Presently, the state of California is preparing for severe increases in energy prices during the summer of 2001. President Bush’s administration proposed a solution to this problem by decreasing standards on emissions from power plants and allowing energy to be produced more cheaply at the cost of environmental health and air quality. This proposed solution demonstrates a general trend where environmental health is sacrificed in light of economic difficulties. In Latin America, this trend exists on a grander scale. In California, people worry mostly about their own cash flow during an economic hardship. In Latin America, people worry about survival and subsistence. Economic difficulty can lead quickly to environmental destruction, as people use resources to simply survive. The case of the gold rush on the Osa peninsula in Costa Rica in the early 1980s illustrates this general connection between economics and the environment.
As part of the Guanacaste Providence, the Osa peninsula is located in the Southwest portion of Costa Rica on the Pacific Coast. Like the old southwest of the United States, the peninsula experiences the boom and bust cycles of resource extraction economies and is known for its rogue atmosphere of robberies and unrest. Still, it contains one of the only remaining tracts of relatively undisturbed tropical rainforest in Costa Rica (Naughton, 48).
The lower part of the peninsula contains Corcovado National Park, a 350,000 hectacre reserve known for its biodiversity and neotropical character (Naughton, 48). The park was founded in 1975, approximately seven years after the founding of the National Park System in Costa Rica (Buchanan, 31). This land was protected because of its ecological significance. It contains approximately 285 bird species, 500 species of trees, 140 species of mammals and numerous other flora and fauna (Buchanan, 30). Unlike National Parks in the United States, however, the Costa Rican National Parks are not adequately funded to constantly monitor and enforce people’s use of them. Thus, despite the Park System’s goal of preserving this ecosystem, people are allowed to live in and profit from the resources in the park. In Corcavado, this land use is gold mining.
Since at least the eighth century, indigenous people mined for gold in the area presently occupied by the park. After the Spanish conquest devastated the indigenous population in the sixteenth century, mining was severely reduced (Naugton, 48). Still, reports from the 1920s, show that there were between ten and one hundred individuals who mined for gold in this area. By 1975, when Corcovado National Park was formed, there were approximately sixty “old-timers” whose illegal work in the park was overlooked as they used traditional panning techniques that caused minimal ecological impact. These people were “viewed as quaint members of the fauna” (Tangley, 296). In 1979, however, the circumstances changed (Buchanan, 31). The economic situation in the region deteriorated and the quality of environmental protection also suffered as a result.
Leading up to 1979, numerous circumstances contributed to the overall decline of the economy on the Osa Peninsula. At the time, the biggest employers in the region were rice and banana plantations. Several consecutive seasons of poor rice crop yields led the Nation Insurance Institute to decree that the peninsula was a not a dependable rice producer (Buchanan, 31). As a result, the Costa Rican government ceased the practice of giving agricultural credits for rice, and rice farmers were out of work (Buchanan, 31).
Meanwhile, the world price of bananas plummeted. Virtually all the banana plantation owners in the area either moved off the peninsula or switched to the less labor-intensive business of palm oil production (Buchanan, 31). This loss of employment from the two major sources of income had negative economic consequences in the entire region. In addition, inflation throughout the country was leaving bus drivers, factory workers, and other urban laborers out of work (Allen, 42). By the early 1980s, masses of people were in search of employment.
At the same time that the economy was depressed, the price of gold skyrocketed (Allen, 42). Victims of the economic collapse, especially those with mining experience in their family history, looked to the Corcovado National Park for work and a home (Tangley, 296). They saw the National Park as publicly owned land that should be used if the public was in need (Allen, 44). Thousands of people and their families moved to Corcovado in search of a future. By 1985 there were between 1000-3000 miners working in the park and between 800-2200 miners and their families living in the Park (Tangley, 296). Though this was not legal, it had previously been overlooked and allowed because of the small impact.
