Anyway, back to the question of paradise. In spite of all the problems of a third world nation, I was impressed by the commitment to the environment that I saw in Costa Rica. Being part of a small population must give one a sense that one's efforts can have a real impact - I heard someone in San Jose talk about how a gold mining company had been harassed and prevented from investing by those crazy environmentalists* (The comment was made by a Costa Rican who wanted more development). But the truth is that gold mining, as I've heard it described, has some incredibly negative associations. When you look at the environmental and economic legacy of industrial gold mining, things like contamination with mercury or cyanide spring to mind. I've also read that the tonnage of earth that has to be moved to find minuscule amounts of gold is ___ (hmm... I'll look it up and insert it later - but the ratio leads one to doubt the morality of gold as jewelry or even as currency).
On the other hand, way back in the mid-80s, when I lived in Costa Rica, the government was struggling to keep small scale gold prospectors from destroying protected land in a national park near Golfito (Corcovado). If I'm remembering correctly, the prospectors used water at high pressure to just denude the land... No need to romanticize artisan gold mining, it can be very damaging also.
My point is that, rather than being a simple black and white issue of "keep all mining investment out", IF citizens are able to force a large company to play by fair rules, in the end, this may leave the country better off than a sort of wild-west gold rush event. The large international corporations are easier targets for the ire of locals. Whatever their specific gripe (labor conditions, environmental damage, unfavorable concessions), nationalism allows alliances between sometimes unlikely partners. While I'm no fan of unthinking nationalism, this type of protest can lead to positive reforms for labor or the environment; i.e. it's easier, in a democracy, to pressure and shame a large corporation to change than it is to stop abuses by local producers (especially when you're dealing with fragile economies).
So, Costa Ricans are determined to design their own style of development, and I support that. Tourism has been an incredible boon to the ability to just say NO to some international corporations, but tourism itself is, at best, a mixed blessing. This reminds me of a phone conversation I overheard in the pulperia (small neighborhood shop) near the school where L studied English. I thought the guy's prices were a tad high, and after this conversation I knew why (assuming he wasn't just charging us extra for being foreigners); he was about to invest in a friend's tourism venture (restaurant/hotel). How do you keep the country's most beautiful areas from being over-developed, while still allowing the average Costa Rican to feel as though tourism can be a ticket to well-being?
Anyway, from a purely personal perspective, the frustrating thing I found (as the type of tourist who hopes that her tourism dollars go to improve the lot of Costa Ricans, and allow the nation to continue to support a green agenda in general) was that so many of the souvenirs were "hecho en la China", even things that surely could have been made by Costa Ricans: coffee mugs, decks of playing cards, watch bands, textiles, jewelry, you name it. I had to make a special effort to find local products. And this was true even in the airport stores selling relatively expensive knick knacks to tourists; a saw an employee holding up a nice piece of textile with a coastal/beach motif. He was holding it up for someone else, and like a spoil-sport I asked if it was made in Costa Rica. He said, "Yes," but I looked for the tag which said ... either Indonesia or the Philippines, I can't remember. The worst case, though, (not that I did much shopping or touring) was the very expensive gift store at the site of the teleferico tour near the national park Braulio Carrillo; at least half of the items for sale were from China, and it just seems more galling because this is a private company that touts it's commitment to the country's ecology.
* During this (2010) conversation about environmentalists' opposition, I remembered reading about a similar case in an old textbook which, miraculously, I was able to find when I got home. In 2002, Costa Ricans successfully organized to stop Harken Energy (Texas) from off-shore drilling. That year the new president said that Costa Rica could not be "an oil enclave or land of open-pit mining." (Global Studies: Latin America, 11th ed. McGraw Hill, 2004, p. 198; It was originally from an article by Mark Engler & Nadia Martinez in New Internationalist, October 2003).
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