The Osa Conundrum

Nearly seven years to the day since I first set foot outside of the US, I returned the place that started it all, the Osa Peninsula of Costa Rica. Only this time I wasn’t a 19-year-old, more concerned with getting a tan than learning the people. I was a grad student, studying conservation policy, in one of Latin America’s most well preserved natural territories. The following is a blog I wrote for the Natural Resources Defense Council... a small portrait of the state of the Osa.. a territory in limbo, caught between conservation and development. 

The Osa Peninsula is perhaps one of the best examples of the original Costa Rica. It lies in the southwest corner of the country as a remote and relatively untouched territory. Its coasts are marked by unfettered jungle which stretches out to the white sand beaches, or in some areas the region is dotted with small-scale eco-lodges. When looking at the rest of Costa Rica’s coastal regions, like that of Guanacaste, which is now home to several major resorts and inundated with millions of tourists annually, it is hard not to ask the question, how did the Osa Peninsula remain so untouched?

The answer is a complex combination of conservation initiatives of the 1970’s, development models which emphasize small-scale tourism, and of course the natural infrastructure barriers which make much of the Osa Peninsula difficult to access. Furthermore, the creation of Corcovado Park in 1975 assured that the majority of the Peninsula would be off-limits to large-scale tourist development. Though this conservation move by the Costa Rican government was not without repercussions (i.e. the riots of 1985 amongst gold miners who demanded compensation for the land which had been taken from them when Corcovado was created), it did ultimately ensure that 425 kilometers were protected by national decree.

But what will become of the Osa if the pending plans for an international airport in the region are carried out in the coming years? A brief week of fieldwork on the Peninsula shed light on how these historical conservation policies are currently affecting the region as a whole both for better and for worse, and what a new airport might mean for the region’s development. 

Costa Rica has become a poster child for environmental policy and sustainable development. The international airport in the nation’s capital reads, “Welcome to to the world’s happiest country.” But it is on the Osa where this sentiment seems to remain true to its roots. Where development has been kept to a smaller scale, eco-lodges and sustainable tourism have been able to flourish. The Osa Conservation group, an NGO founded in 2003, is one concrete example of this success. Here, reforestation projects are combined with sea turtle monitoring initiatives, student internship and volunteer opportunities and future work with carbon sequestration models to offset university emissions in the US are underway. 

Thus far Osa Conservation has been able to restore 100 acres of abandoned teak and pachote plantations of the privately owned Cerro Osa property planting more than 19,000 native tree species. Pictured here, Maxwell Villalabas, a forest engineer for Osa Conservation, points to a nursery of 12,000 new trees of various species which will be planted before the year is out. The nursery was funded two years ago by NRDC as part of an initiative to strengthen the Corcovado-Matapalo biological corridor. “This area is incredibly important because it is part of the biological corridor between Corcovado National Park  and the Cabo Matapalo territory, which is a crucial corridor for several keystone species,” says Villalabas. “NRDC provided the funds for this project and now we have at least ten years worth of work until the project is complete.” 

But even experts like Villalabas find it hard to predict how a mega-project like the international airport will effect the Osa. The construction plans are vague and in the land of “mañana” it is unclear whether the project will arrive in the foreseeable future. But it is hard to ignore how accessibility has shaped the development of coastal regions to the Osa’s North. Jacó, a popular beach spot is more comparable to the Jersey Shore of the US than a tropical paradise of Central America. Water once available to local communities is used up by immaculate golf courses and prostitution is as common as gallo pinto. One can only hope that developers look at this type of development as a warning sign for the Osa rather than an example to be emulated for economic growth.