Costa Rica

Indigenous, peasant, traditional and Afro-descendent peoples from the Amazon region and Central America call organizations and social movements all over the world to endorse this declaration rejecting carbon projects in their territories.

(Only available in Spanish). Documental sobre la expansión de monocultivos de palma aceitera y piña en América Latina, realizado por Aldo Santiago, periodista mexicano independiente, y Claudia Ramos, integrante de la organización Otros Mundos A.C./Amigos de la Tierra México. Duración: 35 minutos. Idioma: Español.

REDD: A Collection of Conflicts, Contradictions and Lies presents summaries of reports from 24 REDD projects or programmes with a common characteristic: they all show a number of structural characteristics that undermine forest peoples' rights, or fail to address deforestation. As offset projects, they all fail to address the climate crisis because by definition, offset projects do not reduce overall emissions: emission reductions claimed in one place justify extra emissions elsewhere.

Costa Rica is currently known throughout the world for its efforts in forest conservation. This “success” is mainly attributable to its Payment for Environmental Services (or PSA for its initials in Spanish), a forerunner to the REDD program in Costa Rica.

The concept of protected areas, born in the United States in the nineteenth century as an idea of conservation by establishing “national parks,” was part of the colonization of the “Wild West” and, in many cases served as an instrument to appropriate indigenous peoples’ territory, handing it over to the States, research centres or corporate interests.  Although an international organization such as the International Union for the Conservation of Nature (IUCN) has acknowledged that when establishing protected areas, indigenous peo

Back in 2003, we said that “using the term reforestation for the establishment of a monoculture tree plantation has historically conferred on this type of activity all of the positive characteristics that people rightly associate with a forest, although this is far from the actual reality” (Ambientico magazine, issue 123, December 2003,www.una.ac.cr/ambi/Ambien-Tico/123).

Between 24 and 28 March 2009, in Heredia, Costa Rica, the World Rainforest Movement (WRM) brought together civil society organisations from around the world to address the subject of climate, forests and plantations and their interrelations with local communities. 

On 17 December 2001, by Resolution # R-578-2001-MINAE and in a totally underhand manner, the Costa Rican Ministry of the Environment and Energy (MINAE) granted a concession for the exploitation of an open-cast goldmine using leaching with cyanide to Industrias Infinito S.A. a branch of the Canadian transnational corporation Vanesa Ventures.