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• Full case study (PDF, 467kb)
• Case study summary (PDF, 100kb)

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• Regional Activities - Latin America

This case study analyses the evolution of the national forest control system in Costa Rica. Costa Rica has a land area of 5 million hectares, with 63% of its territory potentially under forest cover. However, only 40-46% of the national territory is covered with forests owing to deforestation, fueled by aggressive agricultural policies which promoted monocultures oriented to international markets. It is estimated that between 22-31% of the timber supply is illegally harvested. Forest loss to other competitive land uses continues due to high transaction costs and excessive regulations.

The components of the national forest control system (NFCS) have evolved since 1969. The 1996 forest law was an effort to establish its components and interrelations formally. NFCS is a subsystem, belonging to a more complex State Forest Administration structure. This functions under the National System of Conservation Areas (SINAC), which is composed of other interrelated subsystems such as forest management and production, nature and wildlife conservation, and the forest financing trust. It also includes several other bodies and commissions where the private sector, academia and NGOs play an active role in topics related to development of management standards, Illegal logging control, forestry sector information systems and policy development. The Costa Rican NFCS was designed to operate in a decentralised, deconcentrated and democratic (pro-poor) way, e.g. by introducing autonomous administration conservation areas, where decision making was taken at regional and local levels, and also allowing different types of land tenure for accessing harvesting permits, and forest incentives.

In the NFCS, SINAC is in charge of forest harvesting administration and control. It also shares technical supervision, control, policy making, and monitoring of these activities in co-responsibility with civil society, through the following institutions: (i) Forest Regents are responsible for supervising forest operations and provision of environmental services; (ii) the National Police and COVIRENAS - a body comprising SINAC, the police, members of the civil society - responsible for controlling forest products and wildlife transport on the roads; (iii) National Certification Forestry Commission (CNCF) assigned for setting standards and procedures for sustainable forest management of natural forests and plantations, composed by organizations of solid technical background such as national universities, technical NGOs and research centres; (iv) National Forestry Office (ONF) - a public, non-governmental organization composed by landowner organizations, environmental NGOs, and the forest industry whose mandate is to recommend forest strategies and policies in the direction of forest-based development; (v) Forestry Attorney Office, the Forestry Fiscal from the Professional College (CIA), and the external (NGOs and Academia) and internal (SINAC) forest audit systems were also created to oversee the fair function of this system.

However, there are weaknesses in the NFCS. For example, COVIRENAS activities are minimized by SINAC´s regional offices to avoid interference. Excessive regulations suggested by the CNCF have increased the costs of accessing legal permits and decreased private net benefits from SFM. This has produced a sense of unfair competition with other land uses, and increased clandestine timber harvesting. In addition, there is some conflict of interest in the way Forest Regents and COVIRENAS are arranged into the system.

The NCFS continues its evolution. There is an Illegal logging strategy in place which aims to implement spatial technologies to control land use conversion, and is also concerned with deregulating sustainable forest management and finding a solution for forest tax revenues. The system presents a mixture of State, State-Private and Independent agents in the verification and control of forest production.