Green exceptionalism and sustainable development in Costa Rica

Abstract

The thematic section of the 11^th edition of the Anuario del Centro de Investigación y Estudios Políticos explores de complex tension between the imagen of environmental responsibility and social harmony that Costa Rica seeks to project to the world, and its conflictive reality of balancing sustainability, social justice and economic development. The articles that compose this section explore the multiple dimensions of this confrontation and the way it unfolds in a variety of sectors, including agricultural development, environmental conservation, energy production, tourism, and climate change policy. We now very well that similar conflicts and dilemmas are part of the reality of other countries around the world, but Costa Rica is a special case. Though it is a small and unimportant country in global geopolitics, it has historically assumed a critical role as a testing site for sustainable development policies. This has reinforced the idea of Costa Rica as an exceptional place, previously supported by the image of a progressive democratic system in a region characterized by armed conflict and authoritarianism. This introduction offers a political-economic context of the peculiar ways in which Costa Rica has been discursively constructed as an exception in global affairs.