Title: 'Growing together': transnational policy networks and environmental policy change in Costa Rica

Authors: Theresa Garvin; Blythe McLennan; Julio Calvo-Alvarado; Arturo Sanchez-Azofeifa

Addresses: Human Geography and Planning, Department of EAS, University of Alberta, 1-26 Earth Sciences Building, Edmonton, Alberta, T6G 2E3, Canada ' Centre for Risk and Community Safety, School of Mathematical and Geospatial Sciences, RMIT University, GPO Box 2476, Melbourne, Victoria 3001, Australia ' Escuela de Ingenieria Forestal, Instituto Tecnologico de Costa Rica, Apartado 159, 7050 Cartago, Costa Rica ' Department of Earth and Atmospheric Sciences, University of Alberta, 1-26 Earth Sciences Building, Edmonton, Alberta, T6G 2E3, Canada

Abstract: Costa Rica's Payments for Environmental Services (PES) has been held as a promising option for valuing environmental services in developing countries. We undertook a systematic evaluation of academic and grey literatures and used narrative analysis and policy transfer evaluation to identify the global and local interactions that underpinned the successful implementation of PES. Our work shows that PES was an example of 'growing together' unique to Costa Rica and resulted from complex sharing of policy ideas, knowledge, and institutional and financial arrangements over time. We show that Costa Rica's PES represents a long-term developmental process rather than a simple and straightforward example of policy transfer. We conclude that the development and implementation of programmes valuing environmental services requires a set of underlying social, political, and economic conditions as well as evolving interactions between global and domestic policy arenas specific to each particular nation.

Keywords: Costa Rica; Payments for Environmental Services; PES; environmental policy; policy transfer; transnational policy networks; transnational actors; policy change; market-based environmental services; developing countries; long-term development.

DOI: 10.1504/IJSSS.2015.068026

International Journal of Society Systems Science, 2015 Vol.7 No.1, pp.1 - 22

Published online: 14 Mar 2015 *

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