Sustainable Development: A New Challenge for Costa Rica

Today, humanity stands at a crossroads and the need to build new visions for a common future has become of the utmost importance. The end of the Cold War has brought an end to the polarization of ideologies and has meant that the international agenda must be redefined. While the production and consumption patterns of the industrial world wreak havoc on the natural world, poverty in the third world is also causing serious environmental damage. The result is a rapid deterioration of the natural resource base on which all life depends. Today, we are beginning to recognize that much of the social and economic progress achieved during this century was made at the expense of the environment. Our contaminated rivers, eroded soils and disappearing forests are proof of this. With every passing day, there is a growing awareness that the path the world has chosen is not sustainable.

The mechanisms used to treat yesterday’s problems are no longer valid. We must develop new ways to confront today’s issues of hunger, poverty, unsanitary living conditions, mediocre education, the abuse of natural resources, corruption and drug trafficking. In our country, at the center of the Americas, we are especially concerned about growing tensions between social progress and the environment which supports it. For the future, only a sustainable style of development can offer us continued abundance and well-being. We define “sustainable” development, as development which respects the balances provided by political stability, social equity, economic stability, and development in harmony with nature.

Central America as a region is changing for the better. The past decade was characterized by four conditions: one, suffering the effects of the Cold War more that any other part of our hemisphere; two, tensions between our countries which generated less trade, less investment, and less opportunities; three, warfare within our countries which caused terrible loss of human lives and terrible suffering, tremendous damage to infrastructure, and problems caused by hundreds of thousands of refugees; four, degradation of our natural resources and wastes of our biodiversity and its potential.

With courage and hard work on the part of Central Americans, and help from international friends, conditions have changed in three direction. In the political context, the countries of Central America are moving toward democracies. In economic terms, we are more effectively utilizing market forces and articulating government orientations. Finally, in human terms, we are governing with an increased respect for human life and human rights.

It is ironic that as we harvest the fruit of our greatest achievements, we are faced with the challenge of working in an environment where traditional economic flows are changing and financial resources are increasingly scarce, particularly in the public sector. The need to achieve economic stability and the need for environmental and social security, thus, are inexorably intertwined. Following a new, sustainable development path is now critical to our survival.

All of the Presidents of Central America have embarked on a process to meet these challenges. We have agreed that we should approach development in a manner that would not make the mistakes of the past, but would rather look to the future. We defined this approach as one that would create opportunities for our people and would be fine-tuned to our region, our culture, and our values. We have further agreed to form an “Alliance for Sustainable Development” which would not only embody the political will and spirit of cooperation to work together, but would also provide a framework under which we can form partnerships with other countries in the world. This alliance was formalized last year in Guácimo, Costa Rica.

Throughout Central America, the challenge of sustainability is essentially the challenge of a balanced development: it involves eradicating poverty, promoting collective education, changing attitudes and social habits, as well as the political culture, creating institutional mechanisms for ensuring the high performance of the public sector and the participation of society as a whole in decision-making, developing new models of production and consumption, striving for equity and cooperation in international relations.

The question before us is...