Download or read book The Ecolaboratory written by Robert Fletcher and published by University of Arizona Press. This book was released on 2020-03-17 with total page 385 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Despite its tiny size and seeming marginality to world affairs, the Central American republic of Costa Rica has long been considered an important site for experimentation in cutting-edge environmental policy. From protected area management to ecotourism to payment for environmental services (PES) and beyond, for the past half-century the country has successfully positioned itself at the forefront of novel trends in environmental governance and sustainable development. Yet the increasingly urgent dilemma of how to achieve equitable economic development in a world of ecosystem decline and climate change presents new challenges, testing Costa Rica’s ability to remain a leader in innovative environmental governance. This book explores these challenges, how Costa Rica is responding to them, and the lessons this holds for current and future trends regarding environmental governance and sustainable development. It provides the first comprehensive assessment of successes and challenges as they play out in a variety of sectors, including agricultural development, biodiversity conservation, water management, resource extraction, and climate change policy. By framing Costa Rica as an “ecolaboratory,” the contributors in this volume examine the lessons learned and offer a path for the future of sustainable development research and policy in Central America and beyond.
Download or read book Costa Rican Ecosystems written by Maarten Kappelle and published by University of Chicago Press. This book was released on 2016-04-15 with total page 798 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: In 1502, Christopher Columbus named Costa Rica, and while gold and silver never materialized to justify the moniker of rich coast in purely economic terms, scientists and ecotravelers alike have long appreciated its incredible wealth. Wealth in Costa Rica is best measured by its biodiversityhome to a dizzying number of plants and animals, many endemic, it s a country that has long encouraged and welcomed researchers from the world over, and is exemplary in the creation and commitment to indigenous conservation and management programs. Costa Rica is considered to have the best preserved natural resources in Latin America. Approximately nine percent (about 1,000,000 acres) of Costa Rica has been protected in 15 national parks, and a comparable amount of land is protected as wildlife refuges, forest reserves or Indian reservations. This long-awaited synthesis of Costa Rican ecosystems is an authoritative presentation of the paleoecology, biogeography, structure, conservation, and sustainable use of Costa Rica s ecosystems. It systematically covers the entire range of Costa Rica s natural and managed, terrestrial, freshwater and marine ecosystems, including its island systems (Cocos Islands), the Atlantic and Pacific oceans and shores (coasts, coral reefs, mangrove forests), its lowlands (dry, season and wet forests), its highlands (the northern volcanoes and southern Talamanca s), and its estuaries, rivers, lakes, swamps and bogs. The volume s integrated, comprehensive format will be welcomed by tropical and temperate biologists alike, by biogeographers, plant and animal ecologists, marine biologists, conservation biologists, foresters, policy-makers and all scientists, natural history specialists and all with an interest in Costa Rica s ecosystems."
Download or read book Lonely Planet Best of Costa Rica 3 written by Jade Bremner and published by Lonely Planet. This book was released on 2021-12 with total page 474 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Lonely Planet's Best of Costa Rica is your passport to the most relevant, up-to-date advice on what to see and skip, and what hidden discoveries await you. Lounge on sugar-white beaches in Southern Nicoya, spot sea turtles in Tortuguero, and catch the surf off deserted beaches on the Costa Ballena; all with your trusted travel companion. Get to the heart of Costa Rica and begin your journey now! Inside Lonely Planet's Best of Costa Rica: Up-to-date information - all businesses were rechecked before publication to ensure they are still open after 2020s COVID-19 outbreak Color maps and images throughout Highlights and itineraries help you tailor your trip to your personal needs and interests Insider tips to save time and money and get around like a local, avoiding crowds and trouble spots Essential info at your fingertips - hours of operation, phone numbers, websites, transit tips, prices Honest reviews for all budgets - eating, sleeping, sightseeing, going out, shopping, hidden gems that most guidebooks miss Cultural insights give you a richer, more rewarding travel experience - history, people, music, landscapes, wildlife, cuisine, politics Covers San Jose, Monteverde Cloud Forest, Manuel Antonio, Volcan Arenal, Montezuma, Peninsula de Osa, Tortuguero, Puerto Viejo de Talamanca, Playa Samara, and more The Perfect Choice: Lonely Planet's Best of Costa Rica is filled with inspiring and colorful photos, and focuses on Costa Rica's most popular attractions for those wanting to experience the best of the best. Looking for a more comprehensive guide that recommends both popular and offbeat experiences, and extensively covers all the country has to offer? Check out Lonely Planet's Costa Rica guide. Travelling further afield? Check out Lonely Planet's Best of Central America guide for an in-depth look at all the region has to offer. About Lonely Planet: Lonely Planet is a leading travel media company, providing both inspiring and trustworthy information for every kind of traveler since 1973. Over the past four decades, we've printed over 145 million guidebooks and grown a dedicated, passionate global community of travelers. You'll also find our content online, and in mobile apps, videos, 14 languages, armchair and lifestyle books, ebooks, and more. 'Lonely Planet guides are, quite simply, like no other.' New York Times 'Lonely Planet. It's on everyone's bookshelves; it's in every traveler's hands. It's on mobile phones. It's on the Internet. It's everywhere, and it's telling entire generations of people how to travel the world.' Fairfax Media (Australia)
