Costa Rica
I. Summary of Conclusions
1. JAI commends Costa Rica for being a climate leader on mitigation and encourages further leadership in creating pathways to net-negative societies so as to halt warming.
2. JAI encourages Costa Rica to implement further adaptation pathways to address climate challenges, particularly impacts on vulnerable and marginalized peoples and communities who may be at severe risk from sea-level rise, disappearing rainfall, extreme weather events, and other climate change impacts.
3. JAI encourages Costa Rica to take greater action on the impacts of hunting and the capturing of animals, which has had a devastating effect on biodiversity, in order to protect the right to a clean, healthy and sustainable environment.
4. JAI encourages Costa Rica to protect the human rights and the self-determination of Indigenous Peoples within Costa Rica, including their connection to their lands, territories, and resources as well as their cultural integrity.
5. JAI encourages Costa Rica to do more to protect human rights defenders.
II. Costa Rica is a Global Leader in Mitigation and Climate Action
6. JAI applauds Costa Rica for its climate leadership on the global stage. Costa Rica’s commitment to mitigation is evinced by their 0.02% share of global emissions, 98% renewable energy usage, recovery of forest cover to upwards of 53%, and the enactment of the National Decarbonization Plan[1]. Further, the Ministry of the Environment and Energy (MINAE) and National System of Conservation Areas(SINAC) are leading efforts, resulting in over 25% of the land in Costa Rica being protected by national parks, wildlife refuges, marine sanctuaries, national reserves, conservation areas, and biological reserves.[2]
7. The National Decarbonization Plan was launched in February 2019. The plan intends to chart a course towards achieving net zero emissions by 2050 and fulfilling Costa Rica’s obligations under the Paris Agreement.[3] The Plan directs reforms in transportation, energy, waste, and land use.[4] According to the Climate Action Tracker, Costa Rica’s policies and actions are rated as “1.5ºC compatible.”[5]
8. Transportation accounts for 40% of Costa Rica’s total emissions. Under the National Decarbonization Plan, all public buses and taxis will emit zero emissions and an electric train will connect 15 of the 31 neighborhoods in the San José metropolitan area.[6] Innovative legislation has also been introduced, such as mandating municipalities to build bike lanes into all new roads and tax breaks for companies that build bike racks and buy bicycles for their employees,[7]. Various financial tools have been successfully implemented to incentivize private uptake of electric vehicles (EVs) with a corresponding increase in key infrastructure to support public and private EVs.[8] Costa Rica’s government predicts that, by 2035, 70% of the country’s buses and 25% of its cars will be electric and that, by 2040, the number of cars circulating in urban areas will be halved.[9]
9. We commend Costa Rica for not engaging in the extractive fossil fuel industry and utilization of 98% renewable energy.[10] In 2019, Costa Rica extended its moratorium on oil exploration and exploitation until 2050 and has since proposed enshrining the moratorium in law.[11] However, future policy must address Costa Rica’s reliance on oil revenue via fuel, vehicle import, and driving taxes that account for 12% of government revenue.[12]The National Decarbonization Plan does account for some of this adjustment. Under the plan, the state-owned petroleum distributor will research alternative energy solutions and transition workers from fossil fuel to clean energy industry.[13]
10. Waste and Land Use. Under the Plan, forest cover will be increased to 60%, and Costa Rica will continue to invest in solutions for the collection, separation, reuse, and disposal of waste.[14] Agriculture accounts for 36% of Costa Rican land use and 14% of its employment;[15] thus, agriculture must receive considerable attention as Costa Rica aims to reach its admirably high goals in the coming decades. To that end, Costa Rica should continue enacting and developing plans like its National Low-Carbon Livestock Strategy, increasing financing for low-carbon technologies, and reducing inefficient pasture areas.[16]
III. Areas of Vulnerability Future Policy Must Address
11. Biodiversity. Home to 500,000 different species of mammals, birds, reptiles, amphibians, fish, invertebrates, and plants, Costa Rica accounts for more than 6% of the world’s biodiversity despite Costa Rica covering only 0.03% of the world’s surface.[17] The majority of Costa Rica’s biodiversity is found within their forests, of which there are four types: rainforest, humid forest, cloud forest, and dry forest.[18]
12. Threats to Biodiversity are various but often associated with human activity. Of the 179 species that are considered threatened, 70 are “vulnerable,” 76 are “endangered,” and 33 are “critically endangered.”[19] Threats to biodiversity implicate the right to a clean, healthy, and sustainable environment.
