Ethics and Environmentalism: Costa Rica's Lesson

By Robert Blasiak for United Nations University (UNU)

At first, the story of Costa Rica's forests seems like a tragedy. In the 1940s, over 75 per cent of the country was covered in indigenous woodland, mostly tropical rainforest. In the subsequent decades, however, rampant and unchecked logging ensued as the nation's valuable forest resources were transformed into cash profits. By 1983 only 26 per cent of the country retained forest cover, and the deforestation rate had risen to 50,000 hectares per year.

At this point, something amazing started to happen. By 1989 the annual deforestation rate had dropped to 22,000 hectares per year. The figure dropped even lower to 4,000 hectares per year by 1994 and in 1998 the deforestation rate had dropped to zero. Today forest cover has increased to 52 per cent (double 1983 levels), and the government has set the ambitious goal of further increasing this figure to 70 per cent and achieving carbon neutrality by 2021.

How did Costa Rica achieve such an astonishing reversal of trends? And how is it that over this same time-frame, Costa Rica has shown such impressive gains in social indicators like education level and poverty reduction? Is there a way that other countries around the world currently being devastated by deforestation, desertification and rampant biodiversity loss can achieve similar results?

The right combination

The answer seems to lie in a combination of ethics, environmentalism and effective policy-making. The readiness of key decision makers in Costa Rica to think outside the box may be seen in their decision to disband the country’s standing army in 1948. At a recent presentation on 9 November 2011 at the United Nations University Institute of Advanced Studies in Yokohama, Japan, Costa Rica's Ambassador to Japan, Álvaro Cedeño Molinari, described how at the time this was principally an ethical decision.

Looking back, after 63 years without a military, such a seemingly unconventional decision has proven both brave and useful in channeling additional investment into the country's social and environmental programs. This same forward-thinking set of ethics guided the country to amend its constitution in 1994 to enshrine the right of "every person [...] to a healthy and ecologically balanced environment".

Costa Rica's success in slowing and ultimately reversing the deforestation trend is due to recognition by policymakers of the value of the country's ecosystems. Success can also be attributed to a decision to use payments for environmental services (PES) as a tool for poverty reduction, particularly in rural areas. At the core of Costa Rica's PES program is an understanding that healthy ecosystems provide a wide range of services, including carbon sequestration, water filtration and the provision of habitat for genetic resources, that can potentially be used in pharmaceuticals and natural medicines. By providing financial incentives to landowners, the so-called Tragedy of the Commons — the danger that free resources shared by all gradually degrade over time — can be averted.

These policies demonstrate an understanding that economic well-being is inextricably linked with healthy ecosystems. Or as Ambassador Cedeño Molinari succinctly put it: "One hundred percent of all the inputs and all the raw materials for all industrial and economic processes to produce all the products and services that we use come from the environment. One hundred percent. It’s not a fraction; it's all of them."

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