May 2nd, 2025

Integrating Conservation and Community Well-Being in Community-Based Conservation in Costa Rica

By Margaret Rose R. Price

Link to JSE General Issue May 2025 Table of Contents

Link to Article PDF

 

Abstract: Economic globalization has led to the seemingly unstoppable spread of a culture of exploitation and consumption; and both people and planet are suffering as a result of its unintended consequences (Böhm et al. 2015). In light of increasingly startling statistics on climate change, resource depletion, land degradation, and biodiversity loss, we are starting to see a global shift towards conservation and restoration. As more research reveals the complexity of these ecological problems and demonstrates their inextricable connections to socioeconomic instability and poor public health (Cross et al., 2019), practitioners are beginning to employ community- and place-based approaches to restoration and conservation. With a growing consensus in the global conservation community that the participation of local communities is essential for the success of conservation initiatives (United Nations, 2021), there remains a large knowledge gap in how to integrate conservation and community well-being. I propose that a series of community characteristics and project design factors grounded in a biocultural approach can help guide this integration. I present ethnographic and ecological evidence from four communities engaged in community-based conservation in Costa Rica. My main finding was that while each community operates within its own unique social-ecological context, communities engaged in conservation share notable similarities in community characteristics and project design.

Key Words: Conservation, Restoration, Community-based, Place-based, Asset mapping, Costa Rica

 

Author’s Note

This project stands as the culmination of my Bachelors of Arts in Interdisciplinary Studies. For my senior project, I spent three weeks in Costa Rica working with rural communities engaged in conservation in a class led by Dr. Mariana Altrichter and Dr. Peter Sherman. This paper is the write up of those three weeks. As you might imagine, three weeks does not easily fit into a short paper. In this paper, I have done my best to condense three weeks of work into tangible emergent themes I witnessed in the communities I worked alongside. By no means is this paper comprehensive in understanding, analyzing, and positioning these communities engaged in community-based conservation, and I look forward to furthering my study of these topics in my graduate studies.

Additionally, I want to note that my descriptions of transformation in these communities inevitably fall flat on the paper. The feeling and experience of witnessing people collaborating on a fundamental alteration of their communities for the collective good of humans and the environment is truly ineffable. Without experience, I do not think it is possible to fully grasp how impactful it is. Witnessing it serves as a reminder of the great power and potential we all hold, regardless of whether we believe that about ourselves or not, and once you are shown that, you will never forget. At least I won’t. Nearly every day I am reminded of what Anna Laura, a founder of the woman’s coffee cooperative in Altamira, said to us as we departed. She spoke in Spanish, of course, but the loose English translation is, “Look what we have done with all the odds stacked against us. We started with no money, no education, and no support from even our families. Imagine what you can do with all that you have.”

I am eternally grateful to Prescott College for the interdisciplinary education I have received. No other academic route could have better prepared me to move into the world as a serviceable local community member and global citizen. I believe that the integrated learning opportunities of an interdisciplinary education is what our global society needs if we are to truly reverse our trajectory towards the sixth mass extinction caused by the Anthropocene. For too long has academia operated through parallel but separate fields to understand our world; for too long has our society placed the authority of science above local and traditional knowledge; and for too long have we viewed the health of humans and the health of the Earth as separate. Only by accounting for the complexities in the convergence of the human and more than human worlds will we fully be able to understand and address the problems we are facing. By definition, interdisciplinarity strives for this kind of comprehensive understanding as it acknowledges the interconnectedness of our world, weaving together different fields of knowledge, bridging the gap between generalists and specialists, and recognizing the value of all knowledge holders. The field of interdisciplinary studies is growing, but more work, funding, and research is needed to address the intellectual and practical barriers remaining in integrating interdisciplinary education into the mainstream (Higgs, 2009). I am filled with gratitude for all my professors and mentors at Prescott College whose hard work provided me with the opportunity of an interdisciplinary education and helped me find my place in this world. Special thanks to Mariana Altrichter and Peter Sherman, Lorayne Meltzer and the Kino Bay Center, Irene Espinosa Garza, Gregory Smart, Kim Williams, Ellen Bashor, Julie Munroe, Cecil Goodman, Dylan Barnes, Derek Field, and the Bacerra family.

 

Introduction

Community-based conservation emerged as an alternative to the strict protectionism of conventional conservation initiatives. Community-based conservation finds its footing in a biocultural approach, which posits understanding the involvement of humans as essential in undertaking conservation initiatives (Cross et al., 2019). A biocultural approach recognizes that conservation is a social process as much as it is an ecological one, and that the success of ecological outcomes is dependent on understanding and managing the complexity of social layers involved (Burke & Mitchell, 2007). A biocultural approach seeks to build ecological resilience through building socio-cultural resilience. As defined by the Resilience Alliance, resilience refers to the capacity of systems to cope with a hazardous event, trend, or disturbance, responding or reorganizing in ways that maintain their essential function, identity, and structure (Sigman & Elias, 2021). The biocultural approach of community-based conservation recognizes the fundamental linkages between community and environmental well-being, that one resilient system supports another, and that resiliency for multiple systems can be achieved synergistically. Following a biocultural approach, community-based conservation attends concomitantly to ecological, economic, and social goals, derived from the Triple Bottom Line model of sustainability (Correia, 2019). It is difficult to define community-based conservation concretely, as the nature of community involvement brings extreme variability but, generally speaking, community-based conservation aims to combine elements that link conservation with development, engage local communities as active stakeholders, and devolve control over natural resources (Brooks et al., 2012). Community-based conservation seeks to simultaneously contribute to biodiversity protection and community well-being by operating on a local level with economic, ecological, and social incentives for participation.

