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I read the case study on “Incentives and institutional arrangements for participatory watershed management: The case of Arenal, Costa Rica” on the The Community-Based Natural Resource Management Network website.
This article recounted a long and intense argument between environmentalists and local ranchers about an initiative to reforest the area around the Arenal Conservation Area and the Rio Chiquito region. While environmentalists insisted that reforestation was necessary to restore and maintain watershed management over the longer term, the local ranchers said that the gra**** they planted to feed beef worked just as well as forests in managing the local ecosystem. After a series of talks with local stakeholders and extensive environmental testing, the ranchers were proved right. The best answer for the area was to intersperse forests with pasture lands.
Interestingly, in searching for updated information about the Arenal Conservation Area, I found an announcement that the government of Costa Rica pledged at the UN Climate Talks in Doha on December 6, 1012, to restore 1 million hectares of degraded and deforested land by 2020. From the news article, it seems the land to be reforested is largely in the area of the Arenal Conservation area. However, the purpose of the reforestation commitment was not to manage the local watershed. Rather, it was to help reduce the earth’s carbon emissions.
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