#SECRETS COSTA RICA LAWSUIT HOW TO#

“We live it, we feel it - but for the others, it’s just about money,” said Nora Paez Mayorga, who helps runs the 15-hectare (37-acre) Siwakabata agro-ecology project with her daughter Melissa. Guides from outside the area explaining the Bribri’s spirituality and strong connection with nature usually just learn their spiel from a book or the internet, she added. Tourists have long come inland from Costa Rica’s Caribbean coast to explore the mountains, swim in waterfalls or float in long wooden canoes along the rivers lacing the Bribri territory.īut by the time middlemen have taken a hefty slice of their money, little is left for local people offering trips or cultural demonstrations, said Espinoza, who is learning English to help bring in more international tourists. The World Travel & Tourism Council says about 13 percent of Costa Rica’s gross domestic product comes from tourism, which is expected to employ 265,000 people directly and indirectly in 2018 to deal with its 3 million annual visitors. World Tourism Organization and United Nations Development Programme. Tour companies need to think about ways to become more socially responsible and inclusive, and avoid disrupting communities with their activities, he added.Įcotourism ranks as one of the fastest-growing sectors of the global travel market, and is worth around $100 billion a year, according to a 2017 report by the U.N. “Dealing with people is more complicated than dealing with natural reserves.”

#SECRETS COSTA RICA LAWSUIT HOW TO#

“The tourism sector in general is still learning how to deal with the social factors,” said Saul Blanco Sosa, a sustainable tourism specialist with the Rainforest Alliance conservation group. A quarter of its territory is now national parks or protected reserves.īut while ecotourism offers an incentive to protect the biodiversity that pulls in visitors, there has been less success in channelling benefits to those who provide services and protect the local environment, say some in the industry.

Home to dense jungles and cloud forests teeming with wildlife, Costa Rica has become one of the world’s best-known ecotourism destinations. Tourists often stay with local families in thatched wooden houses to absorb Bribri traditions and learn the language, while some make appointments with traditional doctors who prescribe plant-based medicines. We are trying to live a more dignified life,” she said at the Siwakabata farm near Bribri town, some 220 km (140 miles) southeast of the capital San Jose.īased in Talamanca canton, one of the poorest in Costa Rica, the recently licensed Talamanca Indigenous Bribri Tour Guides Association (AGITUBRIT) wants to ensure the financial benefits start to trickle down to local families, said Espinoza.Īlongside medicinal plant and gastronomy tours, hiking, jungle and river trips are run through a network of indigenous guides who stamp their cultural identity on the expeditions.Ĭosta Rican tourists, who often have little knowledge of indigenous culture, as well as Europeans, have so far made up the visitors who come to find out more about the relatively isolated Bribri people. “We’re giving a tourism experience that is truly cultural.

“When other agencies brought tourists to our territory, sometimes they’d give a small amount to the people here, but it wasn’t really the value of their work,” said Espinoza, 38, indicating a green dart frog trying to hide in the undergrowth. In the lush mountains close to the Panama border that make up the Bribri indigenous territory, Espinoza hopes the country’s first certified indigenous tour agency can deliver a bigger slice of income from ecotourism directly to local women. BRIBRI, Costa Rica, June 18 (Thomson Reuters Foundation) - To treat snake bites, bathe in a tea brewed from yellow button-shaped flowers, advises Melissa Espinoza Paez as she describes the medicinal properties of Costa Rica’s jungle plants, pointing out towering vines used to combat kidney problems.

Secrets costa rica lawsuit