Costa Rica: Reflections about Community Sustainability

After an amazing adventure in the rain forest of Kekoldi, we spent a day snorkling around a coral reef - exploring an underwater jungle of tropical fish and sea life and enjoying the warm water and beautiful surf of Cahuita, a funky tropical village along the Caribbean Coast of Costa Rica. The next day we traveled deeper into the Talamanca rain forest to the homeland of the BriBri indigenous people. We stayed at Finca Educativa, a community sustainability organization working with 26 different indigenous communities - helping local people develop micro-businesses and ecotourism ventures that enable them to become economically self-sustaining while also conserving their environment and culture.

One of the sites we visited was a remote village called Yorkin ("Your-keen). To get there, we traveled with guides by dugout canoe 10 kilometers upstream along the Yorkin River on the Costa Rica/Panama border. It was an amazing experience with lush tropical vegetation along the river banks and hills, an incredible diversity of bird species, and banana and cocoa plantations in the river valleys. We arrived at the "Casa de Mujeres," an ecotourism lodge where we learned about their organic agricultural practices, their use of medicinal plants, how they build their homes with materials borrowed from the forest, and their delicious organic cocoa (chocolate) business. We got to see the whole chocolate production process from picking the bean pods off the trees to drying them; from crushing the beans to grinding them into a thick, rich dark chocolate paste; and, finally, to adding sugar to form a gooey chocolate candy that melted in our mouths as we oooed and awed. It was the freshest and most delicious chocolate we had ever tasted and an important income producer for this remote community.

We learned how this ecotourism venture is enabling the BriBri to generate a sustainable income and to continue living in their river community nestled between the beautiful Talamanca mountains. Like so many of the sustainable communities we have visited, it is the women who are organizing to form partnerships to produce sustainable income for their families and villages while also protecting their environment and preserving their culture. We have seen so many inspiring examples of sustainability through community during this semester program - examples that give us hope for the possibility of achieving global sustainability. We have seen so many examples of what one person, one women's group, and one village can do to inspire a whole community's commitment to live sustainably.

When we look at the problems the world faces, I think we are starting to feel like we will never be deeply discouraged again because we have see the power of people working together to solve local problems. And, in a very real way, all global problems are local problems that have creative solutions through community. I think we are all feeling inspired to return home and to work with our communities to explore ways that we can live more respectfully and sustainably. We are learning how hope is a renewable resource.