In 1985, the World Wildlife Fund funded a survey entitled Corcovado National Park: A Perturbed Rainforest Ecosystem, to study the ecological impact of this gold rush. The study outlined the environmental destruction caused both by the mining and by the impact of human population (Allen, 43). It showed that hunting and agriculture had decimated the large mammal population, especially in the southern portion of the park. This, in turn, limited the seed dispersal of numerous plant species (www.exploringcostarica.com). Moreover, the miners cut trees for firewood and cleared land for agriculture causing increased erosion (Tangley, 298). According to Fernando Cortez, head of the National Park Service research section in 1985, “Poaching and habitat degradation are the most pressing worries…One no longer sees peccary herds of 200 or more, sightings number 50 or less” (Buchanan, 32).
Furthermore, mining activities were causing serious damage to the aquatic ecosystems. Most miners used a technique called placer mining that requires little investment and has extremely low costs of operation (www.mininglinks.com). In this method, sediments are excavated from stream banks or old riverbeds and placed through a sluice, or large-scale sieve or pan (www.sfmuseum.org). If additional water is needed to run the sediment through the sluice, the river can be converted to produce a greater flow. Dams, canals, and tunnels are built to allow maximum flow and access to sediment (www.exploringcostarica.com).
These major stream manipulations and constant dredging of sand and gravel caused large-scale sedimentation and numerous landslides. The World Wildlife Fund study found that 80% of the landslides in the area were caused by mining practices. These landslides, together with the clearing of land along the banks, caused fluctuations in temperatures and light affecting the riparian ecosystems (Naughton, 49). The World Wildlife Fund study found that a team of two miners could “destroy a medium sized stream for 2-10 km downstream” and affect migrating organisms on a much greater scale (Naughton, 49). These decimated streams were described as “liquid deserts” in the report (Allen, 45). Recovery time for this destruction was not certain, but was estimated to range from ten to one thousand years (Naughton, 49).
Another problem associated with placer mining, though not mentioned in the World Wildlife Fund report, is mercury leaching (www.exploringcostarica.com). According to Kricher in A Neotropical Companion, mercury is used in the processing of fine gold particles after they are extracted (Kricher, 344). Aqueous mercury itself is water-soluble and is thus not extremely toxic. However, this ion can be easily methylated, making the mercury fat soluble and thus capable of rapid bioaccumulation. Even in low doses, methylated mercury is toxic and can cause death to organisms in the stream and to humans who are exposed to it.
The recommendation of the 1985 report was to cease gold mining immediately and to remove the miners from the park, though the report did not include a description of how this should be completed (Allen, 44). In February 1986, with funding from the World Wildlife Fund, the Costa Rican National Park Service and the National Rural Guard evicted the miners from Corcovado (Naughton, 49). Five hundred miners left voluntarily. The remaining 218 were arrested and moved to a small town outside the park where they were provided with food and housing for nine months (Naughton, 49). After several uprisings and hunger strikes, the miners were given appeasements in the form of either a small piece of land or $4500.
Presently, restoration and recovery techniques are underway. Complete restoration is a slow process (www.exploringcostarica.com). The ecological crisis caused by the gold rush was a result of an economic downturn. Had people been employed and inflation been low, this destruction may not have occurred. Also, had the National Park Service been more restrictive on activities in the park, the situation could have been avoided. Still, people must eat and support their families. In an attempt to strike a balance between these needs of the people and the environment, the National Park System established a goal for Corcovado to support both conservation and sustainable use. The question remains: Can this balance be maintained if new economic pressure is applied?
References:
W. Allen. (2001) Green Phoenix: Restoring the Tropical Forests of Guanacaste, Costa Rica. New York: Oxford University Press
A. Buchanan. (July/August 1985) “Costa Rica’s Wild West” Sierra. 31-35
J. Kricher (1997) A Neotropical Companion. Princeton: Princeton University Press.
L. Naughton. (1993) “Conservation verses Artisamal Gold Mining in Corcovado National Park, Costa Rica: Land Use Conflicts at Neotropical Wilderness Frontiers.” Yearbook 1993: Conference of Latin Americanist Geographers. 47-55
L. Tangley. (May 1986) “Costa Rica—test case for the neotropics” Bioscience 296-300
www.exploringcostarica.com
www.mininglinks.com
www.sfmuseum.org
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