The integrated biocultural approach of community-based conservation is not only holistic in nature, but also adaptive. An adaptive conservation framework accepts the unpredictability inherent in ecosystems of great functional and spatial complexity (Aronson et al., 2020), and approaches community-based conservation as a perpetual process of self-organization, adaptation, and renewal (Cross et al., 2019). The adaptability of community-based conservation fosters resilience in project design, which in turn helps to support the creation of resilient communities and ecosystems.

The need for community-based conservation and the biocultural approach comes from the growing awareness that the environmental crises we are facing have no simple solutions. The once popular conservationist approach of protectionism is increasingly recognized as problematic, as management of protected areas comes at a high financial cost and protectionism struggles to achieve biodiversity conservation without exacerbating poverty (Brooks et al., 2012). Protectionism, which involves protecting areas by restricting human access, evolved from settler colonialism and the doctrines of Manifest Destiny (Layden et al., 2025). Beginning in the U.S. with Yosemite Valley as the first protected area and the establishment of Yellowstone National Park in 1872, protectionist conservation hinges on the forced removal and denial of rights of Indigenous peoples (Murdock, 2021). Paradoxically, as Indigenous peoples were forced off their ancestral, cultural, and hunting lands in the name of conservation, protected areas were opened to heavy resource extraction, pollution, and sport hunting (Layden et al., 2025). Beyond the detrimental impacts of resource extraction and pollution, protected areas have a long history of mismanagement by settler colonial governments with tactics such as fire suppression that leaves habitats more vulnerable to large uncontrolled fires (Whyte et al., 2021), predator removal that disrupts key species interactions (Blossey & Hare, 2022), and stocking freshwater systems with invasive fish for sport that, along with species misidentification, has led to drastic declines in native fish populations (DeCicco, 2005). Much of this mismanagement is rooted in the neoliberal fallacy that nature can be conserved through capitalist developments such as for-profit carbon offsetting and the privatization of land, water, and natural resources (Kashwan et al., 2021). Prolonged and thorough research has demonstrated that the conventional neo-colonial conservation approach of protectionism is not only ineffective in preserving biodiversity, but also antithetical to promoting justice, equity, and well-being in human communities (Layden et al., 2025). While protected areas may have their place, we must change the way we think and go beyond protected areas to meet the needs of our environmental crisis. Humans are using the equivalent of 1.6 Earths to maintain our current way of life (UNEP, 2024a). We do not have 1.6 Earths to use, so we must change our way of life if we wish to secure a future on this planet.

What we need is deep transformation, not only protectionism. Transformation, as opposed to change, is a fundamental alteration of state that is path-shifting, innovative, multi-scale, system-wide, and persistent (Sterling, 2024). Transformation addresses the root causes of problems with the awareness that incremental adaptation responses fail to adequately address the structures, systems, behaviors, and vested interests that perpetuate social and ecological vulnerability (Schreuder & Horlings, 2022). Worldwide, politicians, scientists, and citizens are calling for this type of deep transformation. Doubling down on their call for transformation in the Paris Agreement and their Sustainable Development Goals (SDGs), the United Nations declared 2021-2030 a Decade on Ecosystem Restoration. Ecosystem restoration is the conservationist practice of restoring health to degraded ecosystems (Sigman & Elias, 2021). I have chosen to use the term conservation in this paper to account for a variety of practices, though I will occasionally use restoration interchangeably when referring to certain sources with the understanding that restoration falls within the umbrella of conservation. The United Nations declared the decade as “a rallying call for the protection and revival of ecosystems around the world, for the benefit of the people and nature…Only with healthy ecosystems can we enhance people’s livelihoods, counteract climate change, and stop the collapse of biodiversity” (United Nations, 2021). While some researchers criticize the Decade on Ecosystem Restoration for an anthropogenic focus, ambitious goals, and a lack of clarity for what is needed at the conceptual level (Cross et al., 2019), I am more interested in what the declaration represents. The United Nations Decade on Ecosystem Restoration signifies that our environmental crisis and its connection to human well-being are at the nexus of our current global political world. The United Nations recognizes that the daunting task of global ecosystem restoration, a conservationist practice, will require great cultural upheavals and deep transformation in our food systems, economic structures, policy incentivizations, infrastructure, and social norms (UNEP 2024b). Globally, there is an urgent need for more research on how to effectively integrate conservation objectives with human health and well-being. As one researcher put it, “understanding how restoration is conceived and approached is key for achieving inclusive social-ecological restoration, particularly as the world embarks upon the UN Decade for Ecological Restoration” (Sigman & Elias, 2021). In this paper, I present an analysis of four Costa Rican communities engaged in community-based conservation as an avenue to contribute to the developing understanding of how to integrate human and environmental health in conservation initiatives.

