Percepción y decisión económica de productores locales: el rol del pago por servicios ambientales para dos tipos de bosque en la región Huetarnorte, Costa Rica

Abstract

Percepción y decisión económica de productores locales: el rol del pago por servicios ambientales para dos tipos de bosque en la región Huetar norte, Costa Rica

State of the Art of Geodiversity, Geoconservation, and Geotourism in Costa Rica

“…Therefore, an extensive bibliographic review was carried out on Costa Rican environmental legislation in its first steps, as well as on the international agreements, in which the country has participated [57][58][59][60]. This methodological step gives a historical reconstruction of environment conservation that has been carried out in the country [61,62], where emphasis was placed on how these regulations have allowed for the conservation of the geoheritage in Costa Rica [63][64][65][66][67][68]. In parallel, we identify the worldwide and Latin American efforts of geoheritage assessments on protected areas [69][70][71].…”

“…In other words, at that time in Costa Rica, geoheritage was preserved exclusively under the figure of a national park. The creation of these monuments and national parks protect the biodiversity of each of these, as well as the geoheritage inside them [61,62]. This period was tumultuous because many protected areas were created and the agricultural frontier in Costa Rica allowed land with forest aptitude to be gradually deforested, putting geoheritage at risk by not being in a management category that would give it the corresponding protection as valuable as the biodiversity itself.…”

“…In addition, it was during these years that the Costa Rican government created institutions whose purpose was the conservation of the environment, such as the General Forestry Directorate (1969), the Department of Wildlife and the National Park Service created in 1977, entities that were responsible for administering the Forest Reserves and Protected Zones, Wildlife Refuges and National Parks, respectively [66,68]. The first protected areas in Costa Rica were created in 1955 when the Law of the Costa Rican Tourism Board (ICT) was approved [60,61]. Article 6 of this law stipulated that each volcano in the country would become a national park taking, as reference, the area from the center of the crater of each volcano with a radio of 2 km around it [62].…”

“…Since there was no entity in charge of managing each protected area of Costa Rica at the time, many more were created, such as National Monuments in Cahuita (1970) and Guayabo (1973); the National Parks in Poás Volcano and Santa Rosa in 1971, Manuel Antonio in 1972, Rincón de la Vieja in 1973, Chirripó, Corcovado and Tortuguero in 1975. The creation of these monuments and national parks protect the biodiversity of each of these, as well as the geoheritage inside them [61,62]. This period was tumultuous because many protected areas were created and the agricultural frontier in Costa Rica allowed land with forest aptitude to be gradually deforested, putting geoheritage at risk by not being in a management category that would give it the corresponding protection as valuable as the biodiversity itself.…”

“…In Costa Rica, biodiversity was given priority, while geodiversity was protected as a secondary element below biodiversity. It was considered as part of the natural wealth but not as the main element of conservation [58,60,61].…”