Abstract
The present chapter focuses on the most recent period, that is, the post-Combo/ICE stage after 2000. I begin with the assertion that the Combo struggle inaugurated a new stage in Costa Rican social movements, and as such, it had an important impact on civic involvement in subsequent environmental issues. Briefly, it can be said that there are two main axes in Costa Rican environmental struggles. First, there is the struggle for land or natural resources, as represented by forestry and mining activities. Costa Rican environmentalism has been very zealous over modern and industrial extraction practices, especially from transnational companies, that imply soil and subsoil alterations as well as changes in forest composition and depletion. The other axis concerns the use of water, manifested in massive campaigns such as local plebiscites against dams. At the local and municipal levels, the movement to protect and defend community sources of water has experienced remarkable growth. That is why this chapter is called Forest, water, and struggle: Environmental movements in Costa Rica. The “forest” serves as a symbol of the living and bountiful earth and “water” as an indispensable resource of life. I add “struggle” as the concept that summarizes our main interest: environmental movements in Costa Rica.
This text is a summarized version of an essay published under the same title as a chapter in the book Aproximaciones al movimiento ambiental en Centroamérica, Margarita Hurtado and Irene Lungo, (comp.), FLACSO, Guatemala, 2007.
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Notes
- 1.
Far-reaching campaign led by the Asociación Ecologista Costarricense (Costa Rican Ecological Association) that opposed a plan to sow and industrialize gmelina ( Gmelina sp)—raw material to make paper, located in the Osa Peninsula, in the South Pacific area of the country.
- 2.
ICE: Instituto Costarricense de Electricidad (Costa Rican Institute of Electricity), founded in 1949, one of the emblematic institutions of the Costa Rican developmentalist state. The “combo ICE” refers to a legislative package that wanted to open and gradually privatize the ICE.
- 3.
There is another author, Eduardo Mora, who partially agrees with Fallas’s typology. Mora classifies “Costa Rican environmentalists” in three categories. One focuses on reconciling the current development model, plus slight modifications, with the recovery of natural equilibrium. “Pure” conservationists focus on conservation without relating it with the current socio-political order. The last looks for a socio-political change as an essential process to foster a different relationship between society and nature (Mora 1998, p. 130).
- 4.
In a paper that could be claimed as foundational of Costa Rican critical ecologism, renowned leader Oscar Fallas traced Costa Rican environmental destruction back to the arrival of the Spaniards in 1492 (Fallas 1992, pp. 9–17).
- 5.
ALCOA was the transnacional Aluminion Company of America. In April 1970 a strong civil opposition to ALCOA began. This involved the strong participation of student movements, especially from Universidad de Costa Rica supported by thousands of high school students. The arguments against ALCOA already included environmental issues, combined with political ones, exemplified by the criticism to the imminent damage to political sovereignty. A very lively description of the events is offered by Alvarado (2001). For a counterculture perspective, the article “Alcoa, los artificios de la calle o de cuán densa puede ser la irrealidad” by Jiménez (2000) is very useful.
- 6.
According to Baldotano and Rojas, this campaign had two great achievements: “it avoided the enclave, because it was clear that there was not enough planning, that it was not grounded on reality and far from the local social perspectives and that it would have negative effects on local communities and the environment.” Besides, this campaign made it easier and called the attention of different social sectors so that they began to reflect on development models, sustainability, and the right of communities to plan and control their resources and define their future (Baldotano and Rojas 2005, p. 11).
- 7.
The analysis of this environmental campaign was brilliantly described and analyzed in a graduate thesis by Rafael Cartagena Cruz in his work “El público vs. Placer Dome. Comunicación y Conflicto Ambiental en el Espacio Público. Communication with emphasis on public relations thesis” Universidad de Costa Rica, San José, Costa Rica., 2000. Other sources are Isla 2002 and Torres 2000b.
- 8.
This campaign will be further described in the following section since it is chronologically located in the analysis scope of this research paper, the year 2000.
- 9.
An example of this type of community participation is the struggle by El Molino in the city of against the pollution of the El Molino River caused by a company named Mundimar.
- 10.
When this text was written in 2006, the struggle against the Central American Free Trade Agreement (CAFTA), which resulted in the referendum of October 2007, had not yet developed. Nevertheless, we can say that the environmental movement participated in the struggle against CAFTA, showing similar characteristics as during the ICE struggle.
- 11.
Information provided by Orlando Barrantes, General Secretary of CONATRAB, one of the participating organizations.
- 12.
In other countries, as is the case of Tela in Honduras, hotel expansion resulted in conflicts with the Garifuna population. They fought a tourism development style based on enclave and also for the manner in which resort hotels dealt with the waste they produce (Alvarado 2008).
- 13.
In the case of mine exploitation in (Puntarenas), it is currently in effect. The mining company has developed an important public relations campaign in order to stop community discontent.
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Ulate, A. (2015). Forest, Water, and Struggle: Environmental Movements in Costa Rica. In: Almeida, P., Cordero Ulate, A. (eds) Handbook of Social Movements across Latin America. Handbooks of Sociology and Social Research. Springer, Dordrecht. https://doi.org/10.1007/978-94-017-9912-6_18
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