Methodology

This paper integrates narrative and analytical review approaches to provide a holistic (though not comprehensive) analysis of communities engaged in community-based conservation in Costa Rica. This paper draws on an extensive review of literature and data from four different sites.

Literature Review

The literature review in this paper seeks to explore the vast complexities of the field of community-based conservation. Taking an interdisciplinary approach, I draw from the fields of conservation, ecology, sustainability, anthropology, policy, economics, sociology, and ethnography to produce a comprehensive understanding of the intricacies inherent in the relationships between humans and environment and the potential for transformation within various communities.

Analysis of Communities Engaged in Conservation

Gathering evidence from participatory mapping, ethnographic surveys, biological indicators, and documentation of organizational structures, I employ an “asset mapping” (Wali et al., 2017) technique to analyze four communities engaged in community-based conservation in Costa Rica: Salitre, Altamira de Biolley, Rancho Quemado, and Arroyo Quebrada. I spent three weeks (May-June 2024) visiting these communities, talking with key informants and other community members, making observations, taking notes, and touring the communities and their surroundings. Using asset mapping as my primary analytical framework, I identify commonalities in assets across communities engaged in conservation.

Asset Mapping

Asset mapping is a technique of community assessment (Wali et al., 2017). Using a variety of diagnostic instruments, asset mapping identifies the local capacities and ecological expertise of a community (Yeager et al., 2024). Beginning the process of community assessment from a place of assets rather than deficits empowers communities to sustain a good quality of life and steward the management of their natural resources and cultural practices. Research on asset mapping has demonstrated that when the rich social and ecological assets of communities are validated and reinforced, local people can contribute to the creation and long-term management of protected areas with synergistic benefits to the health and well-being of their community (Wali et al., 2017).

With an integrated biocultural approach, asset mapping becomes context-specific, analyzing communities within their own definitions of environmental and human health and well-being (Böhm et al., 2015). With the goal to elicit as many perspectives as possible from within the community, asset mapping employs a variety of ethnographic research techniques to assess community members’ perceptions of their quality of life in five different dimensions: (1) the state of natural resources, (2) cultural practices and beliefs, (3) social relationships, (4) political life, and (5) the economic situation (Wali et al., 2017). The information garnered from community members in these different dimensions is then divided into four separate categories for community analysis: (1) resource system characteristics, (2) human group characteristics, (3) institutional arrangements, and (4) external environment (Wali et al., 2017). Resource system characteristics include things such as the state of biodiversity, ecosystem descriptions, and size and boundary definitions. Human group characteristics include things like population size, shared norms and values, leadership, and interdependence among community members. The institutional arrangements category pertains to things such as clarity and enforceability of rules, local legitimacy of norms, and accountability of officials. The external environment category includes things such as technology, the supporting role of the state, and resistance to outside interference (Wali et al., 2017).

In this paper, I employ asset mapping as an analytical framework for understanding the complex social-ecological contexts of the communities in Costa Rica.

Sites and Data Sources

Analyzing each of the four sites of communities engaged in community-based conservation in Costa Rica with asset mapping reveals the distinctive nature of each community while simultaneously producing emergent commonalities of communities engaged in conservation.

Salitre

Resource System Characteristics:

Salitre is an Indigenous reserve located in the Talamanca Mountain range in the Puntarenas province of Costa Rica (Juanita Calderón, personal communication, May 2024). There is significant altitude variation within the territory across 11,700 hectares. The territory consists of largely intact forests with over 90% of the territory being conserved. There are some small parcels of deforested land that are managed for livestock and agriculture. There is an abundance of healthy creeks, rivers, and waterfalls, which are managed and conserved by the community (Wendy Lazaro, personal communication, May 2024).

Human Group Characteristics:

The Indigenous people within Salitre are the Bribri (Hannia Calderón, personal communication, May 2024). There are ten different communities within the territory, and there is very low population density. Twelve years ago, their population was counted at around 2,000 individuals, but there is no current number (Jenny Ortiz, personal communication, May 2024). The community places great value on their traditional language and culture as they work to undo the erasure of colonization. Now, each school in the territory has a traditional language and culture teacher, and about 90% of the people in the community speak Bribri. Many community members report that the collective is more important for them than the individual. The Bribri cultural vision of the collective includes humans, the environment, and the spirit world (Jenny Ortiz, personal communication, May 2024). The deep sense of interconnectedness in their culture fosters intrinsic motivation for community members to devote considerable time and energy to the betterment of their community free of charge (Hannia Calderón, personal communication, May 2024).

Livelihoods are largely based on subsistence farming, tourism, and a solidarity economy (Juanita Calderón, personal communication, May 2024). A solidarity economy is an economic system that practices interdependence to produce wide social profitability and collective economic liberation (Villalba-Eguiluz, 2024). In a solidarity economy, the community prioritizes cooperation and approaches economic gain as a community effort to maximize the number of community members benefiting from the gain, rather than individuals focusing on amassing profit gain (SEPP, 2024). For example, in Salitre, the community works to disperse tourism revenue widely, cooperating instead of competing for business (Hannia Calderón, personal communication, May 2024).

