Charlene Rose Mangi

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Estacion Cuerici and Sustainable Agriculture

The amazing thing about environmental learning through the Organization for Tropical Studies is that we learn about systems or concepts by going and seeing them and participating in them. This is true of the various ecosystems we study, but also when it comes to agroecosystems and sustainability.

The "one rest day every ten days" schedule affords hardly any opportunities to travel on our own (except for our week-long fall break), and we don't stay in any community long enough to really get involved in it, but the nature of our program brings us into contact with all sorts of interesting ecotourism opportunities and programs.

To talk about sustainability in terms of agriculture and the view of "agroecosystems," we spent five days at Cuerici—a biological station high in the Talamanca mountains, close to Costa Rica's tallest mountain, Chirripo. The area is stunning. The station is in a tropical montane oak forest, which is dominated in the canopy by oaks and in the understory by bamboo. Hikes up this mountain are beautiful, especially when the fog rolls in, filling bamboo glades with an eerie, mystical feeling. La Estacion Biologia Cuerici is small. There is a wood burning stove in the main building, the showers sometimes have hot water (heated by hydroelectric power), a kitchen, and a second floor with 15 bunk beds complete with heavy blankets. Our group of 26 students and three professors settled in and then went on a tour of the farm.

Don Carlos, who runs the station, looks like perfect stereotypical Mountain Man, with a big build and bushy beard. His grandparents owned this land and were using the forest to harvest timber and to grow crops. Most of the oak forests around here have been deforested for timber and for pasture. Seeing what was happening to the area, Carlos and several friends got enough money together to buy the land from his grandparents and protect it. He has kept the standing forest protected and has reforested on the disturbed land. To build the station, he used oak trees that had fallen in the forest, not cutting down any new ones.

Don Carlos and a few families that live on the land do some small-scale farming of blueberries and potatoes for a local market. The main source of income, however, is the trout. Food waste from the homes and the station are fed to worms. The worms are then fed to trout, which are bred organically in small ponds. These trout are sold off the farm to start trout ponds. Cuerici is the only seller of breeding trout in Costa Rica other than the government, and the only breeder that doesn't use hormones and other chemicals in the ponds. The other source of money for the area is students, like my OTS group, visiting the biological station. Don Carlos doesn't allow tourists, just students, because he thinks the ecotourists end up having too big of an impact.

So, is Cuerici a sustainable agroecosystem? Don Carlos certainly wants it to be. The area has some excellent natural resources, like the beautiful forest, and plenty of water for his small hydroelectric motor. The trout farm functions in a fairly closed biogeochemical loop by recycling waste to grow worms for fish food. Everything is done organically, which limits pollutants. However, despite all this, defining sustainability is tough—everything has an impact on something. Even taking a dead tree out of the forest for timber or fuel wood has a negative impact because you are removing nutrients that would otherwise be degraded and recycled in natural processes. And while the trout growing may have minimal impact on the forest, Don Carlos is not particular about who he sells trout to and what impact these temperate fish will have if the are introduced in tropical ponds or lakes. However, Cuerici is incredibly impressive in its initiatives to limit its negative impact on the environment. The most valuable resource it possess is the creativity and strong values of Don Carlos himself, constantly working to increase sustainability and environmental awareness. I'm really glad that our group visited and supported this station. Not only do I think they are pursuing a worthy cause, but it gave me ideas about what to look for when evaluating a sustainable ecotourism or agricultural site.

 

 

Eco-Travel Part 1: The Price of Too Much Trash

The San Blas archipelago islands of the Kuna Yala reserve in Panama are strikingly picturesque: 365 white sand islands of various sizes dot the Atlantic horizon when looking out from the rainforested mainland. Snorkeling in the warm, clear tropical water provides views of coral life. The Kuna Yala, an indigenous group that originated in Columbia and that has inhabited these island for over 500 years, have sovereignty over this province, which includes a strip of mainland along the shore and the San Blas islands. The Kuna Yala have been determined to preserve their culture, traditions and way of life. Most still live in thatched huts, sleep in hammocks, and use traditional medicines. Many women still wear traditional clothing. The main source of income on the islands in the sale of coconuts to Columbian traders. However, another source of income, tourism, is being rapidly embraced by many Kuna, and this is bringing with it many Western influences and problems.

For our fall break, four of us headed down to Panama. We decided to bypass the overly touristy Bocas Del Toro islands and go all the way to Panama City. From there, we hoped to get to the San Blas islands, which had been described to us as "the most beautiful place on earth." Looking through our trusty Lonely Planet and online, we were dismayed that most places we could stay appeared to be fancy resort-style operations whose prices were way out of our range. Luckily, we stumbled upon a deal run through Mamallena Hostel in Panama City, in which you could get driven and boated to the archipelago by a Kuna Yala person, stay in a families' house on the island, and get taken to islands for swimming and snorkeling during the day. It was the perfect deal—we didn't need a fancy, high impact hotel, and we really liked the idea of directly supporting a Kuna family. On top of all this, the price was just right.