Download or read book Salvadorans in Costa Rica written by Bridget A. Hayden and published by University of Arizona Press. This book was released on 2003-03 with total page 232 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: During the political and economic upheaval that swept El Salvador in the 1980s, as many as 20,000 Salvadorans took refuge in Costa Rica. Despite similarities between the countries, most Salvadorans experienced El Salvador and Costa Rica as very different places; yet some 6,000 chose to remain after the violence in their country ended, re-establishing their lives successfully enough that they claimed that they now "felt Costa Rican." Bridget Hayden examines the ways in which these people integrated into Costa Rican society and the ambiguous sense of identity they developed, exploring their experience of the process and the cultural concepts they used to interpret those experiences. Salvadorans in Costa Rica: Displaced Lives introduces readers to people from a wide range of class and educational backgrounds who had come to Costa Rica from all over El Salvador. All shared the experience of having become refugees and having settled in a new country under the same circumstances, and when the war in their own country ended, they shared a concern about the issues involved in deciding whether to return there. Their diversity allows Hayden to examine the ways in which the language of national identity played out in different contexts and sometimes contradictory ways. Drawing on contemporary theories of migration and space, Hayden identifies the discourses, narratives, and concepts that Salvadorans in Costa Rica had in common and then analyzes the ways in which their experiences and their uses of those discourses varied. She focuses on key spatial concepts that Salvadorans used in talking about displacement and re-emplacement in order to show how they constructed the experience of settlement and how such variables as gender and age influenced their experiences. Because "nationality" was an idiom they used to relate their experiences, she pays particular attention to the role of national belonging and national differenceÑin terms of both the ways in which the Salvadorans were received by Costa Ricans and their reactions to their new lives in Costa Rica. A concluding chapter compares them with Salvadorans who emigrated to other countries. The story of these displaced Salvadorans, focusing on the lives of real people, can give us a new understanding of how individuals feel a sense of belonging to a sociocultural space. By exploring many meanings of the nation and national belonging for different people under varying conditions, Hayden's study provides fresh insights into the dynamics of migration, gender, and nationalism.
Download or read book The History of Costa Rica written by Iván Molina Jiménez and published by Editorial Universidad de Costa Rica. This book was released on 1998 with total page 188 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt:
Download or read book Costa Rican Natural History written by Daniel H. Janzen and published by University of Chicago Press. This book was released on 2018-12-14 with total page 829 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: This volume is a synthesis of existing knowledge about the flora and fauna of Costa Rica. The major portion of the book consists of detailed accounts of agricultural species, vegetation, amphibians, reptiles, mammals, birds, and insects. "This is an extraordinary, virtually unique work. . . . The tremendous amount of original, previously unpublished, firsthand information is remarkable."—Peter H. Raven, Director, Missouri Botanical Garden "An essential resource for anyone interested in tropical biology. . . . It can be used both as an encyclopedia—a source of facts on specific organisms—and as a source of ideas and generalizations about tropical ecology."—Alan P. Smith, Ecology
Download or read book Gold and Power in Ancient Costa Rica Panama and Colombia written by Jeffrey Quilter and published by Dumbarton Oaks. This book was released on 2003 with total page 448 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: The lands between Mesoamerica and the Central Andes are famed for the rich diversity of ancient cultures that inhabited them. Throughout this vast region, from about AD 700 until the sixteenth-century Spanish invasion, a rich and varied tradition of goldworking was practiced. The amount of gold produced and worn by native inhabitants was so great that Columbus dubbed the last New World shores he sailed as Costa Rica—the "Rich Coast." Despite the long-recognized importance of the region in its contribution to Pre-Columbian culture, very few books are readily available, especially in English, on these lands of gold. Gold and Power in Ancient Costa Rica, Panama, and Colombia now fills that gap with eleven articles by leading scholars in the field. Issues of culture change, the nature of chiefdom societies, long-distance trade and transport, ideologies of value, and the technologies of goldworking are covered in these essays as are the role of metals as expressions and materializations of spiritual, political, and economic power. These topics are accompanied by new information on the role of stone statuary and lapidary work, craft and trade specialization, and many more topics, including a reevaluation of the concept of the "Intermediate Area." Collectively, the volume provides a new perspective on the prehistory of these lands and includes articles by Latin American scholars whose writings have rarely been published in English.