Only indigenous people are lawfully allowed to hunt in Costa Rica, but the community of Salitre largely opts not to, in order to protect the wildlife (Wendy Lazaro, personal communication, May 2024). Per a solidarity economy, the community supports each other in developing diversified income sources and food security. Many families in Salitre produce most of their own food, growing large varieties of beans, corn, rice, fruits, vegetables, herbs, and medicinal plants (Juanita Calderón, personal communication, May 2024). Every two months the community holds a market where people from all over the territory come to buy, sell, or trade local goods and services (Jenny Ortiz, personal communication, May 2024).

Institutional Arrangements:

There is an informal system of private property within Salitre; there is no paperwork or titles for land, but it is passed down through generations and bought and sold within the community (Juanita Calderón, personal communication, May 2024).

Salitre is governed by a local Association for Development, run entirely by volunteers in the community (Jenny Ortiz, personal communication, May 2024). The Association for Development delegates authority and decision making with numerous committees on things such as environment, education, agriculture, patrols for hunting and logging, tourism, health, firefighting, infrastructure, sports, and culture. Each committee works largely independently, traveling throughout the reserve to ensure all the smaller communities within Salitre are attended to in the association’s efforts. When the association needs to make a big decision, all the committees and association members gather and reach a decision in an assembly. Association directors are held accountable with required financial transparency. The association invests in capacity building programs for individual families and the community at large (Jenny Ortiz, personal communication, May 2024).

External Environment:

Adjacent to the territory is a Del Monte pineapple plantation (Juanita Calderón, personal communication, May 2024). Community members discuss the adverse environmental and human health impacts of the chemical use at the plantation and how they are working to diversify their income sources so that community members do not have to work in the plantation (Juanita Calderón et al., personal communication, May 2024).

The Costa Rican government supports Salitre through payments for environmental services. Additionally, the national education committee collaborates with the Salitre committee on education (Jenny Ortiz, personal communication, My 2024).

The Association for Development brings in third parties to conduct training. Since 2023, there have been twenty different trainings offered through the association (Jenny Ortiz, personal communication, May 2024). The association also sends members to other communities in Costa Rica to learn how to improve their operations. Additionally, Salitre receives third party support from volunteers (Hannia Calderón, personal communication, May 2024).

Altamira de Biolley

Resource System Characteristics:

Altamira de Biolley is a town located near the eastern most corner of the Talamanca Mountain range, adjacent to Parque Internacional de la Amistad. The town serves as an ecological buffer zone between the protected national park and the larger towns and pineapple plantations down below (Yolanda, personal communication, June 2024). The land consists of fragmented forest, with many parcels in the town having been cleared for development or farming. A raging river runs through the center of town that the community brought back to life after it nearly dried up due to deforestation (Yolanda, personal communication, June 2024). Toucans are abundant and community members report thriving biodiversity (Maria Rubi, personal communication, June 2024).

Human Group Characteristics:

The community has a population of about 200 people, many of whom live near the town center, establishing a low population density in a small area (Yolanda, personal communication, June 2024).

Livelihoods are based in commercial and subsistence farming and livestock, tourism, coffee production, and specialty goods production (Ever, personal communication, June 2024). There is a solidarity economy within the community and a notable number of cooperatives formed to promote shared economic growth (Anna Laura, personal communication, June 2024). Additionally, many community members freely give and trade any excess product they have (Ever, personal communication, June 2024). At the center of town is a community space complete with a kitchen, teaching garden, and soccer field. Community members gather there nearly every afternoon for various formal and informal activities (Yolanda, personal communication, June 2024).

Nowadays, the people of Altamira de Biolley take seriously their role as the buffer zone between the park and areas of heavier human impact. The cultural norms of the community are shifting towards conservation and organic farming practices (Maria Rubi, personal communication, June 2024). Some families have begun to generate their own gas with biodigesters (Selimo, personal communication, June 2024). Volunteers conduct frequent wildlife monitoring in the area (Yolanda, personal communication, June 2024).

Interdependence is clearly a strong cultural value of the community, with many different groups forming to operate businesses that bring synergistic benefits to multiple families. Specifically, there are several groups of women that work together towards common goals. One woman said to me, “It is not about how do I survive, but how do we survive” (Anna Laura, personal communication, June 2024).

Institutional Arrangements:

Presently there is a formal system of land ownership in the community. Altamira de Biolley is governed by a local Association for Development that delegates authority and decision making with numerous committees, makes decisions in assemblies, invests in community capacity building, and provides financial transparency (Yolanda, personal communication, June 2024). The community also has the Asociación Productores La Amistad (ASOPROLA) that operates similarly to the Association for Development to bring diversified income sources and a solidarity economy to the community in harmony with conservation practices. ASOPROLA runs the town’s recycling program (Gehry, personal communication, June 2024).

External Environment:

The community is supported externally by the protection of the nearby national park, which brings various social, economic, and ecological benefits (Gehry, personal communication, June 2024).

After experiencing community instability from the fluctuation of the global coffee price, the community has diversified from a coffee monocrop economy to resist outside interference (Maria Rubi, personal communication, June 2024).

In addition to the solidarity economy of the community, local farmers sell their products to other regional, national, and international markets. The luxury brand Chanel is a patron of farmers in Altamira de Biolley, buying honey and coffee oil to use in their cosmetics (Ever, personal communication, June 2024).

