In the framework of the Day of the Tree in Costa Rica, the State of the Nation Report 2017 indicates that one of the most positive aspects in the management of the national territory is the recovery of forest coverage; however, the sustainability of this environmental achievement faces latent threats.
Since the 90s forest loss processes have been reversed. According to the State of the Nation, this unprecedented achievement was made possible due to the application of legal restrictions (prohibition of land use change) and incentives (payment for environmental services) and the consolidation of protection efforts, combined with the reduction in the areas for livestock activity. This change is especially noticeable in the province of Guanacaste, where coverage went from 51% in 2005, to 60% in 2015.
Although the overall balance of forest coverage is favorable, the main challenge facing the country is to ensure the sustainability of these advances in light of the new threats that arise from the occupation patterns of the territories.
In Costa Rica, important foci of deforestation continue to be present. Between 2005 and 2015, Guanacaste lost 63,650 hectares of forest, mainly due to changes in land use for pastures and agricultural crops. This occurred mainly in private farms (6.6%) that are mostly concentrated in the districts of La Garita and Porozal, as well as northeast of Bagaces. The smallest losses are recorded in land located in protected areas (4.4%), although the Costa Rica-Nicaragua National Border Corridor Wildlife Refuge lost more than 1,300 hectares.
The latent threats facing forests can be natural or derived from human activities, such as forest fires, which in 2016 registered the highest number of affected hectares in the last fifteen years (56,139). In protected wild areas, the loss of 6,271 hectares was reported, the most significant in the last eight years; of that total, 85% were lands located in the National Border Corridor Wildlife Refuge and the Guanacaste National Park. The forests are also affected by earthquakes and extreme weather events, since Costa Rica has ecosystems in steep slopes.
Another challenge comes from the productive pressure and the expansion of some agricultural crops. A study carried out by the project “Monitoring land use change in productive landscapes linked to tenure” (Mocupp) found that between 2000 and 2015 the area planted with pineapple went from 11,000 to 58,000 hectares, a figure higher than that reported for the 2014 Agricultural Census, which is 37,660 hectares.
At the same time, new phenomena of an international nature threaten the country’s environmental strengths. In Central America, there is concern regarding the implications of the so-called “narc-deforestation”. One study estimated that between 15% and 30% of deforestation losses in Central America are attributable to cocaine trafficking. On the other hand, a group of experts calculated the monetary value of socio-ecological costs associated with drug trafficking in five zones of protected areas in the region. In four of them, the amount approached 44 million dollars per year between 2001 and 2010, which is equivalent to almost the entire budget devoted by the respective countries to their protected area systems.