13. Deforestation, driven by agriculture and forest fires, is a major threat to biodiversity.[20] Historically, agriculture has driven massive periods of deforestation across Costa Rica reaching its peak in 1987 when forest cover was only at 21%.[21] This deforestation was largely driven by cattle ranching, subsistence production, and industrial agriculture.[22] Today, around one-third of the country remains cattle pasture and huge swaths of land have been dedicated to pineapple production, making Costa Rica the world’s largest pineapple exporter.[23] Agricultural practices are also a significant driver of forest fires as farmers often intentionally set fires to stop advancing forests, burn off cover, and stimulate grass growth for their cattle.[24] Hunters also frequently set fires to create meadows and concentrate game.[25]
14. Relatedly, habitat fragmentation, the process through which a large area of habitat is transformed into a number of smaller, isolated, and dissimilar patches that are too small and sparse to maintain populations, is a second major driver of biodiversity loss.[26]
15. Climate change, particularly through its impacts on precipitation, temperature, and climatic events is another significant threat to Costa Rica’s biodiversity.[27] The UN IPCC projects that by 2080 Central American temperatures will increase by 1-5ºC during the dry season and 1.3-6ºC during the wet season. The IPCC also projects that by 2080 overall precipitation in Central America will decrease by 30% or increase by 5% with high spatial variability.[28]
16. Historically, Costa Rica has only experienced approximately 25 dry days each year, but now that number has risen to exceed 100 dry days each year.[29] Fluctuations in temperature and precipitation have an immense effect on forests and can lead to significant changes in the amount and/or the character of Costa Rica’s forests.[30] Many species have adapted to their environments, such that these sorts of fluctuations can have catastrophic consequences for local flora and fauna.[31] Costa Rica is also vulnerable to extreme weather events, in part due to the El Niño-Southern Oscillation cycles (ENSO) that cause extreme droughts on Costa Rica’s Pacific Coast and extreme flooding on the Caribbean coast. Costa Rica is also prone to experiencing devastating storms and cyclones. Climate Change is known to increase intensity and frequency of such events.[32]
17. The hunting, capture and trade of animals is another threat to biodiversity.[33] As more than 80% of Costa Rica’s forests are within 20km of human settlements, hunting is an exceedingly accessible manner to acquire food and income.[34] Additionally, almost one-quarter of Costa Rica’s population owns illegal pets.[35]
18. Costa Rica’s vulnerability to the effects of the changing climate is particularly pronounced for certain populations—namely, those living in Puerto Limón, Jaco, and Puntarenas.[36] In fact, 77.9% of Costa Rica’s population (and 80.1% of Costa Rica’s GDP) resides in areas at high risk of natural hazards such as floods, landslides, cyclones, storm surges, and sea level rise.[37] Costa Rica’s Indigenous Peoples, most of whom live in isolated stretches of jungle near the southern border, are particularly vulnerable. Indigenous Peoples have disproportionately low access to schools, healthcare, electricity, and drinking water, implicating their human rights to education, health, adequate shelter, sanitation, and food and water.[38] Indigenous Peoples are also facing encroachment on their lands and impacts from environmental degradation. Indigenous Peoples also face higher levels of unemployment with fewer opportunities and lack of access to credit, driving families into disintegration as youth migrate in search of work.[39] Indigenous Peoples are also losing their capacity to engage in traditional agricultural practices and lack adequate opportunities for legal redress to guarantee their communal properties.[40]
IV. The Right to Water
19. Reference is made to General Comment No. 15 (GC15) from the Committee on Economic, Social, and Cultural Rights (CESCR) which provides that, “the human right to water is indispensable for leading a life in human dignity. It is a prerequisite for the realization of other human rights.”[41] GC15 also concluded that governments should afford special attention to groups who have historically had difficulty and/or faced resistance when attempting to realize their water rights.[42]
20. Currently, 96% of Costa Rica’s population has access to water and 76.6% has access to sanitation.[43]However, marketization and declining state capacity, agriculture, technology, tourism, financial services, restraints on public social spending, and the importation of neo-liberal policies are driving an increase in inequality which, in turn, increases water insecurity.[44] Costa Rican schools provide an example of this trend as it is estimated that 13% of schools operate with non-potable water, if they have access to water at all, and 20% of schools only provide limited access to water for basic hygiene services.[45]
21. We call attention to the negative impacts of the pineapple industry on access to water and the impacts on the right to a clean, healthy, and sustainable environment. Pineapple plantations are also associated with devastating effects on soil and the propagation of stable flies due to poor waste management.[46] Additionally, the establishment of plantations often come at the loss of land for local and Indigenous farmers as well as the devaluation of land and homes neighboring plantations. We urge Costa Rica to protect and address a variety of human rights issues connected with the pineapple industry.