The Association for Development hosts classes for community members through the Costa Rican institute of learning, Instituto Nacional del Aprendizaje. The classes are free and offered on a wide variety of topics like woodworking, English, business, makeup, cooking, etc. (Yolanda, personal communication, June 2024).

Some community members receive governmental support through payments for environmental services. The community also receives third party support from volunteers (Yolanda, personal communication, June 2024).

Adjacent to the community is a Del Monte pineapple plantation. Del Monte is seeking to buy land closer to the national park for better water access and the community of Altamira is working to resist their encroachment (Gehry, personal communication, June 2024).

Rancho Quemado

Resource System Characteristics:

Rancho Quemado is a small town located in the heart of the Osa peninsula, adjacent to Parque Nacional Corcovado, the most biodiverse area in the country. Rancho Quemado is surrounded by lush forest fragmented sporadically by deforestation. Scarlet macaws are frequently observed, as well as many other species of birds and monkeys (Maria, personal communication, June 2024).

The abundance of peccaries in the community serves as a biological indicator of ecosystem health. Once, the peccaries were seriously threatened by hunting, but now they are protected and thriving (Alberto, personal communication, June 2024).

Human Group Characteristics:

Rancho Quemado is a small town of approximately 228 people. The population density is relatively low with residents spread throughout the area (Yolanda, personal communication, June 2024). When the town was settled 70 years ago, livelihoods were exclusively based on hunting, logging, and mining. Now, livelihoods in the community are primarily based in tourism and conservation, though there is also some farming and livestock production. Community members who used to make their living off degradative environmental practices say that they changed because they saw how it was impacting the local environment and realized there were other less destructive ways to support their families (Juan, personal communication, June 2024).

Community members say that their core values are love for community, family, and cooperation. They say that their mission is to be a model of a sustainable community culture where everyone works together (Jessica et al., personal communication, June 2024). Community members work to distribute wealth throughout the community in a solidarity economy. Individuals engaged in conservation only speak kindly of the community members that resist conservation, demonstrating their cultural commitment to love for community regardless of political or practical disagreements (Alberto et al., personal communication, June 2024).

Institutional Arrangements:

Rancho Quemado is governed by a local Association for Development. The association delegates authority and decision making through a committee system, but there is convergence and collaboration between groups (Jessica, personal communication, June 2024). The committees oversee different things such as sports, security, wildlife monitoring, road maintenance, health, and education, but they all come together in an assembly when the association needs to make a decision. Association administrators are held accountable by presenting financial transparency at assemblies. The association displays a strong commitment to individual and collective capacity building. All the work of the association is volunteer, demonstrating clear intrinsic motivation within the community (Jessica et al., personal communication, June 2024).

External Environment:

The Costa Rican government protected the land around Rancho Quemado with the creation of the national park in 1975 (SINAC, n.d.). Though the locals were not happy about it at the time, they now attribute the remaining biodiversity to the government’s intervention (Maria, personal communication, June 2024).

The Costa Rican government supports the community of Rancho Quemado by providing training to help locals develop rural tourism and microenterprises in the community (Jessica, personal communication, June 2024). Recently, the government gifted the community a very nice bus so they can provide transportation for tourists. The government also pays local people to do the road work maintenance in the community (Jessica, personal communication, June 2024).

Additional third-party support for the community comes from volunteers and international organizations who come to Rancho Quemado to learn about the benefits of rural tourism to the community and the environment (Jessica, personal communication, June 2024).

Arroyo Quebrada

Resource System Characteristics:

Arroyo Quebrada is a small village in the mountains above Parque Nacional Manuel Antonio. The community is surrounded by largely untouched primary forest and waterfalls galore (Victor, personal communication, June 2024).

Human Group Characteristics:

Arroyo Quebrada was founded 75 years ago by three families of campesinos, people of mixed Indigenous and Spanish descent (Victor, personal communication, June 2024). For many years their livelihoods were based on vanilla farming, but now they have diversified their income sources considerably with other means of production and tourism. There are now 17 families living in the community of Arroyo Quebrada (Victor, personal communication, June 2024). The population density is low, with a small number of people spread throughout the land.

The community’s tourism enterprise, Los Campesinos, receives overnight tourists and day visitors who come to enjoy the natural attractions. Everyone in the community works at Los Campesinos and the money that comes in is distributed throughout the community. Each family in Arroyo Quebrada receives 60% of their income from the community tourist enterprise. The other 40% of their income comes from their individual businesses (Victor, personal communication, June 2024).

Individuals speak proudly of their community, saying they are so well organized and the benefits are so well distributed that there is no conflict. They say that all their work is motivated by their love for the community and the land, demonstrating interconnectedness and intrinsic motivation (Victor et al., personal communication, June 2024).

Institutional Arrangements:

The community formally owns the land they live and work on. The community of Arroyo Quebrada is governed by a cooperative instead of an Association for Development so they can be a for-profit organization. All decisions in the cooperative are made at an assembly (Victor, personal communication, June 2024). The cooperative invests in individual and collective capacity building through a microcredit system that helps families start their own businesses, which in return benefits the cooperative. There is no interest on the loans given out by the cooperative, they are merely agreements between the families and the cooperative creating a solidarity economy. Everyone in the community is part of the cooperative. When children in the community turn 15, they automatically become part of the cooperative and start thinking about what they want their role to be (Victor, personal communication, June 2024).

