The "Greening" of Costa Rica

The Author: Ana Isla
Publisher: University of Toronto Press
ISBN: 1442626712
Category : Nature
Languages : en
Pages : 223

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Book Description
Drawing on a decade of fieldwork in these communities, Isla exposes the duplicity of a neoliberal model in which the environment is converted into commercial assets, few of whose benefits flow to the local population.

The "Greening" of Costa Rica

The Author: Ana Isla
Publisher: University of Toronto Press
ISBN: 1442626712
Category : Nature
Languages : en
Pages : 223

Get Book Here

Book Description
Drawing on a decade of fieldwork in these communities, Isla exposes the duplicity of a neoliberal model in which the environment is converted into commercial assets, few of whose benefits flow to the local population.

The "Greening" of Costa Rica

The Author: Ana Isla
Publisher: University of Toronto Press
ISBN: 1442620048
Category : Nature
Languages : en
Pages : 223

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Book Description
Since the 1992 Earth Summit in Rio de Janeiro, the concept of sustainable development has become the basis for a vast number of “green industries” from eco-tourism to carbon sequestration. In The “Greening” of Costa Rica, Ana Isla exposes the results of the economist’s rejection of physical limits to growth, the biologist’s fetish with such limits, and the indebtedness of peripheral countries. Isla’s case study is the 250,000 hectare Arenal-Tilaran Conservation Area, created in the late 1990s as the result of Canada-Costa Rica debt-for-nature swaps. Rather than reducing poverty and creating equality, development in and around the conservation area has dispossessed and disenfranchised subsistence farmers, expropriating their land, water, knowledge, and labour. Drawing on a decade of fieldwork in these communities, Isla exposes the duplicity of a neoliberal model in which the environment is converted into commercial assets such as carbon credits, intellectual property, cash crops, open-pit mining, and eco-tourism, few of whose benefits flow to the local population.

The "greening" of Costa Rica

The Author: Ana Isla
Publisher:
ISBN: 9781442620032
Category : BUSINESS & ECONOMICS
Languages : en
Pages : 208

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Book Description


The Green Republic

The Green Republic PDF Author: Sterling Evans
Publisher: University of Texas Press
ISBN: 0292789289
Category : Nature
Languages : en
Pages : 336

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Book Description
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.

The Green Season

The Green Season PDF Author: Robert Isenberg
Publisher:
ISBN: 9789968478779
Category :
Languages : en
Pages : 166

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Book Description
A dynamic collection of essays and reportage, The Green Season illustrates daily life in Costa Rica, a tiny Central American nation dedicated to peace and teeming with tropical life. With his trademark humor and observation, Robert Isenberg describes the people, culture, and biodiversity that make Costa Rica so unique-from a centuries-old indigenous ceremony to a remote jungle crisscrossed by crocodile-filled canals. Isenberg explores the country head-on, fighting his way through San Jose traffic, mingling with venomous snakes, and even making a cameo in an epic soccer film at the height of World Cup fever. Richly detailed and tenderly written, The Green Season is one expat's love letter to his adoptive homeland."

Greening the GATT

Greening the GATT PDF Author: Daniel C. Esty
Publisher: Peterson Institute
ISBN: 9780881322057
Category : Business & Economics
Languages : en
Pages : 348

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Book Description
This text examines the vital connections between trade, environment and development. It argues that current international trade rules and institutions must be significantly reformed to address environmental concerns while still promoting economic growth and development.

Greening the Americas

Greening the Americas PDF Author: Carolyn Deere-Birkbeck
Publisher: MIT Press
ISBN: 9780262541381
Category : Business & Economics
Languages : en
Pages : 406

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Book Description
"Many of the papers included in this volume were first presented and discussed in the Spring of 2000 at a conference on lessons from the NAFTA for the FTAA"--Pref.

Green Phoenix

Green Phoenix PDF Author: William Allen
Publisher: Oxford University Press
ISBN: 9780195347579
Category : Nature
Languages : en
Pages : 346

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Book Description
Can we prevent the destruction of the world's tropical forests? In the fire-scarred hills of Costa Rica, award-winning science writer William Allen found a remarkable answer: we can not only prevent their destruction--we can bring them back to their former glory. In Green Phoenix, Allen tells the gripping story of a large group of Costa Rican and American scientists and volunteers who set out to save the tropical forests in the northwestern section of the country. It was an area badly damaged by the fires of ranchers and small farmers; in many places a few strands of forest strung across a charred landscape. Despite the widely held belief that tropical forests, once lost, are lost forever, the team led by the dynamic Daniel Janzen from the University of Pennsylvania moved relentlessly ahead, taking a broad array of political, ecological, and social steps necessary for restoration. They began with 39 square miles and, by 2000, they had stitched together and revived some 463 square miles of land and another 290 of marine area. Today this region is known as the Guanacaste Conservation Area, a fabulously rich landscape of dry forest, cloud forest, and rain forest that gives life to some 235,000 species of plants and animals. It may be the greatest environmental success of our time, a prime example of how extensive devastation can be halted and reversed. This is an inspiring story, and in recounting it, Allen writes with vivid power. He creates lasting images of pristine beaches and dense forest and captures the heroics and skill of the scientific teams, especially the larger-than-life personality of the maverick ecologist Daniel Janzen. It is a book everyone concerned about the environment will want to own.

Greening the South African Economy

Greening the South African Economy PDF Author: Mark Swilling
Publisher: Juta and Company (Pty) Ltd
ISBN: 1775820696
Category : Business & Economics
Languages : en
Pages : 496

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Book Description
The depletion of South Africa’s (and in some cases the world’s) natural resources and the degradation of environmental sinks (including the atmosphere, lakes and rivers, and land) are continuing at such a rate that natural resource prices are climbing and many critical ecosystem services that underpin human welfare are increasingly threatened. The concept of the ‘green economy’ has gained increasing traction in South African policy discourses over the past few years. However, in much of this discourse it is viewed in a piecemeal way as one part or sector of the economy (e.g. an industrial sector dealing with manufacture and installation of renewable energy technologies and energy-efficient equipment and appliances). In the view of the authors, ‘greening the South African economy’ requires an application of sustainability principles and practices across the full range of primary, secondary and tertiary sectors of the economy in an integrated manner. The aim of this book is therefore to apply principles of sustainability and ‘green economics’ to the entire South African socio-economic system and its major elements in an integrated and comprehensive manner.

The Ecolaboratory

The Ecolaboratory PDF Author: Robert Fletcher
Publisher: University of Arizona Press
ISBN: 081654011X
Category : Social Science
Languages : en
Pages : 385

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Book Description
Despite its tiny size and seeming marginality to world affairs, the Central American republic of Costa Rica has long been considered an important site for experimentation in cutting-edge environmental policy. From protected area management to ecotourism to payment for environmental services (PES) and beyond, for the past half-century the country has successfully positioned itself at the forefront of novel trends in environmental governance and sustainable development. Yet the increasingly urgent dilemma of how to achieve equitable economic development in a world of ecosystem decline and climate change presents new challenges, testing Costa Rica’s ability to remain a leader in innovative environmental governance. This book explores these challenges, how Costa Rica is responding to them, and the lessons this holds for current and future trends regarding environmental governance and sustainable development. It provides the first comprehensive assessment of successes and challenges as they play out in a variety of sectors, including agricultural development, biodiversity conservation, water management, resource extraction, and climate change policy. By framing Costa Rica as an “ecolaboratory,” the contributors in this volume examine the lessons learned and offer a path for the future of sustainable development research and policy in Central America and beyond.