the expansion of export-related agriculture. Drawing on interviews with key players in the conservation movement, as well as archival research, Evans traces the emergence of a conservation ethic among Costa Ricans and the tangible forms it has taken. In Part I, he describes the development of the national park system and "the grand contradiction" that conservation occurred simultaneously with massive deforestation in unprotected areas. In Part II, he examines other aspects of Costa Rica's conservation experience, including the important roles played by environmental education and nongovernmental organizations, campesino and indigenous movements, ecotourism, and the work of the National Biodiversity Institute.

Genres: History, Latin American History

335 pages, Paperback

First published January 1, 1999

Reviews

[sarah morgan · Rating 3 out of 5]

This history of Costa Rica's conservation movement is a bit sugar-coated with rose-colored optimism. Especially for those of us living here and hearing the chainsaws on a regular basis...I would have liked something a bit more hard-hitting about conservation and the loss of natural habitat to tourism. Still giving it three stars because it was interesting, but I think the material is dated.

[Kai · Rating 3 out of 5]

speed read this so i could have missed some details. overall it's a pretty descriptive but analystically lacking history of conservation practices in costa rica. still it's got some nuggets that, in the right hands, could be more productively analyzed. these include the role of foreign individuals, governments, peace corps voluntiers, and the UN in training, financing, and shaping the character and geography of national parks, the way that resisting IMF debt payments and other suggestions allowed CR to partially/temporarily resist the worst aspects of austerity facing other Latin American and tropical countries around the world.

some excerpts:

swedish antihumanist colonizer couple establishes a park, complete with rangers/cops: https://twitter.com/kaibosworth/statu...

alternatively, the role of syndicalists / communists in establishing Manuel Antonio: https://twitter.com/kaibosworth/statu...

a Marxist state-theory viewpoint which reads as more complete: https://digitallibrary.tulane.edu/isl...

[Keith · Rating 5 out of 5]

Having spent 1971 to 1975 as a Peace Corps volunteer in Costa Rica working with both the newly created national parks program and, later, at the National Museum, I found Evans' account extremely informative and accurate. I only wish I had known all the history that preceded my arrival...and also all that happened after I left the country to move to Colombia in 1976. I have been trying to contact the author to express my thanks for his remarkable efforts to chronicle the earliest conservation attempts and all that transpired until the book's publication in 1999. Someone needs to do a similarly thorough treatment of the years since, as a great deal of fascinating history has been made in the meantime.