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Residential Tourism Causing Land Privatization and Alienation: New pressures on Costa Ricas coasts
ABSTRACT Costa Rica has recently seen its tourism industry change with the arrival of residential tourism. Neo-liberal policies aimed at attracting foreign direct investment have played a large role in this change; and the foreignization and privatization of land has been the result. Femke van Noorloos examines how the north-western coast of Costa Rica has become a transnational space, in which struggles over resources and development models will continue to arise. KEYWORDS tourism; lifestyle migration; land grabbing; Latin America; community responses; resource pressures
Introduction
In recent years Costa Rica has become an important destination for migrants from the United States, Canada and Europe to buy their piece of paradiseand live their dreams. This reflects a wider process in which western populations have increasingly made the move to such far-away corners of the world as Central America in search of paradise: a higher quality of life for a lower cost ^ but also an investment opportunity. Important triggers for these developments have been the increased global connectivity and neoliberal policies; it is now much easier than before to become the owner of houses and land in distant locations, provided that one has the financial possibilities to do so. Thus various developing countries are experiencing the progressive development of a residential tourism sector.1 Given its focus on land and housing, residential tourism has a potential to cause more land pressures than short-term tourism. Tourism and real estate are highly attractive for developing countries in dire need of foreign direct investment (FDI) and employment. However, residential tourism is also a main driver of land privatization, speculation and alienation; and in addition it puts strain on other resources. Even Costa Rica, notwithstanding its image as an ecological small-scale tourism destination, has recently seen parts of its coasts (particularly the north-western coast) converted into important residential tourism destinations. As a result, strong pressures on land, water and the environment have emerged. It shows increased signs of enclave creation: a process whereby a tourism destination becomes
Development (2011) 54(1), 8590. doi:10.1057/dev.2010.90
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Figure 1: Number of residential tourism developments in Tamarindo and Playas del Coco areas (north-west Costa Rica). blicas y Transporte, Costa Rica Source: Authors research, cartography adapted from Ministerio de Obras Pu
hotel chains (Programa Estado de la Nacio n, 2007). In the two main micro-regions of tourism development in north-western Costa Rica (the Tamarindo area and the Playas del Coco area), a total of 145 completed residential tourism projects were identified in 2010 (van Noorloos and Zoomers, 2010; Figure 1), with a total of almost 8,000 entities (according to the most conservative estimate). These projects include subdivisions of land, housing developments (residences and apartments), and mixed projects with residential and hotel components. The majority were relatively small apartment complexes, but there were also eight large projects of more than 200 entities. In addition, 45 more projects were announced but their construction was halted or had not yet started; these included some very large projects (Figure 1). This partly reflects the extent to which
the financial crisis has affected the real estate and tourism sectors in Costa Rica. With regard to land ownership, tourism has been engendering a foreignization of the Costa Rican coasts since the 1980s (Honey, 1999): much of the investment in tourism and real estate is of foreign origin. In the aforementioned list of residential tourism developments in Guanacaste, almost 75 percent of the project developments were at least partly of North American origin, whereas 35 percent were at least partly of Costa Rican origin. Combinations of both were thus also common.5 In addition, data on FDI in Costa Rican real estate show that this investment is dominated by North Americans: between 2004 and 2007, 55.2 percent of FDI in real estate originated in the United States, followed by Canada with 7.5 percent.6
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for protest or conflict: land, water and other natural resources (e.g. biodiversity as a natural amenity for ecotourism) are interrelated, and thus we can speak of multifaceted displacement and conflicts.
Conclusion
In the current globalized context and neo-liberal policy environment, residential tourism has surged in Costa Rica. Central governments active promotion policies, combined with weak local governance and regulation, have generated an ill-planned, market-driven tourism development. Current developments have tended towards outside-driven urbanistic development, including real estate, speculation and construction. Hence issues of land privatization and alienation have come up, intertwined with problems concerning water scarcity and environmental damage. Although much land sale has been voluntary and induced by socio-economic change, the coastal territories still remaining are under great pressure for development, causing social tension. In sum, the north-western coast of Costa Rica has become a transnational space influenced by an increasingly complicated variety of actors (Torres and Momsen, 2005), in which struggles over resources and development models will continue to arise.
Irregularities in the application of the law are rampant; hence the claim by local, poor settlers that their interests are being overrun by tourism developers, as public interest zones are de facto privatized and converted into exclusive (residential) tourism destinations. From these examples two new insights can be drawn on conflict in residential tourism areas. First, the variety of actors involved is larger than often assumed ^ and possibly larger than in areas of only short-term tourism. Not only local communities, but also external actors are often involved in the protests: environmentalists, but also tourism entrepreneurs and residential tourists themselves (Janoschka, 2009). In addition, the loss of a combination of resources is often the reason
Notes
1 Residential tourists are people who move temporarily or permanently to another region or country for reasons related to leisure, lifestyle and/or cost of living, and buy or rent a private residence there. Retirees form an important but not exclusive part of this group. Lifestyle migration is another term often used for this type of mobility (Benson and OReilly, 2009). 2 Law no. 6043: Ley sobre la Zona Mar| timo Terrestre. 3 http://www.bccr.fi.cr/documentos/publicaciones/archivos/Informe%20Sobre%20Flujos%20de%20Inversi%C3% B3n%20Extranjera%20Directa%20en%20Costa%20Rica%202007-%202008%20%20N%2019.doc, accessed August 2008. 4 http://www.bccr.fi.cr/documentos/publicaciones/archivos/Informe%20Sobre%20Flujos%20de%20Inversi%C3% B3n%20Extranjera%20Directa%20en%20Costa%20Rica%202007-%202008%20%20N%2019.doc, accessed August 2008. 5 Data on developersorigin could be traced for 94 of the developments; no substantive differences were found when only large projects were counted (van Noorloos and Zoomers, 2010). 6 http://www.bccr.fi.cr/documentos/publicaciones/archivos/Informe%20Sobre%20Flujos%20de%20Inversi%C3% B3n%20Extranjera%20Directa%20en%20Costa%20Rica%202007-%202008%20%20N%2019.doc, accessed August 2008. 7 Law proposal No. 17.394: Ley de Territorios Costeros Comunitarios, (http://territorioscosteroscomunitarios.com/ newsite/index.php?option com_content&view article&id 113&Itemid 174, accessed May 2010).
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