V. The Protection of Indigenous Peoples: Self-Determination, Cultural Integrity, and Their Connection to their Lands, Territories, and Resources
22. Political and legal gridlock has greatly hindered the implementation of the 1977 Indigenous Law.[47] The 1977 Law declared all Indigenous lands – 24 territories or 7% of the country “inalienable” and “exclusive for the Indigenous communities that inhabit them” with the intent they would be set aside for restoration to the rightful Indigenous owners[48]. However, Fred Pearce indicates that flaws in the original legislation have led to a “yawning gap between policy and reality on the ground.”[49] He cites a lack of funding and the failure to recognize traditional representatives of Indigenous communities. The government installed development associations that were intended to help with restoration but have, instead, inflamed disputes.[50] Additionally, a significant amount of Indigenous land is currently within state-protected forests preventing Indigenous Peoples from accessing such ancestral lands and sacred places and carrying out traditional hunting and fishing activities.[51] As a result, approximately half of the land titled to Indigenous Peoples is used by non-Indigenous cattle ranchers, only two of the 24 territories have been fully restored to Indigenous owners, less than 25% of 7 territories have been returned at all, and many of the 100,000 plus Indigenous Peoples in Costa Rica remain landless.[52]
23. We encourage Costa Rica to ensure that Indigenous communities in Costa Rica are afforded rights to free, prior and informed consent with respect to any outside development of their lands, territories and resources, consistent with obligations imposed by international law as well as regional human rights law pursuant to the decisions in Saramaka People v. Suriname and Case of the Kichwa Indigenous People of Sarayaku v. Ecuador. These cases also establish a right of “existence and survival” for Indigenous Peoples under Article 21 of the American Convention on Human Rights, entitling such Indigenous Peoples to the resources they need to exist and survive, as well as to maintain their cultural integrity. Therefore, Costa Rica must afford Indigenous communities representation in decision-making processes concerning their ancestral lands to address the concerns identified in the previous paragraph[53]. A further right to participation is enshrined in the Escazú Agreement and ensures that individuals and their communities can engage in crucial decision-making processes and exercise autonomy and self-determination to develop and dispose of wealth and natural resources.[54]
VI. The Escazú Agreement: The Protection of Human Rights Defenders and the Environment
24. We encourage Costa Rica to ratify the Regional Agreement on Access to Information, Public Participation, and Justice in Environmental Matters in Latin America and the Caribbean (the “Escazú Agreement”) in order to protect human rights defenders.[55] The Escazú Agreement obligates States to protect individuals and communities from non-state actors engaging in environmentally harmful activities and to proactively investigate potential and/or ongoing human rights violations, protect victims of abuses, prosecute and investigate abuses, punish abusers, and provide redress to victims.[56] States must protect against those who cause, acquiesce to, or permit environmental harm and take effective steps to provide and promote efforts to conserve ecosystems and biological diversity, and mitigate harm done by climate change.[57] States are also obligated to provide vulnerable communities with accessible information so that they can effectively participate in decision-making processes and/or prevent/limit damage from imminent threats to public health and the environment.[58] The Agreement also affords individuals the right to access effective remedies for human rights violations via the right to counsel, procedural fairness, and non-discrimination.[59] The Agreement mandates timely, effective, public, transparent, impartial and affordable procedures, and that measures must be taken to ease the burden of proof to increase production of evidence in cases of environmental harms, to help communities without access to research and/or that are facing inter-generational threats like cancer, or with hard to track origins such as air/water-borne pollutants.[60]
25. “Human Rights Defenders” are broadly defined in the Agreement as “individuals, groups, and associations that promote and defend human rights in environmental matters.”[61] The Agreement demands that states facilitate a “safe and enabling environment for person, groups, and organizations that promote and defend human rights in environmental matters, so that they are able to act free from threat, restriction, and insecurity.”[62]
26. We encourage Costa Rica to consider ratifying this treaty to advance its efforts in climate mitigation, the protection of human rights defenders, and to respect, protect, and fulfil the human rights of all Costa Ricans including Indigenous Peoples and other vulnerable communities.
