From Private Property to Common Property: Costa Rican Peasants Mobilize to Protect their Forested Mountains

Abstract

"This paper is based on four months of anthropological fieldwork carried out in the Central Valley of Costa Rica during the summers of 1989 and 1990, and documents the case of a peasant grassroots organization, CODECE (Committee for the Defense of the Mountains of Escazu) mobilized to protect forested mountains on which they live. Emerging as a response to threat of foreign 'development' which endangered their natural water supply, and consequently, their livelihood as subsistence farmers dependent on irrigation, CODECE has developed a comprehensive approach to environmental protection which includes the need for environmental education, cultural revitalization, broad-base support, and action on multiple fronts, and managed to halt rampant deforestation of the Mountains of Escazu. Strategies employed by CODECE which have determined much its success, can broadly be described as adherence to participatory democratic principles, promotion of a common property consciousness, and willingness to be flexible and self-critical. CODECE has recognized the need to convert privately held forested mountains where their springs are born, into common property. Contrary to Hardin's tragedy of the commons, here the commons is seen as a solution to the tragedy of private property."