Cloud forest in Costa Rica. Credit: Germán Miranda/IPS

By René Castro Salazar and Brian Harris
ROME/SANTIAGO, Jun 24 2020 (IPS)

The lack of a coordinated international response had led to varying results worldwide in dealing with the COVID-19 pandemic. Two countries that have long coordinated their response to global goals like promotion on democracy, human rights and environmental issues, Sweden and Costa Rica highlight how public policy matters. While with their similar approaches to climate change the two walk together, their different approaches to COVID-19 have reaped disparate results, and death tolls.

Using Gompertz mathematical modelling, we have analysed both countries’ responses to COVID-19 and found that the human and economic impact of COVID-19 will be greater in Sweden than in Costa Rica. Through May, Costa Rican public policies have resulted in fewer deaths and positive cases (in both absolute and per capita terms) than the much more economically developed Sweden.

The different results through June 21– Sweden attributing 5,053 deaths to COVID-19 compared to Costa Rica’s 12, according to John Hopkins University, cannot be attributed to geography, ethnicity or even Sweden’s slightly older population.

With the impact of COVID-19 estimated at reducing Sweden’s GDP in 2020 by 9.7 percent and Costa Rica’s by 3.6 percent, attending to the immediate impact of the virus will be a higher political priority than the high levels of investment needed for mitigating climate change over the coming decades

Additionally, Sweden’s economy is much bigger and spends more on health care than Costa Rica, dedicating 11.1 percent of its larger GDP to public spending on its health care system compared to Costa Rica’s 7.3 percent of GDP. In both cases, these countries’ universal public health systems are often cited as exemplary models in terms of the breadth and quality of services provided to their populaces, especially in comparison to countries with comparable levels of development.

The crucial element of distinction between the impact of COVID-19 in the two countries can mainly be laid at the feet of their public policies.

Sweden recorded its first COVID-19 case on January 22 and did not record a second until February 26, when its infection “curve” began its upward trend that our models indicate will reach its peak in late July with around 46,000 infections over 190 days. Costa Rica’s first case was detected March 6, but given its policy response we project its curve began to flatten in mid-April, just 35 days after the outbreak was detected. Both countries host large migrant population that appear to be less integrated in to the health systems and have higher rates of infections than citizens.

It is also noteworthy that, while Costa Rica’s initial COVID-19 testing policy was to test patients showing potential symptoms, Sweden restricted its testing only to patients showing severe symptoms. Undetected cases not reflected in national data are likely in both countries, but are not reflected in our mathematical models. In any case, given how new COVID-19 is, no universally accepted standard for testing exists.

Despite this, the wide gap in confirmed cases and deaths between the two countries clearly shows a greater and more prolonged impact in Sweden.

Although we should be cautious in drawing conclusions, Costa Rica’s more interventionist response and actions to control the spread of the pandemic may very well explain the shorter time period and flatter curve the lesser developed nation has recorded compared to its highly developed counterpart.

Costa Rica’s COVID-19 response was to take quick action in an orderly manner, starting with preventative public information campaigns and the prompt introduction of restrictive measures including the isolation of patients and the implementation of social distancing which culminated in a nationwide quarantine that saw borders and schools closed and movement within the country highly restricted.

Notoriously, Sweden went for a very different approach emphasizing individual responsibility by advising citizens to practice social distancing without restricting movement, only closing borders to non-Europeans and barring gatherings of more than 50 people. The architect of Sweden’s COVID-19 policies has since conceded this response disproportionally affected most vulnerable people like the elderly.

While the two countries enjoy very different development levels, both are seen as leaders in their regions in the areas of social services and health care—both provide their citizenry universal health coverage with infrastructure available nationwide. And both follow similar policy goals and approaches to issues facing future generations, especially with regard to climate change.

Both countries have enthusiastically joined 121 other nations in a concerted and coordinated strategy to attain so-called “carbon neutrality” by 2050—in 2019 Costa Rica’s net per capita emissions were 1.61 tonnes while Sweden’s were 4.03 tonnes; the United States’ net per capita emissions were 16.5 tonnes. Sweden has focused its emissions reduction policies on its energy and transport sectors, while Costa Rica (with its abundant hydroelectric resources) is focusing on its diesel-dependent transportation sector.