Download or read book The Birds of Costa Rica written by Richard Garrigues and published by Comstock Publishing Associates. This book was released on 2014 with total page 0 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: A new, updated edition of the only compact, portable, and user-friendly field guide the novice or experienced birder needs to identify birds in the field in the diverse habitats found in Costa Rica. -- "Biology Digest"
Download or read book The Costa Rica Reader written by Steven Palmer and published by Duke University Press. This book was released on 2009-01-01 with total page 399 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Long characterized as an exceptional country within Latin America, Costa Rica has been hailed as a democratic oasis in a continent scorched by dictatorship and revolution; the ecological mecca of a biosphere laid waste by deforestation and urban blight; and an egalitarian, middle-class society blissfully immune to the violent class and racial conflicts that have haunted the region. Arguing that conceptions of Costa Rica as a happy anomaly downplay its rich heritage and diverse population, The Costa Rica Reader brings together texts and artwork that reveal the complexity of the country’s past and present. It characterizes Costa Rica as a site of alternatives and possibilities that undermine stereotypes about the region’s history and challenge the idea that current dilemmas facing Latin America are inevitable or insoluble. This essential introduction to Costa Rica includes more than fifty texts related to the country’s history, culture, politics, and natural environment. Most of these newspaper accounts, histories, petitions, memoirs, poems, and essays are written by Costa Ricans. Many appear here in English for the first time. The authors are men and women, young and old, scholars, farmers, workers, and activists. The Costa Rica Reader presents a panoply of voices: eloquent working-class raconteurs from San José’s poorest barrios, English-speaking Afro-Antilleans of the Limón province, Nicaraguan immigrants, factory workers, dissident members of the intelligentsia, and indigenous people struggling to preserve their culture. With more than forty images, the collection showcases sculptures, photographs, maps, cartoons, and fliers. From the time before the arrival of the Spanish, through the rise of the coffee plantations and the Civil War of 1948, up to participation in today’s globalized world, Costa Rica’s remarkable history comes alive. The Costa Rica Reader is a necessary resource for scholars, students, and travelers alike.
Download or read book National Parks of Costa Rica written by Gregory Basco and published by Comstock Publishing. This book was released on 2015 with total page 304 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: "This book features photographs of, and information about, Costa Rica's network of national parks, which are designed to protect pieces of every type of ecosystem in the country"--
Download or read book Costa Rica Culture Smart written by Jane Koutnik and published by Bravo Limited. This book was released on 2012-10-01 with total page 141 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Costa Rica is renowned for its tropical beauty, the warmth and charm of the "Ticos"—its people's own name for themselves—and its political stability. This "Switzerland of the Americas" is widely regarded as an oasis of democracy in turbulent Central America. Since the first edition of Culture Smart! Costa Rica was published in 2005, however, there have been some important changes and, with rapid economic development, some growing pains. Over the past few years there has been a movement of population to the towns of the Central Valley. Higher education is now the norm for young Ticos, and the middle class has expanded—but so has the gap between rich and poor. Tourism took a dive after the 2009 recession, and the national debt has grown, while the arrival of multinationals and significant Chinese investment has been welcomed. Unemployment has risen, people are prepared to go on strike more readily, and there is a general disillusionment with politicians. In the face of mounting difficulties the Ticos remain remarkably peaceable, relaxed, and fun-loving. Their enthusiasm for life is seen as much in their passion for soccer as in their demonstrations in support of human and political rights. Culture Smart! Costa Rica explores and explains the complex human realities of modern Costa Rican life. Armed with this information, you will be better equipped to understand your hosts and to enjoy your visit to this beguiling and beautiful country to the full.