External Environment:

In the past, the community received governmental support from the Costa Rican Ministry of Agriculture and Livestock who provided training and brought seeds to help the community with agriculture. The government also supported the community through the Instituto Nacional del Aprendizaje, providing training on tourism practices, grant writing, and organic farming techniques. The community previously received support from international organizations as well, but in 2012 they became entirely independent and stopped receiving third party support (Victor, personal communication, June 2024). However, this past year the Costa Rican government gave the community two land rovers to use to transport tourists, which is a form of third-party support (Victor, personal communication, June 2024).

 

Emergent Commonalities

Asset mapping the communities of Salitre, Altamira de Biolley, Rancho Quemado, and Arroyo Quebrada quickly reveals many shared themes among these communities engaged in community-based conservation in Costa Rica. Extracting commonalities in each of the four categories of the asset mapping framework, I integrate a literature review to examine the extent to which these commonalities can aid communities engaged in conservation.

Commonalities in Resource System Characteristics

High biodiversity:

Asset mapping demonstrated that all four of the communities lived in exceptionally biodiverse environments.

Commonalities in Human Group Characteristics

Low population density:

Asset mapping revealed that all four communities have small populations and low population density. Research has found that smaller population groups are associated with behavioral success in community-based conservation initiatives (Brooks et al., 2012). Additionally, research has underscored the importance of small groups and communities in directing the true enduring change of transformation, revealing that when large-scale initiatives for change do not account for the importance of context and the linguistic, conversational nature of community, they largely fall short on their goals; while individual lives are touched, the organizational culture and the community are unchanged (Block, 2020). True transformation is most reliably achieved from bottom-up processes, derived from the complex, adaptive, and evolutionary nature of community that brings about lasting and sustainable change (Schreuder & Horlings, 2022). When community and small group transformation is sustained, it can contribute to further transformation on the local, regional, national, and global levels. Large-scale shifts only occur after a long period of small steps, organized around small groups that are patient enough to learn and experiment, and learn again (Bornstein, 2004). In the communities of Salitre, Altamira de Biolley, Rancho Quemado, and Arroyo Quebrada, small groups are the default due to their low population density. However, small groups can be easily formed within larger communities to create the same desired impact; even if hundreds are in the room, when people are configured into small groups, real change is created (Block, 2020). For example, many co-housing communities in densely populated and highly developed cities in Europe have created small communities within larger ones to enact deep social and ecological transformation (Hagbert et al., 2020). Granted, there is great variance in the structure and outcomes of the co-housing communities, as is to be expected with the nature of communities, and it is not a system without criticisms, but there are notable parallels in community characteristics and project design to the four communities in Costa Rica. Research on the European co-housing communities found recurring characteristics of creating community, self-governance, and the dual pursuit for ecological and social sustainability (Hagbert et al., 2020), echoing several of my emergent commonalities.

Interconnectedness and attitudes of mutualism over competition:

Asset mapping revealed deeply embedded senses of interconnectedness in each of the communities with expressed attitudes of mutualism over competition. Mutualism and collaboration were demonstrated not only between community members, but also between the community and the environment. Instead of viewing the environment as a resource source, the communities approached the natural world as a partner that could help them achieve their goals, and in turn they could help benefit the natural world (Böhm et al., 2015). This commonality of attitudes of interconnectedness and mutualism also reflects the importance of community belonging and relatedness in transformation initiatives that is best achieved in small groups (Block, 2020), and research has found that the presence of supporting local belief systems and traditions to be a significant predictor of project success (Brooks et al., 2012).

Attitudes of mutualism over competition were evident in the lack of political polarization in the communities. When asked about political disagreement, many community members responded with confusion, unable to fathom why different political views would prevent them from working together to achieve their shared goals. They stated that collaboration between people of different beliefs came with the assumption that you would not be able to get your way all the time, but in the bigger picture everyone was more or less satisfied. The lack of political polarization in the four communities stands in stark contrast with the increasingly extreme political polarization of the United States.

Attitudes of mutualism over competition in the communities clearly facilitated more effective collaboration through all stages of organizing, strategizing, implementation, and decision making. Consequently, these attitudes of mutualism over competition served to make communities more adaptable and resilient. Attitudes of mutualism over competition presented in all spheres of community life–social, ecological, and economic. In terms of the ecological sphere, interconnectedness and attitudes of mutualism over competition between humans and the more than human world is imperative in all transformation initiatives, even beyond conservation. To ignore that the health and well-being of our human communities is dependent on that of the ecological world is to do so at our own expense. Try as we might to separate ourselves from the more than human world, it is not possible; we are dependent (Dunn, 2023). Recognizing this will lead to greater likelihoods of success for transformation initiatives.

Commitment to capacity building:

Capacity building means increasing a person or group’s capabilities and potential, generally through knowledge and skills training (Ghaderi et al., 2024). Asset mapping revealed a strong commitment to individual and collective capacity building in each of the four communities. All of the communities recognized that investing in individual capacity building for community members served to increase the overall capacity of the community. Communities invested in capacity building through education, technical skills training, and economic initiatives.

