Johnny Haglund/Lonely Planet ImagesCorcovado National Park on Osa Peninsula in Costa Rica.
In a region of Costa Rica that harbors 3 percent of the world’s known biodiversity, a proposed international airport is eliciting concern about ecological consequences and potential damage to an existing and exemplary network of ecotourism lodges.
On the Osa Peninsula, a hooking promontory on the southwest Pacific coast, the airport is planned for a site only three miles from the Térraba-Sierpe Wetland, a recognized Wetland of International Importance with annual ecosystem services valued near $2 billion.
The airport project has moved in “fits and starts since 2006,” according to Carolina Herrera, Latin American Advocate at the Natural Resources Defense Council. But since last October when Costa Rican President Laura Chinchilla designated the project one “of national importance,” promoting its ability to fight poverty and create jobs, the government has moved quickly to conduct preliminary impact studies and lay a foundation for permitting.
The 1,000-acre agricultural site was formerly held by two government agencies and transferred through an expedited internal process to a third government agency for development. Local families that make use of the land are preparing for eviction and will testify before the National Assembly’s Environmental Commission with other community groups next week.
“There’s been very little information released publicly,” said Ms. Herrera, regarding the project’s progression.
Opponents of the proposal are skeptical that an international airport will reduce poverty and create jobs, and they are using the example of Guanacaste Province as an argument against development on Osa.
Guanacaste expanded its local airport to an international terminal in 2002. Studies of the area have tied this expansion to social instability from a rapid influx of international real estate investment and an overgrown luxury resort industry. Many of the new jobs created — an oft-cited benefit of development — have gone to people from outside the region. Additionally, the cost of living in Guanacaste has risen, while wages for many have not kept pace.
Costa Ricans describe ecological damages in Guanacste through their nickname for the residential and commercial development that has taken hold: desarrollo hormiga, or “ant development.”
Opening a major airport in the Osa Peninsula “with few rules, limited government resources and little planning or control could readily lead to the same negative effects seen in Gunacaste,” argues a recent report by the Center for Responsible Travel, a nonprofit research institution with offices in Washington and at Stanford University.
This is particularly troubling, says the center, given the vibrant industry of high-value, small-scale ecotourism lodges operating on the peninsula, which owes much of its success to pristine natural surroundings. A 2010 survey of forest health across the peninsula found the highest rates of reforestation on the reserve of a private eco-lodge and its adjacent properties.
More than a dozen daily one-hour flights from San José into local airports and a newly constructed highway provide 150,000 tourists access to the Osa Peninsula every year. Making these airports “work better could support the Osa’s ecotourism model without potentially opening up the region to major over-development,” Ms. Herrera said.
Herrera works with other nonprofits and community groups to bolster the local ecotourism market. She said, “The mere announcement of the proposed new airport in the south of the country is being used by real estate developers in their advertisements.”
Supporters of the airport include President Chinchilla, Costa Rica’s Civil Aviation Authority, the Ministry of Public Works and Transportation, the Osa Chamber of Tourism, and Judesur, a regional development board formed in the economic vacuum left when the United Fruit Company departed in 1984.
Construction is planned in two phases from 2012 to 2016 at a cost of $35 million. An initial airstrip designed for 50 passenger planes will later be expanded into an almost 10,000-foot-long runway able to land the new A380 Airbus, the world’s largest commercial aircraft with a maximum capacity of 853 passengers.
As part of its Peace with Nature Initiative, formally announced in 2007, the Costa Rican government has pledged to achieve carbon neutrality by 2021, only five years after the completion of the airport. Green technologies incorporated into the airport design construction are intended to help meet these goals, but there has been lack of clarity on the specifics of these technologies.