‘We used to give hope to the world’: is Costa Rica’s green halo fading?
From his home, José Sanchez looks out at the mountain Cerro Pasquí, in Cartago province, Costa Rica, across ever-expanding fields of cabbage and potato. It wasn’t always like this. Sanchez, 68, recalls a time when the hills were covered in forest, not just farmland for cattle and vegetable crops.
With the rise in crops has come an increase in the use of agrochemicals. Laboratory tests have confirmed that residues of chlorothalonil, a fungicide banned in Europe – and in Costa Rica in recent times – have seeped into the springs of Santa Rosa de Oreamuno, a small agricultural district in the north-eastern hills of Central Valley, and the neighbouring town, Cipreces, affecting a population of nearly 9,000 people.
A truck has been delivering water to Santa Rosa and Cipreces since the end of 2022 because the tap water is no longer safe to drink. But, as the person in charge of managing the water supply in the district, Sanchez fears a larger problem: that the chemical contamination could extend to an entire mountainous strip, and affect 65,000 people.
“I don’t think about myself but about my children and grandchildren, because they will suffer the greater problems,” he says. “We say that Costa Rica is a country that respects the environment, but it’s not really so.”
Even with the new ban on chlorothalonil, water and farmland pollution will remain two of the most pressing environmental challenges facing Costa Rica. The country has one of the highest intensities of pesticide use in the world, and, despite being rich in natural resources, the proportion of its population served by the water supply fell below 90% in 2022.
For decades, pioneering policies in forest protection and conservation have burnished the international image of a sustainable Central American country. But longstanding challenges remain, including high fossil fuel consumption and urban growth.
Onion farming in Costa Rica. Photograph: Jeffrey Arguedas/EPA-EFE
In recent years, environmental programmes have suffered from financial cuts while ecosystems have been overwhelmed by a rise in tourism. Experts say that Rodrigo Chaves’s new government tends to prioritise economic development over environmental protection, which has put previously resolved issues, such as exploration for fossil fuels, back on the table.
“We are in a rough patch,” says Carlos Manuel Rodríguez, who has served twice as environment minister and now leads the environmental fund Global Environmental Facility (GEF). The urgency to accelerate the economy after the pandemic seems to have changed priorities. “Everything must have a productive logic,” the current environment minister, Franz Tattenbach, has said.
The country’s foreign minister, Arnoldo André Tinoco, told delegates at Cop28 in Dubai: “Costa Rica’s ocean territory is 10 times larger than its continental territory, and thus we have historically underestimated our valuable marine resources, which require sustainable management. It’s not about absolute conservation, but about long-term sustainable use in favour of coastal populations.”
Recent analysis by the local research centre State of the Nation, sponsored by public universities, highlights the resurgence of “anti-environmentalist” narratives that risk the return of unsustainable water, energy and soil management patterns.
View of the ocean from El Dominical … Costa Rica’s ocean territory is 10 times larger than its continental territory. Photograph: Jeffrey Arguedas/EPA-EFE
The country’s energy matrix is an example. Costa Rica has long been known for its almost 100% renewable electricity, mainly hydroelectricity, but unusual rainfall patterns due to La Niña reduced this capacity. Last year, the government imported more fuels for thermal power stations and 50% more petroleum derivatives than in 2000, spending the highest amount in history on fuels.
Greenhouse gas emissions from road transport – one in four Costa Ricans has a car – increased by more than 30% in the past decade, according to the Organisation for Economic Cooperation and Development (OECD). As a consequence, more than 88% of the population is exposed to harmful levels of air pollution.
Controls have been weakened and budgets reduced. The idea that the environment is an obstacle to development has grown
Rafael Gutiérrez, former environment official
“Costa Rica is globally known as a green country and ecotourism destination. It should be commended for reversing deforestation, producing all of its electricity from renewables and committing to net zero by 2050,” says the OECD report. “However, energy use and related greenhouse gas emissions rose. Air quality is of concern in major urban areas. Increasing population, urbanisation and tourism have strained the undersized water, waste and transport infrastructure and services. Pressures on the environment are likely to grow with rising living standards and climate change.”
One protected area reflecting the imbalance between nature conservation and tourism is Manuel Antonio national park, the park most visited by foreigners. Located in Quepos, on the central Pacific coast, it has received more than half a million visitors in a year, endangering the mangrove, marine environment and tropical rainforest, according to some.
This year, Costa Rica’s constitutional court ordered a cut in the maximum number of the park’s daily visitors from 3,000 to 1,200, angering Chaves. The president argued that the income from tourism was necessary for inhabitants of this coastal region.
A lagoon contaminated by plastics on Guacalillo Beach, near San Jose, Costa Rica … Costa Rica produces nearly 4,000 tons of garbage daily. Photograph: Jeffrey Arguedas/EPA-EFE
Rafael Gutiérrez served as environment vice-minister in the first year of Chaves’s government before resigning over the government’s environmental policies. “We did very good things decades ago, and we still have good results from that, in addition to having developed the tourism industry,” says Gutiérrez, who also served as national director of conservation areas.
“But we stopped doing it a long time ago. Controls have been weakened, and budgets have been reduced. In some sectors, the idea that the environment is an obstacle to development has grown.”
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Gutiérrez cites Chaves’s request of Norway to help identify potential fossil gas deposits as a first step towards fossil fuels exploration. Decisions such as these, says Rodríguez, are being closely watched by the international community, given Costa Rica’s reputation as a green country. He warns that it may be risking its credibility as co-organiser of the World Ocean Conference 2025 with France.
“We have been a country that gives hope to the world,” he says. “We used to show that paradigms can be broken.”