A commitment to capacity building has been shown to be an important factor of project design. Research on community-based conservation has found that a project’s commitment to capacity building is highly correlated with attitudinal, behavioral, economic, and ecological success (Brooks et al., 2012). The increase in knowledge and skills through capacity building serves to increase adaptability for communities as it facilitates processes of individual and cultural transformation, growth in the social and economic spheres, and allows for better environmental management practices (Böhm et al., 2015).

Solidarity economies:

Asset mapping revealed the presence of a solidarity economy in each of the four communities. The solidarity economies observed most frequently took form in efforts to source products and services from within the community whenever possible. This iteration of solidarity economies can be called a circular economy, which seeks to retain money and resources within the community and circulate it throughout, rather than outsourcing (Villalba-Eguiluz, 2024). Each of the communities paid close attention to ensuring an equitable distribution of wealth throughout their community, focusing on bringing wealth to as many families as possible rather than individual accumulations of wealth.

The retention and distribution of wealth in communities via a solidarity economy fosters social, economic, and environmental resilience. Solidarity economies facilitate greater economic security for a community; make communities healthier, safer, and more equitable; and are often correlated with a reduction in degradative environmental practices (SEPP, 2024). Research has found that community-based conservation is most successful when benefits are distributed equitably without elite capture (Brooks et al., 2012). Building a solidarity economy into project design is an ideal way to achieve an equitable distribution of benefits, though other strategies may be needed for communities entrenched in highly capitalist lifestyles. For example, a community seeking to develop in eco-tourism could create a business framework that involves a considered rotation of where tourists stay, eat, recreate, and explore to prevent one or two businesses from monopolizing the revenue from tourists. Alternatively, commercial and agricultural businesses alike can form cooperatives with similar enterprises to share knowledge, tools, training, and profits for the benefit of all parties. In terms of a circular economy, a restaurant or store may decide to only sell or use products from within the local community. With solidarity economies, we see how many of these emergent commonalities are connected, as interconnectedness, mutualism over competition, and a commitment to capacity building form the basis for a system of shared and equitable economic gain.

It is notable that none of the solidarity economies observed exist truly in isolation. As a result of globalization and modernity, each community depends in some way on buying, selling, or receiving from outside their community. This fact does not discredit the communities’ solidarity economies but serves as a reminder to avoid oversimplifying or romanticizing these initiatives for transformation. The degree to which a community’s economy expands beyond the local market varies greatly in accordance with social, economic, and ecological factors.

Diversified income sources:

Asset mapping revealed that each of the four communities were in the process of actively diversifying individual and collective income sources after experiencing economic or ecological pressures that revealed the instability of monocrop economies. Diversified income sources bolster community resilience with greater ability to withstand unexpected market fluctuations, an increase in internally available goods and services, and less reliance on environmentally degradative practices. For example, a farm that diversifies from monocrop production produces more variety within the community, becomes less dependent on individual markets, and nourishes the land.

While all the communities expressed a desire for non-extractive income sources, they also all confronted the reality that it is not always a choice. Many community members worked for nearby agricultural plantations, not because they wanted to, but because it was the best option for supporting their family. With diversified income sources, some were able to quit these jobs, but not everyone. Again, we must remember to not oversimplify or romanticize the realities of these communities.

Intrinsic motivation:

Asset mapping demonstrated pervasive intrinsic motivation within each of the four communities engaged in community-based conservation. Community members were largely self- motivated in their conservation and transformation efforts rather than being motivated by external rewards. The presence of intrinsic motivation was evident in the self-reporting of community members, who attributed their motivation to personal values and a sense of interconnectedness. Intrinsic motivation was also apparent in the significant time and energy individuals devoted to community development and conservation without external compensation.

Intrinsic motivation is imperative in the durability of community-based conservation initiatives; without intrinsic motivation, if/when the extrinsic motivators cease, so will the initiative (Murayama et al., 2010). Each of the four communities discussed major setbacks and challenges that would have deterred their efforts if not for their strong personal drive and belief in their objective. Also, without intrinsic motivation, community members are more likely to continue to undermine conservation objectives when no one is watching.

Markedly, neuroscience has found that the expression of intrinsic motivation is not automatic; rather, it depends on environmental support of basic psychological needs, such as competence and autonomy (Di Domenico & Ryan, 2017). The four communities all sought to meet such needs of individuals with capacity building, interconnectedness and mutualism, and shared authority and decision making, thus effectively bolstering intrinsic motivation.

Commonalities in Institutional Arrangements

Secure land rights:

Asset mapping revealed that all the communities had secure land rights. The Indigenous community of Salitre may not have a formal system of land ownership within their territory, but the group retains secure land rights to the territory as a whole. This is not to say that the communities did not face conflict over land and encroachment from outsiders, but rather that their land belonged to them, it could not be arbitrarily taken away by someone else. Secure land rights are important for the prolonged livelihoods of communities, and they are especially important when a community is concerned with protecting their land, as it is difficult to protect land you do not own in our modern system of land ownership. Secure local land rights have also been shown to be positively associated with economic success in community-based conservation (Brooks et al., 2012).

