Up against the wall: ecotourism, development, and social justice in Costa Rica

Abstract

Nearly one-quarter of Costa Rica's export earnings derive from an expanding tourist sector, one that is increasingly diversified in a mix of tourist niches. Ecotourism is the fastest growing niche and its promises are featured in a range of sites and practices, including the largest multinational hospitality and hotel corporations. These companies promote a vision of sustainability that relies on expanding consumption of ‘environmental' amenities through profit-driven global corporations – a vision that is, to some, antithetical to the very meaning of ecotourism. Our study explores the historical evolution of tourist development in Costa Rica, specifically large-scale coastal development, as a means for national development. Amid pressures to attract foreign direct investment in a neoliberal era, Costa Rica has struggled to maintain its developmentalism, which includes social welfare, environmental protection, and public goods, including coastal preservation and public access. We argue Costa Rica's simultaneous protection of coastlines and public access and the promotion of large-scale private investment by global real estate and hospitality industries exposes contradictory ethical paradigms of developmentalism, one rooted in the principle of inclusion and the other in exclusion. We highlight these contradictions in two events in order to raise questions about development, ethics, and inclusion.