{"product_id":"the-greening-of-costa-rica-4","title":"The \"Greening\" of Costa Rica","description":"\u003cp\u003eSince the 1992 Earth Summit in Rio de Janeiro, the concept of sustainable development has become the basis for a vast number of “green industries” from eco-tourism to carbon sequestration. In \u003cem\u003eThe “Greening” of Costa Rica\u003c\/em\u003e, Ana Isla exposes the results of the economist’s rejection of physical limits to growth, the biologist’s fetish with such limits, and the indebtedness of peripheral countries.\u003c\/p\u003e\n\u003cp\u003eIsla’s case study is the 250,000 hectare Arenal-Tilaran Conservation Area, created in the late 1990s as the result of Canada-Costa Rica debt-for-nature swaps. Rather than reducing poverty and creating equality, development in and around the conservation area has dispossessed and disenfranchised subsistence farmers, expropriating their land, water, knowledge, and labour.\u003c\/p\u003e\n\u003cp\u003eDrawing on a decade of fieldwork in these communities, Isla exposes the duplicity of a neoliberal model in which the environment is converted into commercial assets such as carbon credits, intellectual property, cash crops, open-pit mining, and eco-tourism, few of whose benefits flow to the local population.\u003c\/p\u003e\n","brand":"By Ana Isla","offers":[{"title":"Default Title","offer_id":55075361620348,"sku":"9781442620032","price":26.99,"currency_code":"GBP","in_stock":true}],"thumbnail_url":"\/\/cdn.shopify.com\/s\/files\/1\/0251\/4980\/0541\/files\/9781442620032.jpg?v=1743626469","url":"https:\/\/combined-academic.myshopify.com\/products\/the-greening-of-costa-rica-4","provider":"Combined Academic Publishers - Mare Nostrum Group","version":"1.0","type":"link"}