[1] “Costa Rica: The ‘living Eden’ Designing a Template for a Cleaner, Carbon-Free World.” UNEP, 20 Sept. 2019, www.unep.org/news-and-stories/story/costa-rica-living-eden-designing-template-cleaner-carbon-free-world.
[2] Rodwin, Dana. The Endangerment and Conservation of Wildlife in Costa Rica , 2020, digitalcommons.conncoll.edu/cgi/viewcontent.cgi?article=1015&context=sip. - 3
[3] Id.
[4] Id.
[5] “Costa Rica.” Climate Action Tracker, climateactiontracker.org/countries/costa-rica/.
[6] UNEP; “Costa Rica Unveils Plan to Achieve Zero Emissions by 2050 in Climate Change Fight.” The Guardian, Guardian News and Media, 25 Feb. 2019, www.theguardian.com/world/2019/feb/25/costa-rica-plan-decarbonize-2050-climate-change-fight.
[7] Id.
[8] Climate Action Tracker.
[9] The Guardian.
[10] UNEP; The Guardian.
[11] Climate Action Tracker.
[12] The Guardian.
[13] Id.
[14] UNEP.
[15] “Costa Rica.” Food and Agriculture Organization of the United Nations, www.fao.org/in-action/scala/countries/costa-rica/en. Accessed 22 Mar. 2024.
[16] Climate Action Tracker.
[17] Rodwin, Dana. The Endangerment and Conservation of Wildlife in Costa Rica , 2020, digitalcommons.conncoll.edu/cgi/viewcontent.cgi?article=1015&context=sip.
[18] Id.
[19] Id. at 3.
[20] Id. 4-7.
[21] Id. At 6 .
[22] Id. at 8.
[23] Pearce, Fred. “Lauded as Green Model, Costa Rica Faces Unrest in Its Forests.” Yale E360, 21 Mar. 2023, e360.yale.edu/features/costa-rica-deforestation-indigenous-lands.
[24] Rodwin 9.
[25] Id. 9.
[26] Id. 10.
[27] Id. 12-13.
[28] Id. 12.
[29] Fox, Michael. “Climate Change Is Rapidly Shifting Costa Rica’s Sensitive Ecosystems.” The World from PRX, 16 Aug. 2023, theworld.org/stories/2023-08-16/climate-change-rapidly-shifting-costa-rica-s-sensitive-ecosystems.
[30] Rodwin 12.
[31] Fox.
[32] Rodwin 12-14
[33] Id. 15-16.
[34] Id. 15.
[35] Id. 15.
[36] “World Bank Climate Change Knowledge Portal.” Summary | Climate Change Knowledge Portal, climateknowledgeportal.worldbank.org/country/costa-rica.
[37] “World Bank Climate Change Knowledge Portal.” Vulnerability | Climate Change Knowledge Portal, climateknowledgeportal.worldbank.org/country/costa-rica/vulnerability.
[38] “Indigenous Peoples in Costa Rica.” Minority Rights Group, minorityrights.org/communities/indigenous-peoples/.
[39] Id.
[40] Id.
[41] Cuadrado-Quesada, G. “Realising the Human Right to Water in Costa Rica through Social Movements”. Utrecht Law Review, vol. 16, no. 2, 2020, p. 96-109.DOI: https://doi.org/10.36633/ulr.561
[42] Id.
[43] Id.
[44] Id.
[45] “Improving Access to Safe Water and Sanitation in Costa Rican Schools.” UNOPS, 14 Sept. 2022, www.unops.org/news-and-stories/news/improving-access-to-safe-water-and-sanitation-in-costa-rican-schools.
[46] Cuadrado-Quesada.
[47] Pearce.
[48] Id.
[49] Id.
[50] Id.
[51] Id.
[52] Id.
[53] Sarah Dávila A., The Escazú Agreement: The Last Piece of the Tripartite Normative Framework in the Right to a Healthy Environment, 42 Stan. Envtl. L. J. 63 (2023)
[54] Id. at 87.
[55] Id.
[56] Id. At 81
[57] Id. at 82.
[58] Id. 83-86.
[59] Id. at 94.
[60] Id. 97-98.
[61] Id. at 101.
[62] Id. at 103.