Ecotourism in Costa Rica
A Way to a Better Future?
About US
We, Carina Baltz, Alexandra Gehrmann, Matthew Lichtenstein, and Janina Zimmer, are students of the Master Program in InterAmerican Studies at Bielefeld University in Germany.
As part of the CIAS - The Center of InterAmerican Studies, we are interested in the American continent as a whole. Furthermore, we like to think about the Americas differently by exploring the culture, literature, history, and politics of the American continent from a transregional and interdisciplinary perspective.
For more information, please refer to the website of the CIAS at Bielefeld University by clicking here.
Our Methodology
The methodology used for this research was to gain as much in-depth up to date background information through secondary sources written by scholars and international tourism organizations dealing with ecotourism as a theory and more specifically within Costa Rica.
We aim to use this information to provide a more complete and in-depth analysis on the particular case study. Due to the prevalence of positive literature regarding Costa Rica, as one of the premier ecotourism practitioners and a world leader in nature conservation, we have compiled a range of primary sources found in both media productions and newspaper articles to try and gain a more complete picture regarding exactly what is happening currently in Costa Rica and to interpret the current environmental concerns and impacts there. We aim to provide an analysis and compilation of these sources to test the notion on whether Costa Rica deserves the reputation as an environmental defender and ecotourism practitioner.
We attempt to blend existing research on the topic with news articles and several interviews with experts from Costa Rica to present an accurate picture of ecotourism dynamics within Costa Rica and put that it into context on a regional and global scale.