Are Protected Areas Sustainable? Biodiversity Benefits and Cost Efficiency

Abstract

Despite its relatively small size, Costa Rica holds a prominent position among the 20 nations with the highest density of protected areas per square kilometer. This effort has materialized in what is currently known as the National System of Conservation Areas (SINAC), which is the primary bioasset underpinning the country’s ecotourism development strategy. On the one hand, this article offers a theoretical contribution to the economics of protected areas. It introduces concepts such as economic bio-benefits and net bio-rents, as well as “main attraction,” among others. Applying these concepts to the Costa Rican experience leads to the following conclusions: a) there is significant potential for generating economic bio-benefits from protected wilderness areas, which have been operating at a surplus; b) despite this, the results show that SINAC is not optimizing its capacity to generate bio-benefits; c) the practice has been simply to accumulate these net bio-revenues rather than reinvest them in the system; d) which is paradoxical, given the major challenges the country faces in consolidating—both territorially and biologically—a system that is already showing significant and accelerating biodiversity loss; e) which will lead to the unsustainability of the entire system. Finally, several recommendations are presented regarding environmental economic policy and system management to achieve its economic and biological sustainability.