Download or read book Reptiles of Costa Rica written by Twan Leenders and published by Comstock Publishing Associates. This book was released on 2019-08-15 with total page 643 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Reptiles of Costa Rica, the long-awaited companion to Amphibians of Costa Rica, is the first ever comprehensive field guide to the crocodilians, turtles, lizards, and snakes of Costa Rica. A popular destination for tourists and biologists because of its biodiversity, the country is particularly rich in reptile fauna, boasting 245 species. The sheer diversity in shapes, sizes, colors, and natural history traits of these animals is beautifully displayed in this book. Lizards range from minuscule dwarf geckos to dinosaur-like iguanids, and everything in between, while the country's snakes include tiny eyeless wormsnakes, massive boas, as well as twenty-three dangerously venomous species, which include the largest vipers in the world. Author, photographer, and conservation biologist Twan Leenders has been researching and documenting the herpetofauna of Costa Rica for nearly twenty-five years. His explorations have taken him to remote parts of Costa Rica that few people ever visit, journeys that usually find him hauling an array of photographic equipment to document his finds. In addition to including more than 1,000 photographs, detailed black and white scientific illustrations, and range maps, this book also features paintings of anole dewlaps, a key identification feature for that very complex group of lizards. This new field guide will enable the reader to identify all species, while also providing a wealth of information about natural history, predation, breeding strategies, habitat preferences, and conservation of Costa Rica's reptile fauna.
Download or read book The Green Republic written by Sterling Evans and published by University of Texas Press. This book was released on 2010-06-28 with total page 336 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: With over 25 percent of its land set aside in national parks and other protected areas, Costa Rica is renowned worldwide as "the green republic." In this very readable history of conservation in Costa Rica, Sterling Evans explores the establishment of the country's national park system as a response to the rapid destruction of its tropical ecosystems due to the expansion of export-related agriculture. Drawing on interviews with key players in the conservation movement, as well as archival research, Evans traces the emergence of a conservation ethic among Costa Ricans and the tangible forms it has taken. In Part I, he describes the development of the national park system and "the grand contradiction" that conservation occurred simultaneously with massive deforestation in unprotected areas. In Part II, he examines other aspects of Costa Rica's conservation experience, including the important roles played by environmental education and nongovernmental organizations, campesino and indigenous movements, ecotourism, and the work of the National Biodiversity Institute.
Download or read book Pottery of Costa Rica and Nicaragua written by Samuel Kirkland Lothrop and published by . This book was released on 1926 with total page 462 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt:
Download or read book Tropical Plants of Costa Rica written by Willow Zuchowski and published by Comstock Publishing Associates. This book was released on 2022 with total page 560 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: "This second edition is in a smaller format than the first, with additional photos and a new section on the Osa Peninsula. More than 800 photographs, taken in the field, show entire plants and closer views of flowers, fruits, and seeds. Pen-and-ink drawings depict botanical details. The text covers identifying characteristics, natural history, chemical properties, economic importance, medicinal uses, conservation, ethnobotany, and ecology"--
Download or read book Costa Rica written by Barbara Ras and published by Traveler's Literary Companions. This book was released on 1994 with total page 264 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: A collection of 26 remarkable stories by Costa Rican writers--most of which is available in English for the first time. Whether searching for something relevant and entertaining to read on Costa Rica's idyllic beaches or looking for Latin American enchantment back home, this is a fiction reader's cultural guidebook to the country. 2-page map.
Download or read book Costa Rica ABCs written by Sharon Katz Cooper and published by Capstone. This book was released on 2007 with total page 36 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Coffee and brightly painted oxcarts. Quetzals, coastlines, and the Montverde Cloud Forest Reserve. Learn the ABCs of Costa Rica in this exotic, colorful tour of the small but treasure-filled Central American country.