In both countries, the forestry sector- and its ability to remove or “sequester” carbon from the atmosphere- plays a fundamental role in the short- and medium-term efforts. But for both, the long-term solution lies in energy efficiency by adopting measures to reduce emissions per kilowatt hour generated and per kilometres travelled to decrease their use of fossil fuels.

Sweden has focused on emissions reductions in the energy sector, specifically by reorienting production to so-called renewable sources including hydroelectric and reducing fossil fuels and nuclear dependency. By 2030, Sweden’s energy sector aims to reduce its emissions by 44 percent and its transportation sector by 30 percent from 1990 levels.

With an emphasis on the forestry sector to attain their net emission goals, both have been implementing parallel fire-prevention and control policies to avoid the devastation wrought in other forest-dependent countries of late.

Fires in both Sweden and Costa Rica have occurred with less frequency and intensity over the last decade as a result, according to NASA observations. That is no guarantee that fires will not pose a threat in the future, but with forestry potentially sequestering 37 percent of total emissions in Costa Rica and projected to capture 18 percent in Sweden, both countries have established similar fire prevention policies and administrative structures.

In Costa Rica, succeeded in phasing out fossil fuels in its electricity generation and legal reforms helped push forest cover from 21 percent of the country’s territory in 1996 to 54 percent in 2018 and its sequestration needs will fall to 33 percent of emissions by 2050 or roughly one tonne or carbon per person per year. Now, the country needs to transform its transportation into a cleaner and more efficient one.

Sweden and Costa Rica can both attain carbon neutrality by 2050 if political consensus remains unchanged. But with the impact of COVID-19 estimated at reducing Sweden’s GDP in 2020 by 9.7 percent and Costa Rica’s by 3.6 percent, attending to the immediate impact of the virus will be a higher political priority than the high levels of investment needed for mitigating climate change over the coming decades.

Combatting COVID-19 in the absence of a vaccine, as with confronting climate change, will require international cohesion. The wide gap in cases and deaths between Costa Rica and Sweden tragically highlights that, as well as how real global public challenges like health and environmental crises need government interventions.

Doctor Rene Castro graduated from Harvard University and is currently ADG for FAO on climate change and biodiversity; he served as a minister in the ministries of foreign affairs and environment and energy of Costa Rica between 1994-2014.

Brian Harris is a Chilean-American consultant with extensive experience as a foreign correspondent and in the global coffee industry as the former president of Chile’s coffee association ANAPAC

The next time you turn on the tap to fill the kettle, you might want to spare a thought for the forest that made it possible. It may be a hundred kilometres away or more from where you are sitting, but the chances are that you owe your cup of tea, in part at least, to the trees that helped to capture the water, and to filter it on its long journey to you the consumer.

René Castro Salazar

The importance of forests to the water cycle cannot be overstated. They slow down the flow of water, percolating it gently through the soil, ensuring stable year-round supplies even during drier seasons. At the same time, forests filter the water that enters our rivers, lakes, streams and groundwater, increasing the quality of this life-giving resource. Research in Burkina Faso has shown how a single tree can help with groundwater recharge, protecting water from evaporating from the soil, its root system allowing rainwater to filter more deeply into the ground, providing clean, safe drinking water.

The intertwined and essential relationship between forests and water is the theme of this year’s International Day of Forests (March 21). At the Food and Agriculture Organization of the United Nations (FAO), we are taking the opportunity to highlight the crucial role that forests play in providing good quality water for the world’s growing population. As well as safeguarding quality water supplies, forest management reduces poverty by creating jobs, preventing forest fires, protecting watersheds and providing other services, such as removing carbon dioxide from the air we breathe.

Worldwide, forested watersheds and wetlands provide a massive 75 percent of our freshwater resources. That may not come as much of a surprise for rural areas. But think of big cities, such as Mumbai, Tokyo, Bogotá and Mexico, and ask yourself where their water comes from. The truth is that one-third of the world’s largest cities obtain a significant proportion of their drinking water from protected forests – and this figure will continue to rise as urban centres increase in size and population. Take the case of New York, one of the most densely populated cities on the planet. There, two forest systems — spread over 2,000 square miles (5,180 square kilometres) and located far upstream from the city itself — supply water for 9 million people, delivering 1.3 billion 4.9 billion litres every day.

Like any living organism, trees transpire, and in so doing they increase humidity levels in the air, ultimately leading to rain or snowfall. On average, 40 percent of rainfall over land originates from evapotranspiration – the name given to this process – from plants, including trees. In some areas, that figure is even higher. For example, more than 70 percent of rainfall in the Rio de la Plata river basin originates from evapotranspiration from the Amazon forest.

