Changing communities, expanding forests : how constellations of actors change land-use and forest-cover in southwest Costa Rica

A major environmental concern throughout the tropics is deforestation. While many forests are in a state of crisis, such an encompassing narrative can obscure significant instances where forest-cover expands. This research investigates the geography of forest regeneration in rural Costa Rica from a social and institutional perspective. Attracted to the Pacific coast, foreigners purchase farms, change the patterns of land ownership, and extensively promote secondary forest growth. Environmental change and a declining agriculture sector have forced peasants to sell or abandon land and diversify their livelihoods. Two conservation NGOs collaborate at an institutional level to promote reforestation and consolidate protected properties into the Mesoamerican Biological Corridor. Drawing on foreign funding, they serve as an avenue through which external visions of land management become reproduced locally. This case illustrates how the values and management decisions of a constellation of actors synergistically interlink to influence local land-use and ultimately join to expand forest-cover