On the main island, we stayed in hammocks in a one-room Kuna Yala house, ate simple seafood meals with our Kuna guide, "bathed" using a bucket, faucet, and biodegradable Camp Suds, and were careful to collect and take back any trash we had brought with us onto the island. However, these procedures are probably not observed by all the tourists that visit the archipelago's idyllic beaches. The growth of expensive resorts, hotels, and stopovers by giant cruise ships has greatly effected the San Blas islands and has contributed to its largest conservation issue—plastic trash. Of course, it’s not just tourists who contribute to this problem. While the Kuna have kept many traditional customs, they have been influenced by Western culture and enjoy some modern conveniences, including plastic. They burn paper trash and sell aluminum and glass trash to Columbian traders for recycling, but there is nowhere for plastic trash to go except the ocean. As a result, the most populated islands are ringed with plastic trash on the shore.

The trash problem, though currently serious and unsightly, is probably still in its infancy. It is likely that health and environmental problems will follow. Impacts on fish and coral may begin to appear. Currently, the Kuna fish away from the heavily populated islands, but eventually these effects may be felt further out. The problem will increase rapidly as tourists, who bring with them or request food and other products that come in plastic, continue to arrive on the islands.

Our Kuna Yala guide explained what he has observed, though he did not offer any potential solutions. Several years ago, he said, a Peace Corps volunteer tried to do something about the problem, but she did not stay long and nothing really happened. Far from simply the lack of a recycling program, there doesn't even appear to be any kind of trash collection program, which might be the first step in dealing with this issue. The islands are probably too small to contain a recycling plant, but perhaps one could be built on the mainland, and the trash collected (via boat) and brought there. Of course, this might mean cutting down rainforest and polluting the mainland; and, collecting trash from a large number of widely dispersed islands could be logistically difficult. Another possibility might be to connect the Kuna Yala area to preexisting trash collection or recycling programs in Panama or central or South America,but, unfortunately, these are already rare and intermittent. The ideal might be to reduce the use of plastic products that generate the trash, but on a wet and sandy island that now generates a good deal of income from foreign tourists, incredibly useful plastic would be hard to part with.

At no point in our trip was the word "ecotourism" used, but I think our Panama adventure is an excellent example of this concept—something that has been heralded as a way to protect nature and promote environmental stewardship while also making a positive economic impact, but something with a great deal of hidden costs. San Blas is just not set up to deal with a growing population, or too many visitors. And, of course, any solution to the trash problem comes with its own hidden costs. However, San Blas has a lot going for it. Non-Kuna cannot own land in San Blas, so Kuna Yala are getting cash for keeping their land beautiful and for sharing their culture with outsiders. Tourism has not reached its peak level yet, so there is still time to improve infrastructure and practices to better handle the problems tourism brings.

Note: If you are interested in visiting San Blas, I definitely recommend it! We traveled there with the help of MamaLlena Hostel in Panama City, which we also stayed at for a few days. The folks there are pretty helpful, and you can check out there website and get in touch with them at www.mamallena.com.

 

Pay Attention To What You Put In Your Mouth

Agriculture and ranching take up 5 billion terrestrial earth hectares and forest takes up 3.9 billion hectares, out of 13 billion total. Whoa! This means that the food you eat is no small matter in terms of global social and environmental impact. Deforestation in the Amazon and elsewhere is being by many factors, but two of the biggest are to clear land for huge, corporate cattle ranches and soybean farms, often displacing indigenous groups and subsistence farmers. And of course, industrial agriculture everywhere can contribute to all sorts of problems when land is not managed responsibly—pesticide, fertilizer and other agrochemical pollution, land degradation of all sorts, fossil fuel use and social disparities when big corporate multinationals replace small farmers and contribute to the dependence state of the global south.

Obviously, though, the solution isn’t to stop eating—but there are alternatives. Being a conscious consumer when it comes to food can reduce your personal environmental impact:

Buy local! In addition to cutting down on the greenhouse gas emissions needed to get your oranges from Chile to New York in middle of winter, many farmers on local markets are small landowners who have strong environmental values and practice other environmentally responsible techniques.

Buy sustainably and fair: When local food isn’t available, there are still often sustainable options, if you look hard enough. Many organic farmers practice a variety of environmentally friendly techniques, and many fair trade products are coming on the market every day. Worldwide, fisheries are crashing due to overfishing. Consider switching to Marine Stewardship Council sustainable certified fish. Shade grown, Rainforest Alliance Certified and fair trade coffee brands are probably available in your local supermarket.

Eat less meat: or consider becoming vegetarian. At every trophic level (that is, every time you move up in the food chain) 90% of the energy is lost. This means it takes a lot more pastureland for a cow to make one calorie of meat than farmland to make once calorie worth of grain. In addition, many beef farms produce a great deal of pollution. Again, there are more sustainable options on the local market, but it might be worth it to consider finding other sources of protein.