When managed sustainably, forests also make a significant contribution to reducing soil erosion and the risk of landslides and avalanches – natural disasters which in turn can disrupt sources and supplies of freshwater. Forests can reduce the effects of flooding and prevent and reduce dryland salinity and desertification. By storing water, trees and forests bolster resilience to drought events, one of climate change’s most damaging symptoms.

The evidence is clear: investing in forest-water policies aimed at sustainable management makes sound economic sense. Faced with a choice between putting in place a forest resource protection strategy or installing a facility to treat water for consumers, New York City planners quickly realised there was no contest. The artificial system would have cost US$6-8 billion, plus an annual $300-500 million in operating costs. The total price tag for sustainably managing the two forests upstream on either side of the Hudson River was far lower, at less than $1.5 billion.

One telling example of the economic value of forests as providers of freshwater comes from China. Its forests have a water storage function worth an estimated $1 trillion—three times the value of the wood they contain.

The value of forests can be measured in human lives too – the most important metric. In Africa, there is strong evidence that the extensive deforestation currently taking place in the tropical central belt is having an impact on water supplies in other parts of the continent, such as Ethiopia in the east. Some people have been forced to migrate from their homeland as a result. It is a sobering thought that forest management decisions – or lack of them –can have such a devastating effect on communities situated thousands of miles (kilometres) away.

Clearly, the links between forests, water, and human well-being are many – and cannot be ignored.

René Castro Salazar was minister of environment, energy and foreign affairs of Costa Rica and is currently Assistant Director General of FAO, Forestry Department.

(End)

By René Castro Salazar
SAN JOSE, Dec 27 2010 (IPS)

In the last three decades, Central America has undergone a far-reaching qualitative change in its political and economic life. Armed conflicts have come to a halt, all of the countries have more democratic and pluralistic systems than in the past, and great progress has been made in terms of institutional foundations and freedom. But History must not be forgotten, because ours has not been an easy path, nor are there infallible antidotes against the actions of certain individuals or groups attempting to return to the past.

Thucydides tells us: “The truth is that great good fortune coming suddenly and unexpectedly tends to make a people insolentÂ…the prosperity which your city now enjoys, and the accession that it has lately received, must not make you fancy that fortune will be always with youÂ…sensible men are prudent enough to treat their gains as precarious, just as they would also keep a clear head in adversity” (The History of The Peloponnesian War).

To remain an unarmed democracy in the 21st century, Costa Rica must modernise its security policies. There are agreements heading in that direction, such as the Association Agreement between Europe and Central America, and more recently the declaration adopted by the Ibero-American summit in Argentina. Both have a democracy clause.

The EU-Central America agreement establishes that in the case of an unconstitutional disruption of the legal-political order, the country in question will be suspended from the benefits conferred by the treaty, because the rule of law is a condition for receiving them.

In the second case, a special declaration on the defence of democracy and the constitutional order in Ibero-America established guidelines for vigorous action by the Ibero-American community in case the constitutional order or sovereignty of any of the nations is threatened.

The modernisation of our security policies should also lead us to develop police forces capable of not only protecting the borders but also combating organised crime, responsibilities that have lately not been addressed as fully as required.

In September, I began to give a course in the Institute of Human Rights, inspired by the words of distinguished jurist Sonia Picado with respect to the importance of the Greek legacy in Western law. I allowed myself to set forth a hypothesis: to distinguish between those of us who follow the Athenian, or the Spartan, tradition.

I summed up Costa Rica’s strategy as a reflection of the Athenian tradition. Development based on civic culture and multilateralism, on a new relationship between equals, between regions committed to their fellow citizens and to the planet. As citizens belonging to this Western civilisation, our struggles continue to be inspired more by the Athenian strategy of trade and the democratic forum than by the Spartan approach of harsh discipline and perfection of warfare. And we thus wager that it will be democracy and trade, rather than force and weapons, that will carry us towards that distant horizon that promises a more prosperous, greener future based on greater solidarity.

Athens was a community of thinkers, artists, merchants and craftspeople that achieved a remarkable level of democracy and impressed the Hellenic world with its accomplishments in architecture, philosophy and arts, among other fields.