Strong local institutions:

Asset mapping revealed strong local governing institutions in each of the communities. Rather than deferring to the established state government, communities organized their own local institutions to meet their specific needs and create transformation within their communities. These strong local institutions allowed the communities to organize and act with greater ease and collaboration. Effective local governments and/or institutions have been positively associated with success in community-based conservation (Brooks et al., 2012).

Shared authority and decision making:

Asset mapping revealed a form of participatory governance in each of the communities that served to intentionally distribute authority and decision making throughout the population. Shared authority and decision making is a feature of project design that greatly aids communities engaged in conservation. Shared authority and decision making facilitates greater local involvement, collaboration, and a more holistic scope for communities. Research has found that attitudinal and ecological success in community-based conservation initiatives is correlated with community involvement throughout the initiation, establishment, and daily management of efforts (Brooks et al., 2012). Strong local institutions built around shared authority and decision making is one way to integrate this finding into project design.

Commonalities in External Environment

Aid from the Costa Rican government:

Asset mapping revealed the presence of governmental support in each of the communities to varying degrees. The government of Costa Rica is a global leader in conservation and is uniquely supportive of small communities engaged in conservation (UNEP, 2019). Communities engaged in conservation in other countries may struggle to receive similar levels of assistance from their government. However, somewhat surprisingly, controlled multivariate research has shown that national context does not play a significant role in any domain of community-based conservation success (Brooks et al., 2012). This is not to say that positive national context does not aid communities engaged in conservation, but rather that well-designed projects can be successful even amid national contexts that may not be conducive to success (Brooks et al., 2012). This finding is extremely promising and serves to place greater importance on the commonalities in project design.

Non-governmental third-party support:

Asset mapping also revealed external non-governmental support for the communities from various third parties such as NGOs, international organizations, and volunteers. While non-governmental third parties may not be able to provide support in terms of national policy, they can provide funding, resources, labor, training, time, and land protection. Non-governmental support can help fill in the gaps for communities working under national contexts that are less conducive to success. This commonality recognizes that while communities can be largely independent, no group truly exists in isolation, reflected in the finding that ecological success of community-based conservation is most likely when initiatives engage positively with other institutions (Brooks et al., 2012)(Higgs, 2009).

Discussion

Of the twelve emergent commonalities I identified among the four communities engaged in community-based conservation in Costa Rica, eight are supported by existing research as factors positively correlated with success in community-based conservation initiatives: a commitment to capacity building, shared authority and decision making, third party support, solidarity economies, low population density, mutualism over competition, secure land rights, and strong local institutions. Researchers note that the factors pertaining to project design are significantly more often associated with outcomes than the factors pertaining to community characteristics (Brooks et al., 2012). They even go as far as to say that positive project design factors have the potential to transcend challenging national contexts and human group characteristics (Brooks et al., 2012). This is promising, as project design factors can be created, controlled, and manipulated regardless of context. This finding is relevant to the work of the four communities in Costa Rica because it proves that what they are doing can be done elsewhere, even in less favorable settings. The transference of community-based conservation in Costa Rica is often swiftly dismissed, citing Costa Rica’s unique plethora of green policies (UNEP, 2019) as a deterministic factor of success that is not available to communities in other nations. There is no debating that Costa Rica’s green government provides valuable assistance to communities engaged in conservation, but it is now clear that governmental support is less important than previously thought (Brooks et al., 2012). Thus, I present Salitre, Altamira de Biolley, Rancho Quemado, and Arroyo Quebrada as global examples of communities engaged in conservation that can provide further insight on how to integrate conservation with community well-being.

The significant project design commonalities I identified are a commitment to capacity building, shared authority and decision making, third-party support, and solidarity economies that distribute benefits equitably. From the four communities, we learn that conservation can be integrated with community well-being when community engagement is put at the center of project design, maximizing involvement and positioning community needs as symbiotic to environmental needs. This means including the community in all steps of the process, investing in continual capacity building for community members, and creating accountability for community leaders to ensure an equitable distribution of benefits within the community. Combining the biocultural asset mapping technique with the significant project design commonalities can support communities in self-organizing to harmonize their pursuit of conservation and community well-being within their unique social-ecological context.

The significant human group characteristic commonalities I identified are low population density, attitudes of mutualism over competition, secure land rights, and strong local institutions. These community characteristics can provide guidance to other communities seeking to integrate conservation with community well-being. Communities can work to achieve secure land rights, build strong local institutions, and foster attitudes of mutualism over competition with the sound knowledge that these things could help bring them closer to their goal. The proven efficacy of smaller populations in achieving an integration of conservation and community well-being can guide communities who live in population dense areas to operate on a smaller scale, organizing around their neighborhood rather than the whole city.

Conclusion

As efforts to engage local communities in conservation expand, more research is needed to determine how to best empower local communities within conservation initiatives. The communities of Salitre, Altamira de Biolley, Rancho Quemado, and Arroyo Quebrada provide a reminder that while the formal research is lacking, the work of integrating conservation with community well-being is already being done. In the quest to better understand community-based conservation, academia must humble itself to recognize the shortcomings of Western science and begin to value the wisdom of small communities like these. Only by listening to and positively engaging with communities who are already integrating conservation with community well-being will researchers be able to understand the matter at a conceptual level.

 

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