Trasplante celular en modelo de MMC en conejo

The current rural landscape in Costa Rica has been determined by important processes of land use change over the past decades. While there are economic and cultural factors that are relevant to understand, what has happened during this time, the role of policy changes regarding forest governance should be noted as one of the most important ones. Until the 1970s, Costa Rican forest governance regime was based in a “laissez faire”

approach, whereby existing rules allowed and even promoted the colonization of the agricultural frontier through the transformation of

forest into pasture, whether for grazing or agricultural practices (de Camino et al., 2000). This regime was based on the development of various economic incentives that included credit systems and fiscal subsidies designed to promote land titling based on the occupation of lands and their “improvement” through productive uses (Brockett and Gottfried, 2002).

The approval of the 1969 Forestry Law constituted a critical moment in the development of the forestry regime in Costa Rica. Legitimized by academic and environmental concerns regarding a potential natural resource security crisis due to the massive deforestation exhibited by the country between the 1940s and the 1960s, the new law defined a new approach to forest policy centered on command-and-control, hierarchically-based and top-down instruments for forest conservation. It was a multifaceted agenda based on three distinct measures: first, the creation and expansion of a system of protected areas under direct administration of the state. This system was based on a mandate oriented towards a fences-and-fines approach emphasized on the strict preservation of natural resources (Campbell, 2002). A second measure was the implementation of a new legal framework for forest administration in privately-owned lands. While on paper the objective was to promote sustainable uses of forests, in practice the effect was the elevation of transaction costs for activities of forest exploitation, though the inclusion of new taxes, tariffs and administrative fees (Brockett and Gottfried, 2002). Finally, there was a third, albeit less relevant measure imposed regarding the use of fiscal subsidies as an incentive for reforestation.

While one may not diminish the accomplishments of command-and-control instruments applied since the 1970s, these measures were ineffective to curb deforestation, not to mention that these were strongly opposed by various actors of the Costa Rican rural landscape. By the mid-1980s, the system of protected areas had not achieved the necessary popular support given the high social costs of its initial establishment.

Meanwhile, forest exploitation restrictions were harsh and constantly opposed by the forest industry, which occasionally tried to evade enforcement obtaining permits through corruption. These restrictions were also difficult to monitor and verify by the state. Finally, the fiscal subsidies were only accessible to large owners of forested lands (see Campbell, 2002; Carriere, 1991). Moreover, the forestry policy sector as a whole was undermanned and underfunded, leading to evident difficulties to respond to the many changes been faced by the country’s forests as a result of the Debt Crisis of the early 1980s and the subsequent structural adjustment (Borges-Mendez, 2008).

In this context, and as I have shown in chapter 4, a new policy narrative appeared reforming the forestry sector in view of the perceived deficiencies of the command-and-control approach to attend deforestation, specifically regarding private forests. The most evident

aspect of this narrative has been the notion that forests conservation cannot be done through continuous efforts to isolate forests from economic production. Early on, IFIs, alongside externally-funded academic institutions (e.g.: CATIE and the Agricultural School of the Humid Tropics, EARTH) and international NGOs, began pushing for policy changes in favor of devolved forest management and harmonization of state action with private forestry interests, while espousing a discourse of public choice and government failure (Carriere, 1991). One of the main efforts has been focused on developing forest uses that may dissuade owners to deforest their lands, by allowing to recognize the inherent financial and commodity value of forests. This focus is somewhat reflected in the inclusion of a new economic language in the 1986 Reform to the Forestry Law, but more notably, in the passing of the 1996 Forestry Law and the 1998 Biodiversity Law, which amongst other changes: 1) decentralized decision-making and the administrative operation of the state forest management and 2) created FONAFIFO and the PSA program.

While chapter 4 concentrated on the use of PES as one of the most emblematic green economy measures implemented in the country, since 1996, other measures were taken in order to neoliberalize the Costa Rican environmental policy sector. For example, state forest management has been restructured and decentralized considerably as a result of the creation of the National System of Conservation Areas (SINAC), leading to the formation of a structure of territorially-based offices working with considerable financial and administrative autonomy. This was accompanied by the establishment of several democratization mechanisms, which included new spaces for political consultation that have raised the influence of IFIs, international donors and NGOs regarding the decision-making process at each conservation area (without necessarily improving relations of the state with less influential political groups like indigenous peoples or peasant farmers) (Isla, 2015). Parallel to this, and as shown in previous chapters, the PSA is a mechanism devoted to the commodification and privatization of forest rights as a means of developing an ecosystem services market that could regulate forest-related decision-making processes in the privately-owned forests. Indeed, it was created as a replacement of existing subsidies in response to demands by the IFIs that forest policy be based on market self-regulation rather than state intervention (Lansing, 2014b). These two changes are oriented towards defining new and more efficient financial mechanisms for supporting environmental management and dealing with deforestation (Honey, 1999).

This new forestry governance regime does not imply the dissolution of what preceded it. Indeed, in a country like Costa Rica were neoliberal reform has been greatly countered by political resistance (even from some of its elites), there exist contradictions that reflect the tensions and difficult compromises made by political actors seeking to implement

market-oriented approaches and the ones which recognized the importance of a robust state-centered model of forest conservation. A great deal of the literature on the matter talks about a “hybrid forest governance”, as a means of referring to the internally contradictory result of this compromise in policy-making (see Brockett and Gottfried, 2002;

Campbell, 2002; Fletcher and Breitling, 2012; Vaas, 2013). This hybrid governance features aspects of each approach simultaneously, with new market-oriented measures accompanying a set of still relevant hierarchically-based interventionist policies of the previous regime. For example, the PSA follows this tendency being, on paper, a mostly market-oriented approach to ecosystem services; while also exhibiting a considerably relevant role of the state. Indeed, as Fletcher and Breitling (2012) argue, the state does feature prominently in the PSA, as the program is being financed almost exclusively by taxes and public revenues obtained from IFI donations and credits, with little input from private sector companies. These authors do not doubt the claim that the PSA is a neoliberal conservation mechanism, but they also consider that it is important to acknowledge and study these internal contradictions.

Effectively, stimuli for voluntary carbon markets have not led to the actual formation of local or international ecosystem services markets since the creation of the PSA. Moreover, the state also holds a critical role defining conservation priorities of the program by fiat, with little to no role of markets on the decision (Vaas, 2013).

Like Fletcher and Breitling (2012), I am not arguing that the PSA program is no less neoliberal in any way. The fact that the state plays a significant role is not unusual, nor inconsistent with other forms of neoliberalization, as the state is always a key actor in establishing the necessary institutions for markets to actually be established (Peck and Tickell, 2002). Neither is it highly unusual that the state plays an important role in PES (see McAfee and Shapiro, 2010). Moreover, the PSA it is evidently based in a discourse emphasizing the commodification and privatization of environmental services, and functions through the effective appropriation of rights over these ecosystem services for sale in the international carbon market, as commodities. Even if the program does feature some form of hierarchical governance, it retains sufficient neoliberal characteristics through this discursive basis, as well as clear capabilities to potentially produce deleterious results (Matulis, 2012). My point is that attention must be given to the interplay of these policy narratives as both influences are extremely relevant when looking at the opportunities and obstacles to participation for the indigenous communities in the PSA, and now, in REDD+.