But it also demonstrated that its citizens were capable of fighting bravely to preserve that way of life, and it was Athens that led the Greek city-states in their successful defence against the onslaught of the vast, powerful Persian Empire. Sparta, by contrast, enslaved thousands of people, kept them in poverty, and subjugated them by force. The Spartans themselves led such harsh, brutal, austere and autocratic lives that they ignored the signs of the end of their city-state.

It was these thousands of slaves who first weakened the military power of Sparta, and later wiped the autocratic governments of the Spartans off the map.

Today, philosophers, jurists, engineers and the leaders of nations continue to perfect democracy and to build works inspired by the discussions in the Atheneum, and by the mathematical calculations from the manuals that planned the great architectural works. These were the texts spread around the world by the Hellenic conquests. It is not surprising that the calculations and words have endured, while the echoes of the swords hitting the shields have faded into history. (END/COPYRIGHT IPS)

(*) Rene Castro, minister of foreign affairs of Costa Rica, civil engineer, and full professor at the INCAE Business School.

Excerpt:

Costa Rica could become the world's first example of “strong” sustainable development.

- Fabricio Van Den Broeck

For example, strong sustainable development would require that in the exploitation of a natural forest only mature trees could be extracted, those that if they are not removed would die of old age. And with that small quantity of lumber or the money coming from its sales, factories and schools would be built.

In contrast, weak sustainability assumes that natural resources can be substituted by others and, as a result, all of the forest could be cut and all of the lumber sold at once to build factories that will produce future profits.

Norway is considered a leader in sustainable development, although in terms of the weak version. The country has a progressive tax policy and is complemented by revenues with oil taxes of around 15 dollars per 159-liter barrel.

The petroleum fund has accumulated more than 120 billion dollars and has been used particularly to finance activities aimed at replacing oil in the future and to generate the much-hoped-for perpetual income.

Norway has become an energy superpower and one of the leading exporters of electricity to Europe, because it has developed its hydroelectric potential as well. Today, Norway is a rich country that meets its national and global environmental obligations.

In contrast, other countries — rich and poor — simply raise or lower their living standards with the fluctuations of prices and the overexploitation of their surroundings. Rich countries like the United States consume much more petroleum than they produce and endanger the environmental integrity of the planet by not assuming their share of responsibility for the contamination of the Earth's atmosphere.

Equally unsustainable is the strategy of nations like Chile and Venezuela, which are fiscally dependent on copper and on petroleum, respectively. Furthermore, part of the revenues coming from Chilean copper and Venezuelan oil is used to finance military expenditures instead of saving it and looking for alternative sources for the production of perpetual income.

Could Costa Rica adopt a sustainable development model that is stronger than Norway's? Could this Central American country become the first example of strong sustainable development?

The government of Abel Pacheco has announced a sustainability strategy that is more ambitious than the Norwegian model. It says the country will not base current or future development on the extraction of non-renewable resources, such as open-pit gold mining or oil exploitation.

It is logical to assume that the Costa Ricans will not renounce the aspiration for perpetual returns and that these would be created through an alternative strategy.

In other words, if Costa Rica were to give up gold revenues, it could replace them with a world-class ecotourism industry in order to purchase vaccines and build schools. And if it decides not to drill for oil, it could foment the use of efficient modes of transportation, like electric urban trains and the use of hydrogen and biomass as fuels. Otherwise, Costa Rican policy would be a double standard: I don't use my petroleum, but I do import from others this fuel that is harmful and pollutes.

Strong sustainability in Costa Rica is viable. The country has the opportunity to produce abundant and sustainable energy from renewable sources for domestic consumption and for export.

With a clear political decision to use renewable resources, combined with an abundance of resources like water, wind and sun, and with an export effort headed by the state-run electric company ICE, Costa Rica could sell energy worth some 200 million dollars a year.

Costa Rica could also go from being a pioneer in the promotion of global environmental services to being the leader. For example, it could continue to sell carbon dioxide credits, but should be preparing for a new scale of business beginning in January 2005 for the European market and for the eventual implementation of the Kyoto Protocol, which sets limits for emissions of greenhouse gases.

In the ecotourism arena, Costa Rica should promote certification of sustainability with international standards and improve its language and communications capabilities in its marketing efforts.

This is a matter of moving from being pioneers to becoming the leader, to take care of the “green” niches that set Costa Rica apart and which attract visitors and investors capable of paying for and recognizing these attributes.