Sustainable Development in Costa Rica: A Moral Geography

Abstract

Sustainable development has been uncritically adopted in Costa Rica and elsewhere as a desirable ideal informing development practice. Nevertheless, critical voices outside the development establishment have questioned the efficacy of the concept to guide social change and productive practices in directions that improve the quality of life of Costa Ricans' and their relationship with the natural environment. However, their critiques lack a theoretical framework that effectively explains what it would take for such transformations to take place, and what they mean in terms of the places we inhabit, the lives we live and the values that guide our social relationships and our interactions with the natural realm. This dissertation proposes a geographic conceptualization of development that offers analytical tools to map the moral character of on-going transformations of the Costa Rican place, and to elaborate concrete development alternatives that render the conservation of nature and development practice as mutually reinforcing articulations of a national place-making project.